Does Alexa Spy on You Through Amazon Smart Devices? (2024)

Have you ever had a sensitive conversation near an Amazon Alexa device and given it the side-eye? It’s not supposed to be listening to you when you haven’t activated it … but what if it is? You certainly don’t want anyone else to hear the embarrassing secret you’re telling your mom, the argument you’re having with your spouse or the juicy bit of office gossip that could get someone fired. If you’re feeling a little paranoid, you are not alone. So does Alexa spy on you?

“Like phones, Alexa devices probably aren’t eavesdropping on people, but there’s little need to do so, given how candid users can be when interacting with technology,” says Irwin Reyes, a security and privacy researcher at Two Six Technologies. “There’s a blurry line between ‘personalization,’ ‘recommendation’ and ‘spying.'”

While that answer isn’t exactly straightforward, understanding how Alexa works and the privacy considerations at play can help you make the best decision about using these devices. Ahead, we’ll hear from Reyes and other tech experts, explore Alexa scandals that have made headlines, and share tech tipsfor how you can take more control over your Alexa data.

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What is Alexa?

Alexa is a virtual assistant technology created by Amazon. First introduced in 2014, it uses voice technology to listen and respond to users’ inquiries. This handy AI tool is designed to be activated when a user says the wake word, typically “Alexa,” after which it processes the user’s request. That, of course, can be anything from asking it to play a song or give you a weather report to asking Alexa funny questions when you need a good laugh.

Alexa was initially part of Amazon’s Echo smart speakers, but it has since been integrated into a wide variety of devices. In addition to smart speakers, many TVs, soundbars, kitchen devices, toys and smart home devices like cameras, locks and lightbulbs can now be connected to Alexa.

Does Alexa spy on you?

We can’t give a simple yes-or-no answer to the question of whether Alexa spies on you—the actual answer is much more nuanced. “There is currently no evidence that suggests Amazon is surreptitiously recording users’ conversations when users do not engage with Alexa devices,” says Umar Iqbal, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. “Alexa devices can, however, misactivate and record the user’s conversation.”

Additionally, Alexa collects and shares a lot of data from user interactions that many might consider to be akin to spying. Some of that information may be sensitive, and it doesn’t exactly stay under lock and key. As Iqbal noted in a research paper he presented at the Internet Measurement Conference in 2023, Alexa Echo interaction data is collected by both Amazon and third parties, including advertising and tracking services. Amazon then processes Alexa data to infer a user’s interests, and uses those inferences to serve that person targeted ads on Alexa devices and across the web.

What information is Alexa collecting?

Amazon collects recordings of all Alexa interactions and associates them with the registered Amazon account, Reyes says. According to the company’s FAQ, this includes only queries that follow the wake word. And unless you change the default settings, Amazon will store the data about your interactions with Alexa indefinitely on its cloud servers. That means if you ask Alexa to give you some pointers for your new exercise routine, or your daughter has a plethora of questions about My Little Pony, Amazon will store the data about the interaction unless you set it to delete. (More on how to do that later).

Data collection works a little differently for third parties that create Alexa skills, however. Alexa skills are capabilities created by companies other than Amazon for use with Alexa devices. For example, the Mayo Clinic created a popular skill for answering basic first-aid questions. The Mayo Clinic and any other third parties that create similar capabilities for Alexa devices get access only to specific keywords from the user interactions, not full voice recordings, says Iqbal.

Can Alexa record conversations?

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Yes, Alexa records conversations. It also transcribes them and stores both the recordings and transcriptions. And as noted above, Alexa devices send voice queries to Amazon servers, also known as the cloud, to process those recordings and transcriptions. “Processing generally involves transcribing the voice query (text-to-speech) so that it can be fulfilled either by Amazon’s own services (‘Alexa, order two rolls of duct tape’) or passed along to a third party (‘Alexa, ask MLB about the NL East standings’),” Reyes explains, referring to Amazon’s FAQ.

