Protect your Amazon | From two-step verification to removing private information from Amazon, there are several settings we should enable right now in our Amazon account. There are some preferences that both enhance our privacy and improve the user experience.
Whether we want it or not, Amazon is present in our lives. Even if we have not used an Amazon account directly, it is likely that we have used one of their devices such as their Echo smart speakers or a Kindle. If at some point we have used Amazon devices or services, and if not, you can try it by signing up for a free month, we should check that our privacy settings are in order. By improving the privacy settings, for example, we can prevent Alexa from being able to listen in on our conversations.
Two-step verification
Any Amazon account can be hacked and that is why we should protect it with two-step verification, in addition to setting a secure password. To enable two-step verification we can turn to apps like Google Authentificator. After configuring the application, we will have to go to Amazon to the two-step verification section and activate it. We can also opt to use our cell phone to receive a one-time password, but it is safer to do it through an app.
Disable browsing history
The purchase recommendations set by Amazon depend on our purchase and browsing history. By accessing Amazon’s browsing history, we can delete all items to prevent it from showing us personalized advertising. In this case, this option is specific to each device on which we have our Amazon account open, so we will have to delete the browsing history on each of them separately.
Delete Alexa recordings
Amazon keeps a copy of each of Alexa’s voice commands. By accessing Alexa’s privacy settings we can delete them. On this page if we go to “Voice recordings” we can enable deletion by voice. This will allow us to delete Alexa’s history by deleting the voice commands “Alexa, delete everything I told you today”. We have the option to choose how long we want to keep the recordings for. Unfortunately there is no option to completely stop saving smart device history altogether, with three months being the shortest option.
We can also go to the “Help improve Alexa” option and disable the use of voice recordings. This will prevent Amazon from using our recordings. The downside here may be that Alexa may become less accurate at detecting voice commands.
Hide public profile
Our public profile on Amazon is visible by default. This means that any comments we post or badges we receive are visible to all users. However, Amazon allows us to make our profile more private. To perform this action you have to go to “Public activity settings” and enable the option “hide all activity on your public profile”.
1-Click function
Amazon allows us to use a function called 1-Click to make all our purchases quickly. A great option for faster payments, but it can cause impulse buying. If you want to avoid buying by accident, it would be best to disable this option. You can disable this preference through Amazon’s 1-Click settings page.
Remove old addresses
The best option is to set the address we use the most as our default shipping address account and delete all the ones we no longer need. We can do this through the Amazon address book so that any of our addresses will be the default for subsequent orders.
We also have the ability to set a default payment method on all our purchases through our shopping preferences and set up different cards.
Reduce Amazon device tracking
Through our Amazon account we can also configure privacy settings for Kindle, Echo and Fire TV devices. We can access the “Digital Privacy Center” page and access each device to disable the settings we are not interested in. For example, we can opt out of receiving data tracking from any of the devices.
Delete saved WiFi passwords
Amazon saves WiFi passwords to make the connection faster. If you prefer that Amazon does not have this data you can always delete them. Just go to the “Saved WiFi passwords” section and delete the data.
Kindle book preferences
If you use a Kindle frequently, Amazon’s privacy settings and content page has a lot of preferences that are worth reviewing. We can enable and disable whether we want updates to our Kindle to be done automatically. For the vast majority of users it is convenient to always have the latest version available, but there are some cases in which we may not want to update. For example, if we want to keep a copy of a book we bought as it was the first day.