Amazon has confirmed that it keeps transcripts of users' Alexa voice recordings indefinitely on its servers. The company also keeps Alexa voice recordings indefinitely. According to Amazon, customers customers do have an option to delete both the transcripts and voice recordings.

"When a customer deletes a voice recording, we delete the transcripts associated with the customer’s account of both of the customer’s request and Alexa’s response. We already delete those transcripts from all of Alexa’s primary storage systems, and we have an ongoing effort to ensure those transcripts do not remain in any of Alexa’s other storage systems. We do not store the audio of Alexa’s response. However, we may still retain other records of customers’ Alexa interactions, including records of actions Alexa took in response to the customer’s request. And when a customer interacts with an Alexa skill, that skill developer may also retain records of the interaction," wrote Huseman.
What makes this even a bigger privacy concern is that the transcripts and voice recordings retained by Amazon are not anonymized and are directly linked to a customer's account including when possibly being reviewed by Amazon staff and systems or third party developers who create Amazon Alexa skills.
"As described in answer 1(d), we allow customers to review the transcripts of their Alexa interactions as part of our Voice History feature, which requires us to keep the transcripts associated with the customer’s account."
Also concerning, despite Huseman writing that transcripts are deleted from "Amazon's primary storage systems" is that he also in the same response letter states that "we have an ongoing effort to ensure those transcripts do not remain in any of Alexa’s other storage systems." This sounds like the transcripts are not entirely deleted.

More at: https://www.iafrikan.com/2019/07/03/...-indefinitely/


Does anybody believe it is ever really deleted?