Users do, however, have the option to have their Alexa device do the transcription locally so that no voice data, only transcription data, gets sent to Amazon. This adds an extra layer of security, but it will prevent you from being able to use some Alexa capabilities, such as live translations and multilingual mode.

What are the privacy concerns?

There are a number of privacy concerns to consider when deciding whether to use an Amazon Alexa device, and some have even come to light though lawsuits against the company. For many people, just the data-collection practices we’ve already discussed and the fact that Alexa is always listening for the wake word is enough of a privacy concern to avoid using Alexa, but here are some of the others.

Recording and sharing private conversations

Since Alexa is always listening for the wake word, that means there’s an active microphone operating in your house, and that comes with some inherent privacy risks. There’s no available data around how often Alexa activates and records when it’s not supposed to, but we know it’s something that can happen.

In one instance that went viral in 2018, an Amazon Alexa device recorded a couple’s conversation and then sent it to a person in their contacts—one of the husband’s colleagues. According to Amazon, the device mistook noise in the background for the wake word and then interpreted parts of their conversation as directions to send a message to the contact. This can happen in response to conversations happening around Alexa devices or even on a nearby TV. In 2019, Bloomberg reported that at least 100 transcripts of conversations recorded by Alexas without being purposely activated were being uploaded to the cloud each day.

Collecting sensitive information

Aside from the glaringly intrusive incidents noted above, the everyday interactions users have with Alexa can expose their sensitive information or be used to infer sensitive information about them, Iqbal and his fellow researchers write in their paper. They describe how the voice recordings of users’ commands can be used to figure out information about their age, health and mood, while the transcripts of conversations can give away anything they talk about with Alexa. In the event of a hack, loads of sensitive information could be exposed.

Third-party Alexa skills also pose a privacy risk. While Amazon has policies against such providers collecting sensitive information—such as bank account numbers and addresses—several research studies have shown that policy-violating skills can get certified and that Amazon has allowed thousands of skills that violate its policies on the Alexa marketplace platform.

Violating children’s privacy

Additionally, just last year, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charged Amazon with violating children’s privacy laws by keeping kids’ Alexa voice recordings forever and undermining parents’ deletion requests. The company ended up settling for $31 million in response to lawsuits around both Alexa and Ring, the line of smart home cameras Amazon acquired in 2018. As part of the settlement, Amazon agreed to remove child profiles that have been inactive for more than 18 months unless a parent or guardian chooses to keep them, a spokesperson told Reader’s Digest. Data privacy is an important issue for people of all ages, but many feel there should be even more stringent protections surrounding children’s data.

Who’s listening on the other end?

Amazon employees do sometimes listen to recordings of your interactions with Alexa. In its current Alexa FAQ, Amazon describes how it uses “your voice recordings to improve your experience and our services,” including how “a human reviewing a customer’s request for the weather in Austin can identify that Alexa misinterpreted it as a request for the weather in Boston,” for example. Only a small fraction of 1% of Alexa requests are reviewed, according to an Amazon spokesperson.

News reports, however, have suggested this happens on a much greater scale, so that may change how you view the question at the heart of this story: Does Alexa spy on you? In 2019, Time reported that Amazon employs thousands of people around the world specifically to analyze conversations, annotate them and then feed them back into the software to improve how it responds to users. The reviewers who spoke to Time said they review as many as 1,000 audio clips per shift.

In 2023, Amazon also paid $25 million to settle federal allegations that 30,000 employees were able to listen to users’ conversations with Alexa between August 2018 and September 2019, though Amazon denied the claims.

“As for Amazon employees accessing voice recordings or customer interactions, I’m not aware of any research that conclusively answers that,” Reyes says. “[But] Amazon is certainly in a position to enable that.”

What happens to your data?

