Change these Amazon settings
Welcome to Advisorator’s Tip of the Week, helping you learn something new from the tech world every Tuesday.
If you’re an Amazon customer in any capacity, it’s worth taking a minute to sweep through the company’s labyrinthine privacy menus and put some limits on its vast data collection apparatus.
First, visit Amazon’s Advertising Preferences page and select “Do not show me interest-based ads provided by Amazon.” This will prevent the items you buy on the site from creepily following you around the web.
To limit data collection on Echo speakers, swing by Amazon’s Alexa privacy page and make the following adjustments:
- Under “Voice Recordings,” click the arrow next to “Choose how long to save,” then select “Don’t save recordings.” This stops Amazon from storing the audio of your voice commands.
- Under Smart Home Device History, click the arrow next to “Choose how long to save,” then select three months, the minimum timeframe available. Repeat these steps for “Detected Sounds History.”
- Under “Help improve Alexa,” turn off “Use of voice recordings” and “Use messages to improve transcriptions.”
If you have any Fire tablets or Kindle e-readers, you should also head to Amazon’s Devices Privacy page. Select your device, then disable Device Usage Data, Interest-based ads, and Collect App Usage Data. You’ll have to repeat this process for each device on the list.
Finally, consider turning off Amazon browsing history on a shared computer if you don’t want other folks seeing what you looked for. Head to Amazon’s Browsing History page, click the down arrow next to “Manage History,” then toggle Turn Browsing History on/off.
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