Is Alexa+ private? Recordings, memories, and what deleting leaves behind

The Morse teamPublished October 25, 202611 min read

As of October 2026, Alexa+ (Alexa Plus) is not private from Amazon. Every Alexa+ request after the wake word goes to Amazon's cloud. Even the strictest Alexa recording setting keeps a text transcript for 30 days. Alexa+ also stores the files, emails, and notes you give it on Amazon's servers. Deleting a file you shared with Alexa+ may leave behind the text and summaries Alexa+ took from it.

We read Amazon's Alexa privacy FAQ, its "Alexa, Echo Devices, and Your Privacy" page, seven Alexa+ and Alexa Privacy help pages, the Alexa Terms of Use, and two Amazon announcements about Alexa+ on October 25, 2026, along with the Federal Trade Commission's 2023 case against Amazon. Amazon deserves credit in one place. Amazon's privacy FAQ lists what deleting your history doesn't remove, down to the summaries of a file you shared.

Alexa+ privacy at a glance

Does Alexa+ record everything you say?

No, Alexa+ records what you say after the wake word. Amazon's privacy page says "No audio is stored or sent to the cloud unless the device detects the wake word" or you press a button (Amazon). The audio Amazon sends "includes a fraction of a second of audio before the wake word" (Amazon). Amazon's FAQ says a recording of each request then goes to Amazon's cloud, where Amazon also makes a text transcript (Amazon). The Alexa Terms of Use, updated May 14, 2026, say "When you interact with Alexa by voice, Alexa records and sends audio to the cloud" (Amazon).

Joining Alexa+ turns on Follow Up Mode. Amazon says "When you join Alexa+, Follow Up Mode will be turned on for your compatible Echo devices and the Alexa app" (Amazon). Follow Up Mode lets you keep talking without repeating the wake word. Amazon's FAQ says "At times, Alexa may detect you are making a follow-up request when you are not" (Amazon).

The Echo's microphone button is the one hard stop. Amazon says pressing the button cuts power to the microphones and turns on a red light (Amazon).

What happened to "Do Not Send Voice Recordings"?

Amazon ended "Do Not Send Voice Recordings" on March 28, 2025. "Do Not Send Voice Recordings" let some Echo devices process Alexa requests on the device instead of sending the audio to Amazon. Amazon emailed owners of the fourth-generation Echo Dot, the Echo Show 10, and the Echo Show 15 who used it, TechCrunch reported on March 15, 2025. The email said that as Amazon expands "generative AI features that rely on the processing power of Amazon's secure cloud, we have decided to no longer support this feature" (TechCrunch). Amazon told the Associated Press that "less than 0.03% of customers" used the setting (AP via NY1). Amazon said anyone still using it on March 28 would be moved to "Don't save recordings," according to the same AP report.

Offline Alexa requests reach Amazon's cloud too. Amazon's FAQ says that for a request made offline with Local Voice Control, once the Echo reconnects, "the recording of your request is sent to the cloud" (Amazon). As of October 25, 2026, none of the Amazon pages we read offers a way to keep Alexa requests off Amazon's cloud.

How long does Amazon keep Alexa recordings?

Amazon keeps Alexa recordings for as long as your retention setting allows. Amazon's FAQ offers automatic deletion of voice recordings, transcripts, and typed requests after 3 months or 18 months, or the choice not to save voice recordings at all (Amazon). Amazon says auto-deletion counts the period from your last request in a given chat (Amazon). With "Don't save," Amazon deletes your voice recordings and any Voice IDs on the account (Amazon). Even with "Don't save," Amazon says "chat transcripts and typed requests are kept until they've been inactive for 30 days" (Amazon). None of the Amazon pages we read on October 25, 2026 says which of these options a new account starts on.

Alexa's 30-day transcript rule covers what you type as well as what you say. Amazon says Alexa+ works on the web at Alexa.com as well as in the Alexa app (Amazon). Amazon's FAQ puts "typed requests to Alexa" under the same retention choices as voice transcripts (Amazon).

Does Amazon listen to Alexa recordings?

Yes, people at Amazon review a small sample of Alexa recordings. Amazon says "humans review an extremely small sample of your Alexa interactions" as part of training its machine learning models (Amazon). Amazon "also may use your interactions with Alexa to improve other Amazon products and services" (Amazon). Amazon lets you decide whether your voice recordings are used to improve its services and develop new features. In the Alexa app, open More, then Alexa Privacy, then Manage Your Alexa Data (Amazon). As of October 25, 2026, Amazon's FAQ doesn't say whether that setting starts on or off, or whether turning it off takes your recordings out of human review. We compare Amazon's training rules with other companies' in which AI companies train on your data.

What does Alexa+ remember about you?

Alexa+ remembers your Amazon history, the notes you ask it to keep, and the files you send it. Amazon's Alexa+ announcement, published February 26, 2025 and updated July 21, 2026, says Alexa+ knows your purchases and your listening and viewing history (Amazon). The same announcement says you can ask Alexa+ to remember things like family recipes or dietary preferences.

Files and emails you send to alexa@alexa.com

Amazon says you can share files, images, and webpages with Alexa+ by emailing alexa@alexa.com or through the Alexa app (Amazon). Alexa+ uses a shared email or file to answer questions, write summaries, add events to your calendar, and draft replies (Amazon). Amazon's FAQ says "Your attachment and this related information will be stored in our cloud and used to provide and improve our services" (Amazon).

