Amazon
Amazon has added Anne Toth, a renowned privacy and security expert, to its Alexa group, as it looks to strengthen the privacy policies over its popular voice assistant.
Toth joined Amazon in August and is now the director of Alexa Trust, according to people familiar with the matter.
Alexa Trust is part of the broader Alexa Experience team, and is in charge of building stronger privacy and security policies, one person said. Toth's LinkedIn page has been updated to show her new job. Amazon's representative didn't respond to a request for comment.
Toth is best known for her time at Yahoo, where she was chief trust officer and helped write the company's first privacy policy. After spending over 13 years at Yahoo, she went on to do similar work for Google and Slack. At Slack, Toth also ran the company's HR and government relations. Most recently, she was the head of technology policy & partnerships for the World Economic Forum.
Toth is a high-profile hire for Amazon, who's been hampered by privacy issues over its Alexa voice assistant in recent years. Last year, Bloomberg reported that Amazon had human reviewers listen to private conversations recorded through Alexa, including sensitive conversations or people having sex. It also took a hit when multiple reports showed Alexa mistakenly sending voice recordings to strangers.
Amazon has become more vocal about tightening Alexa's privacy features. On Thursday, Amazon's hardware and Alexa chief Dave Limp said at a company event that privacy is "foundational" to Alexa's products. He announced a number of new privacy features, including new voice commands to automatically delete voice recordings and review privacy settings.
Privacy is expected to become an even bigger part of Alexa, as it continues to launch products that dive deeper into personal space. For example, at Thursday's event, Amazon showcased a new home-flying drone that serves as a security camera and a new service targeting children users, among others.
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