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by skizm 2262 days ago
You can politely ask Bose to disable Alexa the same way you can ask Facebook to "delete" your account. They disable the functionality you have access to while still collecting all the data they normally would and having remote access to turn on the microphone and listen in whenever they want without letting you know about it.
2 comments

you're already buying a set of noise cancelling headphones with an integrated microphone from them. if you're afraid of Bose remotely activating the microphone, that risk exists without the Alexa functionality. Even if the headphones didn't have a usable microphone, they're noise cancelling, meaning they have a microphone for that purpose.
Bose is not an advertising company. They have (had?) less incentive to collect my data. Amazon on the other hand peppers the market with tons of low cost shitware devices that have Alexa integrated in for no reason other than to harvest ambient sound data for Advertising purposes. The fact that Bose is partnered with Amazon makes it less likely I'll buy any of their products now, even without the Alexa since I now know they're cool selling user data (or at least cool accepting money to add Amazon/Google's crapware apps in their otherwise nice hardware).
That's funny because amazon does something similar with your browsing history.

You can turn off browsing history but the button says "hide" not "delete".