Amazon's Echo Show 5 Launches With New Privacy Hub • Gear Patrol - Gear Patrol

Amazon just announced its new Echo Show 5, a new $90 Echo-device with a 5.5-inch screen similar to the Home Hub Google announced for its smart home suite last year. Unlike the Home Hub, Amazon’s Echo Show 5 does have a camera, but also a physical cover for blocking it out, and it also comes part-in-parcel with a whole host of new privacy controls that may be the best part of Amazon’s announcements.

New voice commands for the Echo line of devices now let you delete recordings by voice instead of digging into settings on the web in order to wipe Alexa’s brain. You can now say “Alexa, delete everything I said today,” and soon “Alexa, delete what I just said” to wipe your voice data as easily as you created it. The updates come after recordings from an Echo device were turned over the prosecutors as part of a murder case last year and a report from Bloomberg revealed that Alexa recordings are routinely exposed to thousands of people employed by Amazon.

In addition to the new deletion commands, Amazon is launching an “Alexa Privacy Hub” where you can review privacy policies, delete voice recordings and eventually tweak other privacy settings, though the Hub does not feature a whole ton of options right now. In the meantime, voice deletion commands are definitely a step in a privacy-conscious direction no matter what Alexa-powered devices you own.