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As mentioned above, Amazon records, transcribes and stores your conversations. It also uses your data for advertising purposes and allows third parties to do the same. By default, your data is also used to improve Amazon’s speech recognition and natural language understanding systems. Amazon tells Reader’s Digest that voice recordings are saved until a customer chooses to delete them. So if you don’t set your preferences to delete your data, it appears that Amazon will continue to store it.

How can you protect your privacy while using Alexa?

Amazon provides options to delete your voice recordings, opt out of having your voice recordings sent to the cloud, and opt out of allowing human review of your voice recordings, says Iqbal. These settings won’t entirely reduce the data privacy risks associated with Alexa, but they will minimize them. The key, of course, is knowing they exist and adjusting your settings accordingly. Here’s how to do that.

Delete your voice recordings

1. Go to Settings > Alexa Privacy in the Alexa app or https://www.amazon.com/alexaprivacysettings.
2. Review the Alexa voice recordings associated with your Amazon account.
3. Choose if you want to delete the recordings one by one, by date range, by device, by attributed voice ID or all at once.
4. You can also set your preferences to delete future voice recordings automatically. Select “Save recordings for 3 months” or “Save recordings for 18 months” to have them auto delete after that amount of time, or choose “Do not save recordings” to set it so that no recordings are ever saved.

Amazon does warn that deleting voice recordings may degrade your Alexa experience and that if you choose not to save any voice recordings, voice ID may not work.

Opt out of having voice recordings sent to the cloud

1. In the Alexa app, go to Settings > Device Settings.
2. Select “General.”
3. Toggle off the option that says “Do Not Send Voice Recordings.”

FYI, this option is available only to users with their language set to English and will cause some features—such as Adaptive Listening and Reading Sidekick—to not work for you.

Opt out of allowing human review of your voice recordings

1. In the Alexa app, go to Settings > Alexa Privacy.
2. Select “Manage How Your Data Improves Alexa.”
3. Toggle off the option that says “Help Improve Amazon Services and Develop New Features.”

If you have a voice ID, you can also say, “Alexa, turn on/off human review of my voice recordings.”

Why trust us

Reader’s Digest has published hundreds of articles on personal technology, arming readers with the knowledge to protect themselves against cybersecurity threats and internet scams as well as revealing the best tips, tricks and shortcuts for computers, cellphones, apps, texting, social media and more. For this piece on whether Alexa spies on you, Sage Lazzaro tapped her experience as a tech journalist with nearly a decade of experience. Then Chuck Brooks, the president of Brooks Consulting International and a consultant with more than 25 years of experience in cybersecurity, emerging technologies and other tech topics, gave it a rigorous review to ensure that all information is accurate and offers the best possible advice to readers. We rely on credentialed experts with personal experience and know-how as well as primary sources including tech companies, professional organizations and academic institutions. We verify all facts and data and revisit them over time to ensure they remain accurate and up to date. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.

Sources:

• Umar Iqbal, assistant professor of computer science and engineering at Washington University in St. Louis; email interview, May 9, 2024
• Irwin Reyes, security and privacy researcher at Two Six Technologies; email interview, May 8, 2024
• Umar Iqbal et al: “Tracking, Profiling, and Ad Targeting in the Alexa Echo Smart Speaker System”
• Washington Post: “An Amazon Echo recorded a family’s conversation, then sent it to a random person in their contacts, report says”
• Bloomberg: “Amazon Workers Are Listening to What You Tell Alexa”
• Usenix: “SkillDetective: Automated Policy-Violation Detection of Voice Assistant Applications in the Wild”
• Lentzsch et al: “Hey Alexa, Is This Skill Safe? Taking a Closer Look at the Alexa Skill Ecosystem”
• FTC: “FTC and DOJ Charge Amazon with Violating Children’s Privacy Law by Keeping Kids’ Alexa Voice Recordings Forever and Undermining Parents’ Deletion Requests”
• Time: “Thousands of Amazon Workers Listen to Alexa Users’ Conversations”
• Bloomberg: “Thirty Thousand Amazon Workers Could Access Alexa Data, FTC Says”