No matter how careful you are, you give up some privacy when using a phone, tablet, smart speaker or laptop. They can sometimes listen to you without you even knowing it. Tap or click here to keep Big Tech from listening in on your private conversations. Alexa can be a huge help. She can tell you about the weather or give you a recipe for home-cooked meals and so much more. Skills let you make the most out of Alexa-enabled devices, but they can come with a price. A recent study shows that a quarter of Alexa’s skills have no privacy policy in place.
Alexa, what’s the deal?
Researchers from North Carolina State University analyzed more than 90,000 Alexa skills and found that just 24% have privacy policies in place. Only a few of the tested skills have policies pertaining to categories such as kids and health and fitness. The study also found that skills can be activated automatically, as opposed to asking you for permission. So when you ask Alexa a question, you won’t know where your question is going or where the answer is coming from. Tap or click here for ways to keep hackers out of your smart home cameras. It also found that developers can publish skills under a false name. This name could be a company you trust that has nothing to do with the skill. Thus you can feed it information without knowing who is listening.
Read the fine print
Before adding any third-party skills to your Alexa or other smart devices, find out what you are sharing. Read those notices you may usually agree to without thinking. The fine print can tell you what data is collected and how it will be used. If there is no privacy policy in place, you may want to avoid that skill entirely.
Check in on Alexa
You can set up Alexa and your Echo to be less invasive by going into the privacy settings. Here are some tips.
Delete your conversations
There are a few ways you can get rid of conversations you’re allowed to delete.
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