Amazon Alexa in all its forms has become increasingly prevalent across households — over 600 million Alexa-enabled devices have been purchased worldwide since its initial release. Even though this doesn't translate directly to active Alexa users, it's still an impressive figure that, for many people, conjures up privacy concerns. This proliferation of Alexa is only going to increase, with Amazon just announcing several new products, many of which — like the company's new line of tablets — actively involve Alexa.

Willingly placing a microphone-centric device in your home certainly sounds very Big Brother-esque, especially with how quickly you can build an entire Alexa ecosystem to essentially run every device in the house. This integration is even more compounded with the continued rollout of Alexa+, which is designed to have additional real-world applications. But is Alexa really always eavesdropping on everything you say? It depends on how you define listening.

In a technical sense, your Alexa isn't listening verbatim to every word you say around it, at least according to Amazon. Instead, it's listening for "acoustic patterns" that match its particular wake word. It's sort of like listening to a conversation with earplugs in — you can't hear the exact words being said, but you'd still likely recognize someone saying your name because it's a sound pattern you've heard many times before. Once Alexa recognizes its wake word, it will switch over to active listening to respond to your request, and only then will it record any audio or send it to the cloud.

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