FTC fines Amazon $25 million for violating child privacy with Alexa voice assistant

Amazon on Wednesday agreed to pay a $25 million civil penalty to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations it violated child privacy laws and stored children’s voice and location data recorded by its popular Alexa voice assistant for years. Cheated the parents by keeping till.

Separately, the company agreed to pay $5.8 million in customer refunds for alleged privacy breaches involving its Ring doorbell camera.

Alexa related actions Orders Amazon to overhaul its data deletion practices and implement stricter, more transparent privacy measures. It also forces the tech giant to delete some of the data collected by its internet-connected digital assistant, which people use for everything from checking the weather to playing games and queuing music.

FCT consumer protection chief Samuel Levine said in a statement: “Amazon’s history of misleading parents, indefinitely keeping recordings of children, and requests to remove parents’ names violates COPPA (Child Online Privacy Protection Act) and sacrifices privacy for profit.” The 1998 law is designed to protect children from harm online.

FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya said in a statement that “when parents asked Amazon to delete their children’s Alexa voice data, the company didn’t delete all of it.”

The agency ordered the company to delete inactive child accounts as well as some voice and geolocation data.

Bedoya said Amazon kept the children’s data to refine its voice recognition algorithm, the artificial intelligence behind Alexa, which powers the Echo and other smart speakers. He said the FTC complaint sends a message to all the tech companies that are “racing to do the same” amid fierce competition in developing AI datasets.

“Nothing is more important to a parent than their child’s voice,” Bedoya, a father of two young children, tweeted.

Amazon said last month that it sold more than one Half a billion Alexa-enabled devices worldwide And the use of the service increased by 35% in the last year.

In the Ring case, the FTC says Amazon’s home security camera subsidiary enabled hackers to take control of certain accounts by giving employees and contractors access to consumers’ private videos and providing lax security practices.

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 must pay $5.8 million to be used for consumer refunds.

Amazon said it disagrees with the FTC’s claims on both Alexa and Ring and denies violating the law. But it said the settlements “put these matters behind us.”

“Our tools and services are built to protect customer privacy and give customers control over their experience,” the Seattle-based company said.

In addition to the fine in the Alexa case, the proposed order prohibits Amazon from using the deleted geolocation and voice information to create or improve any data products. The order also requires that Amazon create a privacy program for its use of geolocation information.

The proposed orders must be approved by federal judges.

The FTC commissioners voted unanimously to file charges against Amazon in both cases.

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