Amazon to Pay $25m in Settlement Over Children’s Privacy Violations and Ring Camera Issues
Amazon has agreed to pay $25 million (£20 million) to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in order to settle allegations that it violated children’s privacy rights with its Alexa voice assistant. The company faced accusations of retaining sensitive data for years and failing to delete Alexa recordings upon parents’ requests.
Additionally, Amazon’s doorbell camera subsidiary, Ring, will pay $5.8 million following claims that it granted employees unrestricted access to customers’ data. The settlement was detailed in a filing in federal court in the District of Columbia.
The FTC’s complaint against Amazon stated that the company “prominently and repeatedly assured its users, including parents, that they could delete voice recordings collected” by Alexa. However, Amazon allegedly retained the data for years, using it unlawfully to improve its Alexa algorithm.
Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, accused Amazon of “misleading parents, keeping children’s recordings indefinitely, and flouting parents’ deletion requests.” He added that the company “sacrificed privacy for profits.”
The FTC also claimed that Ring, acquired by Amazon in 2018, allowed “thousands of employees and contractors” to view and download customers’ sensitive video data for personal use, including recordings of private spaces.
In a statement to the BBC, Amazon said that “Ring promptly addressed the issues at hand on its own years ago, well before the FTC began its inquiry.” However, the complaint details that one employee viewed thousands of video recordings belonging to female users, only stopping when discovered by a colleague.
Levine stated, “Ring’s disregard for privacy and security exposed consumers to spying and harassment. The FTC’s order makes clear that putting profit over privacy doesn’t pay.”
Amazon denies violating the law, but said in a statement, “These settlements put these matters behind us”. The company added that it will continue to develop more privacy features on behalf of its customers.
