Have you ever suspected that your gadgets are listening in on your conversations?
When you've just got off the phone with someone and the topic of your conversation mysteriously appears as an advert on the webpage at which you're looking.
There are many conspiracy theories around this, but when it comes to Amazon's Alexa devices it's not far off the mark as they are actually recording us - even if we are not actively speaking to them, the MEN reports.
The revelations were made after an ex-Amazon exec told BBC's Panorama Special, 'Amazon: What They Know About Us', that he turns his Alexa off "whenever [he] wants to have a private moment."
The reason for this is that Alexas react to 'wake words'. So if you say a certain word or phrase, even when you're not interacting with the device itself, it will, in essence, wake up and start recording.
It won't necessarily record entire conversations every time but it will, at least, pick up little sound bites.
There is reason for this however, as an Amazon spokesperson has previously said: "To help improve Alexa, we manually review and annotate a small fraction of one per cent of Alexa requests.
"Access to data annotation tools is only granted to a limited number of employees who require them to improve the service, and our annotation process does not associate voice recordings with any customer identifiable information.
"Customers can opt-out of having their voice recordings included in the fraction of one percent of voice recordings that get reviewed."
How to find the conversations and delete them:
- Open the Alexa app
- Go to the Settings menu
- Select Settings
- Select Alexa Privacy, and then select an entry or review a specific date range
- Tap the text you want to hear, and then click the Play icon
- If you want to delete a recording, simply tick the empty box next to it, and tap ‘Delete Selected Recordings’
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