Can you erase your Amazon purchase history?

Table of Contents Show

How to Hide Amazon Orders Using the Amazon Website
How to See (and Un-Hide) Hidden Amazon Orders
Turn Off Your Amazon Browsing History
Archive Amazon Orders To Hide Them
Delete Your Amazon Movies And Shows History
Consider A Household Account
Before You Go
Save Your Sex Life With These 7 Sex Toys From Amazon

If you’ve bought something on Amazon.com that you don’t want to show up in your order history, you can’t delete it, but you can hide it using an “archive” feature. We’ll show you how to do it.

The short answer is that you can’t completely delete an order from your history. Currently, there is no way to truly delete an order you’ve placed through Amazon from your purchase history. The only alternative is to “archive” an order, which is Amazon’s way of allowing you to hide an order from your main order history. Even when archived, the order will still remain in Amazon’s system (linked to your account), and it can be seen on your “Archived Orders” page through the desktop website version of Amazon.com.

Be advised that if someone knows about how archived orders work and has access to your Amazon account, they can find the orders you’ve hidden. This means that archiving is not a foolproof way to hide the history of buying something from Amazon. To do that, you’d need to begin using a new Amazon.com account and deactivate your old one. Even after deactivating, it’s possible (maybe even likely) that Amazon.com will always keep a record of everything your deactivated account ever bought from the site.

So, here’s the moral of the story: Don’t buy sensitive items with your main Amazon account—or from an account you share with other people—because those purchases will likely follow you for as long as you maintain that account.

How to Hide Amazon Orders Using the Amazon Website

As of this writing, you’ll need to visit the Amazon website in a browser (desktop or mobile) to hide orders using the archive order feature—it’s not supported in the official Amazon apps on iPhone, Android, or iPad.

To get started, open your favorite web browser and visit amazon.com. Next, log into the Amazon account that includes the order you want to hide. In the upper-right corner of the page, click “Returns & Orders.”

You’ll see a list of every order you’ve ever placed on Amazon.com with that account. Locate the order you’d like to hide in the list. When you find it, click “Archive Order” located in the lower-left corner of the order’s information box.

When asked to confirm with a pop-up, click “Archive Order.”

After that, the order will disappear from the main orders list. It will still be visible in the “Archived Orders” section of your account, which you’ll see in the section below. Amazon allows you to archive up to 500 orders total.

How to See (and Un-Hide) Hidden Amazon Orders

To reveal hidden orders (or to unhide them), open Amazon.com in a desktop web browser. After logging in to your account, click “Account & Lists” in the top toolbar.

In the pop-up menu that appears, click “Account.”

In “Your Account,” click “Archived orders.”

In Archived Orders, scroll through and locate the archived order that you’d like to reveal. Click the “Unarchive Order” link located just below it.

After that, the formerly archived order will appear at its proper place in your chronological order history again. Good luck, and happy shopping!

RELATED: How to Hide Orders on Amazon

Turn Off Your Amazon Browsing History

You’ve probably noticed that every time you browse items on Amazon, the site saves your browsing history and recommends other products based on past searches. This can be convenient if you’re the only person who uses your account. But if you’ve been browsing for a gift or other private purchase on a shared account, your browsing history will give away your secret to anyone who logs in.

One of the simplest ways to hide your browsing is to do it from an incognito or private browser window. This way, none of your activity will be saved. However, if you’ve already amassed a long, questionable browsing history, there’s still a way to scrub your Amazon past clean:

Open Amazon and log into your account.
Click on “Browsing History” in the top left of your screen.
If you want to delete a specific item from your browsing history, click on “remove from view” underneath the product.
Alternatively, you can clear the entire list by selecting the “Manage History” dropdown and click on “Remove all items from view.
If you want Amazon to stop collecting your browsing activity, you can put the slider next to “Turn Browsing History on/off” into the “off” position.

Archive Amazon Orders To Hide Them

When it comes to hiding Amazon orders, there’s actually no way to permanently delete your order history. Even if you disable your account, Amazon will maintain a record of everything you purchased. But you still have options. If there’s a purchase you want hidden from your order history, you can archive it:

Starting at the Amazon home page, log into your account.
Click on “Orders” in the top right corner of the homepage.
Here, you’ll see a chronological list of all your past orders. To the left of each order, there are a few actions you can select. Click on “Archive Order” next to the product you want to hide.
A pop-up message will appear asking you to confirm. Click on the yellow “Archive Order” button to remove that item from your orders list.

Note that you’re limited to archiving 100 orders, so choose carefully.

Again, these orders won’t be totally removed from your account ― they can still be viewed by visiting your account page and clicking on “archived orders” under “Ordering and shopping preferences.” This will show a list of all your past archived orders in all their shameful glory. If you want to move an order back to the main list, simply click on “Unarchive Order” next to the product.

Delete Your Amazon Movies And Shows History

Though you might not share Amazon Prime ordering privileges with family and friends, you might let them use your account to stream video. And there will likely be a time when you’d prefer your parents not know about your recent naughty movie night (or the fact that you binge-watched both seasons of ”Murder in Paradise” over a single weekend).

Fortunately, there is a way to hide your Amazon Video activity:

Start by visiting your Amazon Video viewing history.
Each item you’ve viewed will be listed chronologically. Next to the one you want removed, click the “Remove this from watched videos” link and voilà! No one will be the wiser.
Another option is to check the “Don’t use for recommendations” box to the right, which will keep the video in your history but won’t use it to recommend similar titles.

Consider A Household Account

To help organize Amazon-account use across multiple people, you can sign up for a household account. This option is free to Prime members.

A household account allows you to create up to 10 users under the same account and maintain separate purchase history, recommendations and lists. Adults can still access each other’s profiles, but activity can be hidden from teens and kids. Household accounts can contain the following profiles:

Two adults (age 18 and up). Each adult gets their own Amazon account.

Up to four profiles for teens (ages 13-17). Teens can do their own shopping and get permission to make a purchase by sending a text, as well as access some Prime benefits if their parents are members.

Up to four child profiles (ages 12 and under). Child profiles are customizable, allowing parents to select what content they’re able to see, place time limits on use and more.

In this case, anyone with access to your password can still log in and see your orders. But if your main concern is keeping your kids’ Amazon experience separate from your own, a household account could do the trick.