Alexa
How to disable Amazon Alexa voice purchases
Don’t love the idea of using your voice to make purchases through Alexa? You have options.
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While Amazon’s Alexa is a handy AI assistant, she sometimes misbehaves. If you accidentally utter the wrong command, you could end up with a fleet of delivery trucks at your door dropping off parcels you didn’t intentionally order.
Alexa is a wily one, and she’ll sometimes make the effort to mess with you. Thankfully, if you want to avoid accidental Amazon purchases, altering a few settings can resolve the issue.
Let’s discuss how to stop accidental Alexa voice purchases using several different methods.
Turn off Amazon Alexa voice purchasing
READ MORE: How to turn on follow-up mode on Alexa
If you don’t want to deal with voice purchasing at all, you can disable the feature completely. Here’s how to turn off Amazon Alexa voice purchasing for good:
And there you go. You’ve now put a complete stop to Amazon Alexa voice purchases. If you would prefer to continue using the feature, but want more control, keep reading.
Allow only recognized voices for Alexa voice purchases
If you want to use voice purchasing but would prefer a little more security, you can set Alexa to only respond to certain voice profiles. When configured correctly, only authorized individuals or great impersonators will be able to use Alexa to make purchases. Here’s how to manage your Alexa voice profiles:
- Launch the Alexa mobile app
- Tap More and select Settings
- Go to Account Settings > Voice Purchasing > Purchase Confirmation
- Select Voice Profile and tap Manage voice profiles
From here you can configure your profiles and select who has the authority to make voice purchases.
Set an Amazon Alexa voice purchasing PIN
For an added layer of security, configuring an authorization code for voice purchases is a great idea. Here’s how to set a voice purchasing PIN:
- Launch the Alexa mobile app
- Tap More and select Settings
- Go to Account Settings > Voice Purchasing > Purchase Confirmation
- Tap Voice Code, set a four-digit PIN, and tap Save
From now on, voice purchasing will require you to utter your four-digit code. But don’t say it too loud, otherwise, a sharp-eared neighbor or sneaky housemate could overhear you and start making purchases of their own.
How convenient is voice purchasing?
While voice purchasing is a useful feature, how many of us are actually buying so much from Amazon that clicking or tapping has become a genuine time sink? Actually, don’t answer that.
READ MORE: How to call someone from Alexa and Amazon Echo
Ordering an AI assistant to do your shopping may seem cool, but eventually, our clicking fingers will atrophy; we’ll forget how to buy things without help, and the human race will become fully reliant on Alexa and her like. We’re almost there.
Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.
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