Protecting your privacy when using a voice assistant

HOW TO TURN OFF YOUR SMART SPEAKERS A quick solution is simply to turn the microphone on these smart speakers off. • AMAZON ECHO. Press the microphone button. The top will glow red when

it's off. Pressing it again will activate listening mode again. STOP ALEXA FROM LISTENING IN You can stop sending recordings to Amazon Alexa using these steps. 1. Open the Amazon Alexa

app on your smartphone and go to the menu on the top left corner of the screen. 2. Choose SETTINGS | ALEXA ACCOUNT | ALEXA PRIVACY. If you're asked to sign in to your account, go ahead.

3. Once you've signed in, go to MANAGE YOUR ALEXA DATA. 4. Then under MANAGE YOUR VOICE RECORDINGS, turn on AUTOMATICALLY DELETE RECORDINGS. 5. You can then choose KEEP MY RECORDINGS

FOR 3 MONTHS, and it will delete anything older automatically. 6. From the MANAGE YOUR VOICE RECORDINGS page, you can scroll down to turn off USE VOICE RECORDINGS TO IMPROVE AMAZON SERVICES.

7. Also turn off the toggle next to your name under USE MESSAGES TO IMPROVE TRANSCRIPTIONS. • APPLE HOMEPOD. Say, “Hey, Siri, stop listening.” To turn it back on, you have to tap the center

of the HomePod on top and say, “Hey, Siri, start listening." • GOOGLE HOME. Look for the microphone button. The Mini's switch is near its power cord; the regular and Max models

have buttons at the back. HOW TO DELETE PAST RECORDINGS • AMAZON ECHO. In the Alexa smartphone app, go to the menu and select SETTINGS | ALEXA ACCOUNT | ALEXA PRIVACY | REVIEW VOICE HISTORY.

Then choose the date range and delete your recordings for today or the entire history Alternatively, you can say to Amazon's device, “Alexa, delete everything I said today." •

APPLE HOMEPOD. Now, the only way to delete Siri's recordings of the past is to delete all of your account information, which I don't recommend. • GOOGLE HOME. In the Google Home

smartphone app, select the ACCOUNT icon in the lower right corner of the screen and then choose MY ACTIVITY. Then you can delete Google Assistant's recordings individually or in groups.

Better, you can set it to regularly delete such files by going to the MY ACTIVITY page and select CHOOSE TO DELETE AUTOMATICALLY. All of the companies continually update their programs, so

some of these settings may change in the future. In each of these cases, the companies will try to dissuade you from deleting recordings or opting out of the monitoring. They claim that

disabling the recordings and clearing out your recordings on a regular basis will reduce the accuracy of the voice assistants in understanding what you are saying. However, with continual

testing I've found it doesn't make much of a difference. The programs are not that sophisticated yet, so don't be afraid to delete recordings. Still, manually deleting

recordings, like clearing the cache in your computer's web browser, can be an onerous task. Of course, you can always ask your smart speaker, “Alexa, remind me to clear my recordings

every Wednesday at noon.” Problem solved.