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from the I-know-what-you-did^W-said-last-summer dept.
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.
"We retain customers' voice recordings and transcripts until the customer chooses to delete them," Amazon said—but even then there are exceptions.
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.
[...] If you would like to review and delete any Alexa voice or transcript data in your Amazon account, you can do so under the Alexa Privacy section, found under "Change your digital and device settings" in the "Your Devices and Content" section of your account.
See also TechCrunch.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 04 2019, @08:36AM (3 children)
Just a few sentences, detailing exactly what the consumer can "opt in" to, and what he can "opt out" of. I want the one that says, "absolute minimal logging".
Of course, I'm not kidding anyone, including myself. I'll never have an Alexa in my home, or a Siri, or any other "smart" marketing crap.
(Score: 4, Informative) by SpockLogic on Thursday July 04 2019, @11:31AM
This is the only safe position to take.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 04 2019, @11:34AM (1 child)
There's no point in a simple contract if the laws governing them are >100k lines. When the contact says you're letting Amazon record you it doesn't say in one state the recordings are restricted to local servers and that specific company unless a real contract with copyright wavers and lawyers were involved while in another it means Amazon owns it and has the right to replicate, modify and sell it.
Fact of the matter is, it's entirely disingenuous to even remotely suggest a specific reform in this field can help. It takes team of corporate lawyers to evaluate contracts. Trials lasts years and judges take years to specialize in their respective fields. The whole state and federal law is in dire need of a reform. And the lawyers that understand the problem are making a lot of money from keeping things the way they are so they're not going to talk about it openly.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Thursday July 04 2019, @03:31PM
You do realize that the majority of the members of the U.S. House and Senate as well as all the State Legislatures are lawyers. So yeah the likelihood reform is null.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--