Amazon's FAQ says that after you delete an attachment, "Alexa may still retain information from your attachment, such as text extracted from the attachment," along with "descriptions of images in your attachment, or summaries of the contents of your attachment" (Amazon). Amazon's FAQ adds that related information may also stay in your Alexa history and in calendar events, lists, and reminders made from the file.

Remember This notes

Amazon says "Notes are available to anyone using a supported Alexa-enabled device logged into the account" (Amazon). The same page says "There's no limit to the number of notes that you can create" (Amazon). Amazon's help page for managing notes describes archiving them, one at a time or with Archive All, and as of October 25, 2026 it describes no way to delete one (Amazon).

How do you delete Alexa recordings and Alexa+ history?

To delete Alexa recordings and Alexa+ history, start in the Alexa app under More, then Alexa Privacy, or at Amazon's Alexa Privacy Settings page on the web. Then clear the places that history deletion doesn't reach. Each control below comes from Amazon's own help pages, read October 25, 2026.

To clear as much as Amazon's controls allow, go in this order:

1. Review Attachments: delete each file you shared, since deleting your history leaves attachments in place.
2. Calendar, lists, and reminders: remove anything Alexa+ made from those files.
3. Review Info in Remember this: archive your notes, the only option Amazon's help page describes.
4. Review Alexa History: select Delete all History.
5. Retention: pick Don't save, knowing it deletes your Voice ID.

What was the FTC's 2023 case about Alexa and children?

In 2023, Amazon agreed to a $25 million civil penalty to settle charges that Amazon kept children's Alexa voice recordings indefinitely. The FTC and the Justice Department announced the complaint and the proposed order on May 31, 2023 (FTC). The complaint alleged that Amazon kept children's recordings unless a parent asked for deletion, failed to delete transcripts from all its databases when parents did ask, and used the recordings to improve Alexa's speech recognition. Those were the government's allegations, settled without a trial. The court entered the order on July 19, 2023 (FTC). The order requires Amazon to delete inactive child accounts and certain voice recordings and geolocation data, and bars it from using data covered by deletion requests to build or improve data products (FTC).

Amazon still keeps children's requests on purpose, for parents. Amazon's FAQ says "Alexa retains this data to allow parents to review and listen to the requests their children make to Alexa" (Amazon).

How Morse keeps your questions off a shopping account

Every gap above comes from one design. Alexa+ keeps your requests, files, and notes on Amazon's servers, under the account that holds your orders and your listening history, and each privacy control only decides how long Amazon's copy lasts. Morse is a web app built the other way. Your chat history is stored in your browser, encrypted, and not on our servers (Morse privacy policy).

Morse's servers don't keep messages or log message content, so there's no 30-day transcript waiting on them. Morse doesn't train AI on your content, sell your data, or show ads, so there's no Manage Your Alexa Data switch to hunt for. Attached files are sent with the message and never stored by Morse, so there's no Review Attachments page to clean out. Your Morse account holds sign-in details, your plan, your balance, and a usage ledger with no content. Each chat runs in one of three modes, across more than 30 models.

• Private, for questions you'd rather no company keep. Private is the mode a new chat starts in. Open-weight models like DeepSeek, Kimi, and GLM, plus Grok, run here, and Morse has zero data retention agreements with its inference, search, and other providers. Where a provider confirms zero retention on each reply, Morse checks it and refuses a reply that doesn't.
• E2EE, for anything no one should read. Your browser checks the secure enclave's hardware attestation before anything leaves your device, then encrypts the message so only that enclave can read it, and our servers relay text they can't read. The enclaves are run by third-party providers, not by Morse, and the protection rests on the enclave hardware and attestation working as designed. E2EE chats come with Pro, at $19 a month.
• Anonymous, for GPT, Claude, or Gemini without your name on it. Our proxy removes your account, email, and IP address and sends the message under Morse's own account. The provider sees the message without knowing it's you, and may keep it for a limited time to check for abuse, under its own policy, so leave out names you'd rather keep to yourself.

In every mode, your history is locked when you sign out. Opening it takes two keys, one that never leaves your device and one our server gives you when you sign in, so a copy of the browser data alone can't be read. Because we don't store chats, we usually have very little to give authorities. Clearing your browser or deleting your account deletes your chats, and Morse can't recover them, so keep a copy of anything you need. For how other assistants handle the same questions, see are AI chats private.

So is Alexa+ private enough for you?

• Requests around the house: Alexa+ sends them all to Amazon's cloud. Choose Don't save, and press the microphone button when you want the microphones off.
• Human review: turn off the setting under Manage Your Alexa Data, though Amazon doesn't say that ends human review. Morse doesn't train AI on your chats, so there's no setting to find.
• Files and email: keep anything you wouldn't want summarized on Amazon's servers away from alexa@alexa.com. On Morse, attached files are sent with the message and never stored by Morse.
• Notes others could hear: keep them out of Remember This. Morse history locks when you sign out.
• Research and planning you'd type at Alexa.com: ask Morse instead, in Private mode, or in E2EE for anything no one should read.

Try a chat from the Morse home page without an account, or start free with no card needed. End-to-end encrypted chats come with Pro, at $19 a month.