Amazon To Pay Penalty In Alexa And Ring Camera Privacy Breach Lawsuits

The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against Amazon for violating a child’s privacy law. According to the accusations, Alexa breached child’s privacy law and cheated parents as it kept four year childrens’ voice and location data recorded by its renowned voice assistant Alexa. According to The Associated Press reports, Amazon has nodded to pay penalties of USD 25 million in order to settle Federal Trade Commission’s allegations.

Furthermore, Amazon’s Ring doorbell violated a portion of the FTC Act that abstains unfair or deceptive business practices.  In order to rectify its mistake, the company will pay USD 5.8 million in customer refunds. Samuel Levine, the FCT consumer protection chief said in an official statement, “Amazon’s history of misleading parents, keeping children’s recordings indefinitely, and flouting parents’ deletion requests violated COPPA (the Child Online Privacy Protection Act) and sacrificed privacy for profits. The 1998 law is designed to shield children from online harms.”

FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya made this revelation that when the parents requested that the company delete their children’s Alexa voice data, Amazon simply ignored it. As a result, the FTC has mandated that the business delete inactive children’s accounts along with specific voice and geolocation data. He further added that Amazon had kept the data to refine its voice recognition algorithm, the artificial intelligence that underlies Alexa and powers Echo and other smart speakers.

Following this, Bedoya said the FTC complaint is a warning to all tech companies who are acting similarly or considering doing so in the face of fierce competition in the creation of AI datasets.  Meanwhile, Amazon said last month that it sold over a half-billion Alexa-enabled devices worldwide. Moreover, its use of service spiked 35% last year.

Regarding the Ring case, the FTC disclosed that Amazon’s subsidiary for home security cameras gives employees and contractors access to customers’ private videos. It also provides lenient security practices that facilitated hackers to take control of some accounts.

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