Amazon To Pay USD 31 Mn In Alexa, Ring Camera Privacy Lawsuits

Separately, the company will also pay USD 5.8 million in customer refunds for alleged privacy violations involving its doorbell camera Ring.

In an official statement, Samuel Levine, the FCT consumer protection chief said, “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."

Additionally, FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya also stated that when parents asked Amazon to delete their kids' Alexa voice data, the company did not do so. Hence, the agency ordered the organization to delete inactive child accounts as well as certain voice and geolocation data. 

“Amazon kept the kids' data to refine its voice recognition algorithm, the artificial intelligence behind Alexa, which powers Echo and other smart speakers, Bedoya said. The FTC complaint sends a message to all tech companies who are sprinting to do the same amid fierce competition in developing AI datasets," he added. 

“Nothing is more visceral to a parent than the sound of their child's voice," tweeted Bedoya, the father of two small children, AP reported. 

Last month, Amazon said it has sold more than a half-billion Alexa-enabled devices worldwide and that use of the service increased 35% last year.

Speaking about the Ring case, the FTC said Amazon's home security camera subsidiary let employees and contractors access consumers' private videos and provided lax security practices that enabled hackers to take control of some accounts.

Amazon bought California-based Ring in 2018, and many of the violations alleged by the FTC predate the acquisition. Under the FTC's order, Ring is required to pay $5.8 million which would be used for consumer refunds, as per AP reports. 

Amazon said it disagreed with the FTC's claims on both Alexa and Ring and denied violating the law. But it said the settlements “put these matters behind us."

“Our devices and services are built to protect customers' privacy, and to provide customers with control over their experience," the Seattle-based company said.

(With AP inputs)

Updated: 02 Jun 2023, 07:13 AM IST