There is now proof that your smart speaker is eavesdropping on your conversations
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Amazon has confirmed that its smart speaker, the Amazon Echo – also known as “Alexa” – listens to your personal and private conversations.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The company employs thousands of workers to listen to voice recordings that are captured by the company’s Echo “smart” speakers, according to a </span><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-10/is-anyone-listening-to-you-on-alexa-a-global-team-reviews-audio"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Bloomberg</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> report.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Millions across the world have been reluctant to use the device for this very reason, and it turns out that someone IS listening to their conversations.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">However, Amazon doesn’t refer to the process as eavesdropping. The company refers to it as the “Alexa voice review process” and uses it to highlight the role that humans play in training software algorithms.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“This information helps us train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems, so Alexa can better understand your requests, and ensure the service works well for everyone,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The audio transcribers, who are comprised of full-time employees at Amazon as well as contractors, told </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Bloomberg</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> that they reviewed “as many as 1,000 audio clips per shift”. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Although some of the employees might find the work mundane, the listeners occasionally pick up on things that the person on the other end would like to remain private, such as a woman singing in her shower off-key and loudly.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The report from </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Bloomberg</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> also revealed that the more amusing (or harder to understand) voice clips get shared amongst the employees via internal chat rooms.</span></p>
<p><strong>How to disable this feature</strong></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">However, disabling this feature is easy. As it’s switched on by default in the Alexa app, this is also the way you turn it off.</span></p>
<ol>
<li><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Open the Alexa app on your phone.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Tap the “Menu” button on the top left of the screen.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Select “Alexa Account”.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Choose “Alexa Privacy”.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Select “Manage how your data improves Alexa”.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Turn off the button next to “Help Develop New Features”.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Turn off the button next to your name under “Use Messages to Improve Transcriptions”.</span></li>
</ol>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Despite turning off the recording function for Alexa, the company told Bloomberg that its voice recordings may still be analysed as a part of Amazon’s review process.</span></p>
