The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has imposed a hefty fine on Amazon for violating children’s Privacy with Alexa and is investigating its ‘Ring’ doorbell in a separate case. The FTC has hauled Amazon over the coals, surmounting the fines of more than $30 million. The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed the complaints on behalf of the FTC, reprimanding Amazon’s Privacy Violations of a child privacy law.
In April, Amazon reported that it had sold more than half-billion Alexa-supported devices globally to date and its service surged 35 percent in 2022.
Amazon’s Privacy Violations: FTC Fines $25M For Children’s Privacy
Amazon’s civil penalty of $25 million alleges that the tech giant deceived parents by storing children’s voice and location data recorded by its voice assistant, Alexa, for years even after parents asked for the deletion of the data.
In another Amazon-FTC Lawsuit settlement over Alexa Ring privacy violations, the tech company agreed to pay $5.8 million in customer refunds.
“The unlawfully retained voice recordings helped Amazon with an invaluable database for training the Alexa algorithm and benefiting its motives at the expense of children’s privacy.”
As maintained by the filing in a federal court in Seattle, the FTC has ordered Amazon to pay $25 million in fines, delete inactive child accounts, and erase the voice recordings and geolocation details of children as already asked by the parents. FTC has also banned Amazon from using such sensitive data to train its algorithms. Amazon retained the children’s data to refine its voice recognition algorithm. The FTC is rallying for the proposed order to be approved by the federal court.
Amazon’s privacy violations through Alexa have focused regulators to force Amazon on its data deletion practices and more transparency in its privacy measures.
“Amazon’s history of misleading parents by storing children’s recordings, flouting parents’ deletion requests indefinitely, and sacrificing privacy for profits has violated 1998’s COPPA (Child Online Privacy Protection Act).”
And this is not the first time that Alexa has been in a pickle over privacy violations. A Portland-based family contacted Amazon to investigate an incident with evidence that their smart speaker had shared their private conversation to one of their acquaintances. Amazon resolved it as an isolated incident where the device could have misheard its wake word and the prompts after.
Alexa Ring Privacy Violations: Amazon Settles FTC Lawsuit For Privacy
From Amazon’s $30 Million fine, the FTC requires the tech giant to pay $5.8 million for Alexa doorbell ‘Ring’ for privacy violations. The agency claims that Amazon’s home security camera permitted employees and contractors access to users’ private videos. Lax security practices enabled hackers to misuse control over a few accounts.
In one case, an employee viewed thousands of video recordings entailing women users of Ring cameras over several months. The cameras surveyed intimate spaces in the homes and the employee’s misconduct was caught red-handed by a colleague.
Although Amazon has disagreed to be a part of the narrative of privacy violations that the FTC has posed on both Alexa and Ring, it has agreed to pay the settlements stating that they wish to ‘put these matters behind us’.
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