Alexa and Ring Privacy Lawsuits: Amazon to Pay Over $30M in Settlement

Amazon has agreed to pay fines exceeding $30 million to settle allegations of privacy violations involving its voice assistant Alexa and doorbell camera Ring, as detailed in federal filings. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed two separate lawsuits against the tech giant, accusing it of privacy law violations.

In the first lawsuit, the FTC claims that Amazon unlawfully stored recordings of children’s conversations with Alexa, despite parents’ requests for deletion, and used the data to enhance its algorithms. These practices are said to violate the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which mandates that companies obtain parental consent for data collection from children under the age of 13 and allow for data deletion upon request.

As part of the settlement, Amazon will pay a $25 million civil penalty and will be prohibited from using any data that has been requested to be deleted. The company must also remove inactive Alexa accounts belonging to children and notify customers about the FTC’s actions against them.

Furthermore, the FTC seeks a $5.8 million fine from Amazon in a separate lawsuit involving Ring, a home surveillance company acquired by Amazon in 2018. The FTC alleges that employees and contractors at Ring had unrestricted access to customers’ videos, and Amazon failed to implement adequate security measures. Incidents of hackers gaining access to Ring video streams are highlighted in the lawsuit. The FTC claims that Ring did not introduce multi-factor authentication until 2019.

In addition to the monetary penalty, Amazon will issue customer refunds totaling $5.8 million in relation to the Ring lawsuit. The company will also be required to delete customers’ videos and faces predating 2018, inform customers about the FTC’s actions, and report any unauthorized video access to the FTC.