Deleting personal information if you are getting rid of an old Amazon Echo
Everyone thinks about deleting their data when giving away an old laptop. If you are giving away or trashing an old Echo, you need to wipe your information off of it as well. The first thing you will need to do is “Deregister” the speaker from your Amazon account. Here are the steps:
Open the Amazon Echo app and click on Devices
Select All Devices and choose the Echo speaker. If you are using multiple speakers, be sure to choose the one you are getting rid of.
Scroll down to where it says “Registered To” and click on Deregister.
A window will ask if you are sure, so click on Deregister. This will remove it from your Amazon account.
The next step you need to take is to reset the device to the factory settings. Because there are many different Echos at this point, here are a couple of links to help you depending on which version you have.
I have been a fan of Windows Snipping Tool for many years. It was/is a great way of capturing a portion of your screen for any number of reasons. Microsoft has been reminding me that Snipping Tool has been upgraded to Snip & Sketch. I haven’t bothered with it very often because we tend to go back to what we know. There are features in the new program however which are now converting me. The tool is available either from the list of applications on your start menu, by searching, or by using the keyboard combination of Windows Key+Shift+S. If you locate it from search or the application menu, you can also save it to your taskbar or to the start menu for easy access.
When you start the program, you will see a large gray window. In the upper left corner, you will see the word New. Once clicked on a + symbol will appear and you can use it to draw a rectangle around the portion of your screen that you are interested in snipping. Either the keyboard shortcut or the notification button, however, will dim your screen and open a tiny menu at the top of your screen that lets you choose which type of screenshot you want to take — rectangular, free-form, window or full-screen. Once you take your screenshot, it will be saved to your clipboard and show up momentarily as a notification in the lower-right corner of your screen. Click the notification to open the screenshot in the Snip & Sketch app to annotate, save or share it. (If you miss the notification, open the notification panel and you’ll see it sitting there.
