Amazon will pay $30M for violating privacy with Alexa – 05/31/2023 – Tech

Amazon and a subsidiary reached separate multi-million dollar settlements with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Wednesday over privacy violations involving children using its voice assistant. Alexa and homeowners who use their Ring doorbell camera.

Amazon has agreed to pay $25 million (R$126 million) to settle allegations that it violated children’s privacy rights by failing to delete Alexa recordings at the parents’ request and by keeping them stored longer than necessary, according to a lawsuit in federal court in Seattle.

“While we disagree with the FTC’s allegations regarding Alexa and Ring and deny violating the law, these settlements put those issues behind us,” Amazon said in a statement. The company has also committed to making some changes to its practices.

Ring will pay $5.8 million for mishandling customer videos, according to a separate lawsuit in federal court for the District of Columbia.

In its complaint against Amazon, filed in Washington state, the FTC said the company violated rules protecting children’s privacy and rules against misleading consumers using Alexa. For example, the commission’s complaint states that Amazon told users it would erase voice transcripts and location information upon request, but failed to do so.

The entity also said that Ring granted employees unrestricted access to customers’ confidential video data and said that “as a result of this excessively broad access and lax attitude towards privacy and security, employees and third-party service providers were able to view, download and transfer customers’ sensitive video data for their own purposes”.