Amazon confirms it keeps your Alexa recordings basically forever

If you (like so many of us) hate listening to recordings of your own voice, you may be in for an unpleasant future, as Amazon has confirmed it hangs on to every conversation you’ve ever had with an Alexa-enabled device until or unless you specifically delete them. That confirmation comes as a response to a list of questions Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware) sent to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in May expressing ‘concerns’ about how Amazon uses and retains customers’ Alexa voice assistant data. Amazon’s response to Coons, as first reported by CNET, confirms that the company keeps your data as long as it wants unless you deliberately specify otherwise.

Amazon, as well as third parties that deploy ‘skills’ on the Alexa platform, keep records of interactions customers have with Alexa, the company said. If, for example, you order a pizza, purchase digital content, summon a car from a ride-hailing service, or place an Amazon order, ‘Amazon and/or the applicable skill developer obviously need to keep a record of the transaction,’ Amazon said, without clarifying the specific kind of data that’s in that record.

Source: arstechnica.com