Bob in Streetsboro asked me last month, while I was setting up his Wi-Fi: “Bill, my granddaughter gave us this Alexa thing for Christmas. Is it spying on us?”
He pointed at it like it might bite him.
It’s a fair question, and I get some version of it on most house calls. The honest answer is: it’s complicated, but it’s not as bad as people think — and there are three settings I change on every one I install that handle most of what folks worry about.
I’m Bill Davis. I run Bill’s Home Tech in Atwater, and I’m going to tell you what these things actually do, what they don’t do, and what to change so you can use one without feeling watched.
The basic question: are they always listening?
Yes — but probably not in the way you think.
An Amazon Echo or a Google Home (or a Nest Mini, or a Google Speaker, same family) listens for one specific word. For Echo, it’s “Alexa.” For Google Home, it’s “Hey Google.”
Until it hears that word, the device is doing something called “local processing” — it’s listening, but it’s not sending anything to Amazon or Google. The audio is staying inside the little speaker. Think of it like a guard dog that only barks at one sound. The dog hears everything; it only reacts to one thing.
Once you say the wake word — “Alexa, what’s the weather?” — now the device wakes up, sends your audio up to Amazon’s servers, figures out what you wanted, and answers.
So the realistic concerns are two things:
- The wake word isn’t perfect. Sometimes “Alexa” hears something close — “Alex,” a TV character, your husband saying “Alec, asphalt” — and it wakes up and records 5 seconds it shouldn’t have.
- That recording lives somewhere. Amazon and Google save those clips by default, supposedly to “improve the service.” That part you can turn off.
What about real conversations being recorded?
Here’s what would have to happen for a regular conversation in your kitchen to get recorded:
- The device would have to mistakenly hear “Alexa” or “Hey Google.”
- It would have to record a 5-10 second snippet.
- It would send that snippet to Amazon or Google.
- It would sit on a server.
It’s not a microphone running 24/7 sending everything to the FBI. It’s snippet recordings tied to wake-word triggers — most of them legitimate, occasionally accidental.
That said, “occasionally accidental” is enough that I always change a few settings.
The three settings I change on every install
1. Turn off voice recording history
Both Amazon and Google have settings to stop saving your voice recordings. They keep them by default. You can ask them not to.
For Amazon Echo: - Open the Alexa app on your phone. - Tap More (bottom right) → Settings → Alexa Privacy → Manage Your Alexa Data. - Find Choose how long to save voice recordings. - Pick Don’t save recordings.
For Google Home / Nest: - Open the Google Home app. - Tap your profile picture (top right) → My Activity. - Tap Auto-delete → set it to Delete activity older than 3 months (or shorter). - Optionally, turn the Voice and Audio activity switch off entirely.
That’s the big one. Once you do this, your voice clips don’t sit on a server forever.
2. Turn off “use my voice to improve Amazon services”
This one’s separate. Even if you stop saving recordings, Amazon still asks if it can use snippets to “improve” Alexa. Decline that.
In the Alexa app: Settings → Alexa Privacy → Manage Your Alexa Data → Help improve Alexa → toggle off “Use of voice recordings.”
Google has a similar setting under Google Account → Data & privacy → Web & App Activity, with a sub-toggle for Voice and audio activity. Turn it off.
3. Mute the microphone when you don’t want to use it
Every Echo and Google Home has a microphone mute button on top. When you press it, a red ring lights up — that means the mic is physically off. The device can still play music or set timers, but it can’t hear anything until you un-mute it.
For most folks I install one for, I tell them: if you’ve got family over for a sensitive conversation — health stuff, money stuff, anything you’d close the door for — just tap the mute button. Tap it again when they leave. Easy.
My mom Joanne keeps hers un-muted full-time. She’s 90 and she doesn’t care if Amazon hears her ask about the weather. That’s a perfectly reasonable choice too. The point is, you have the choice.
Want me to do this for you?
This kind of privacy cleanup is something I do as part of any smart-home install in Portage County. Takes me about 15 minutes per device once I’m there.
If you’ve got an Echo or Google Home that’s been sitting on the counter and you’d like it set up properly — including the privacy bits — give me a call at (330) 200-8042 or book at billshometech.com.
What these devices DON’T do (despite the rumors)
Let me put a few rumors to rest:
“Alexa is recording everything I say and Amazon is selling it to advertisers.” No. They keep snippets after wake-word triggers. They’ve gotten in trouble with the FTC enough times that they’re pretty cautious now. They’re not selling 24/7 audio of you.
“My phone listens to my conversations and shows me ads about what I talked about.” This one keeps coming up and the science doesn’t back it up. What’s actually happening: ad networks are really good at predicting what you’ll be interested in based on websites you visit, what your spouse searches, what your zip code is, etc. It’s not microphones — it’s that good (and that creepy) at pattern matching.
“They can hear me through walls.” No. They have small microphones designed to pick up someone speaking to them in the same room. They can’t hear muffled conversations through a wall any better than you can.
“Hackers can listen to me through Alexa.” Theoretically? Yes, like any internet-connected device. Realistically? Only if you have a weak Wi-Fi password and your router is from 2010. If your Wi-Fi is reasonably set up (which is something I check for free during any visit), this isn’t a meaningful risk.
What they DO do that you might find creepy
The thing that bothers people more once they understand it:
- Amazon knows what you ask Alexa. So they know your routine — what time you ask for the weather, what music you like, when you say “good night.”
- That data isn’t sold to advertisers, but it does feed back into Amazon’s recommendation engine. So the Amazon homepage is a little better at predicting what you’ll buy.
- Google does the same with Google Home + your Google account. Your search history, your YouTube views, your maps history, and your voice queries are all in one bucket.
If that bothers you — and it’s reasonable to be bothered — the best move is don’t get one. A regular speaker plays music just fine without any of this. You don’t need a smart speaker to have a good life.
But if you want the convenience — quick weather, hands-free phone calls, a kitchen timer when your hands are wet — and you turn off the recording-history setting above, the privacy tradeoff is honestly pretty modest.
What I tell my mom
Here’s the conversation I had with my mom Joanne when I set hers up:
“Mom, this thing listens for the word ‘Alexa’ and only sends a recording to Amazon when it hears it. I’ve turned off saving the recordings. So if it accidentally records you because the TV said ‘Alec,’ that recording goes away in a few minutes. They’re not listening to you sing in the kitchen.”
She thought about it for a minute, and said, “Well, that’s fine, because I sing better than they do anyway.”
If you want one of these and you’ve been hesitant — get one. Turn on the three settings I listed. Use it for the things that make life easier (timers, weather, calling family hands-free), and ignore the rest. It’s not the surveillance device people fear, and it’s not the magic butler the commercials promise. It’s just a small computer that’s pretty good at one job.