Amazon was ordered to pay $25 million by the FTC over child privacy rule breaks via how they handled data gathered via Alexa and Ring.
Amazon has been ordered to pay $25 million over child privacy rule breaks.
The e-retail giant will fork out the huge sum to the US Federal Trade Commission after it was alleged to have not deleted old recordings taken on their Alexa devices at the request of parents.
Amazon was discovered to have maintained data for a number of years on the smart speaker along with their smart doorbell, Ring, according to a court filing in Canada that found them liable for a $5.8 million payout.
According to the FTC, the Jeff Bezos-founded company “prominently and repeatedly assured its users, including parents, that they could delete voice recordings collected” by the devices.
However, it was found that this was not the case and instead they kept it on file and used it to finetune their algorithm.
Sam Levine, the director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection said that Amazon was “misleading parents, keeping children’s recordings indefinitely, and flouting parents’ deletion requests”.
He added that the website “sacrificed privacy for profits”.
The FTC also described how Amazon let Ring – which they acquired in 2018 – “thousands of employees and contractors” to view customers’ private footage.
Amazon told BBC News: “Ring promptly addressed the issues at hand on its own years ago, well before the FTC began its inquiry”.
Mr Levine added “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 responded: “While we disagree with the FTC’s claims regarding both Alexa and Ring, and deny violating the law, these settlements put these matters behind us.”
Amazon ordered to pay 25 million dollars over child privacy breaches
