Amazon’s smart speakers have been called Echo since the first one launched in 2014. Every subsequent smart speaker and display the company has sold has been branded Echo, with Alexa as the name of the onboard voice assistant. We’re running an experiment to better understand product discovery, but that doesn’t mean anything is going to change.”

CNET reported a few weeks ago that Amazon is preparing to remove a key privacy setting in its Alexa smart home devices. Today, it goes into effect. Here's what it means.

Alexa users also have a setting called “Don’t save recordings”, which, if enabled, deletes cloud recordings once they’re processed. In the second change, if the “Don’t save recordings” setting is enabled, Voice ID will stop working, and with it, access to personalised features such as user-specific calendar events.