FTC Smacks Amazon for Alexa and Ring Privacy, Security Failures

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Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

Amazon agreed to pay $30.8 million to settle claims for deceiving people about how it stored the voice and geolocation data it collected through Alexa, including improperly retaining children’s Alexa voice recordings, and agreed to pay $5.8 million for compromising customers’ privacy and failing to implement basic privacy and security protections which enabled hackers to take control of consumers’ accounts, cameras, and videos.

According to a complaint filed by the Justice Department on behalf of the FTC, Amazon’s Alexa prevented parents from exercising their deletion rights under the COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) Rule, kept sensitive voice and geolocation data for years, and used it for its own purposes, while putting data at risk of harm from unnecessary access. Amazon will be require…