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Amazon Inc. is set to pay more than $30 million to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to settle a case related to its Alexa voice assistant and Ring doorbell cameras. The company was accused of violating privacy laws over the use of the said devices.
To end the two federal lawsuits that alleged it had breached users’ privacy, including that of children, Amazon agreed to pay the settlement. According to CNN Business, the FTC claimed that for years, Amazon has been retaining voice recordings on Alexa and videos recorded on its Ring doorbell device.
The commission said that Amazon also stored data related to geolocation. It added that in some instances, the e-commerce and tech giant retained the private data without consent from the users. The FTC mentioned that there were also requests from users to delete the data, but Amazon never did.
Moreover, in the lawsuit, the trade commission alleged that data policies at Amazon are not strict, which means that unauthorized people may have accessed the information as well. It said that this was the case involving footage on the company’s Ring doorbell.
The FTC further indicated in the complaint accompanying the settlement that Ring, which was acquired by Amazon in 2018, has granted employees unrestricted access to videos recorded from the users’ home security systems.
“Between January 2019 and March 2020, more than 55,000 U.S. customers suffered from credential stuffing and brute force attacks that compromised Ring devices,” part of FTC’s complaint reads. “Through these attacks, bad actors gained access to hundreds of thousands of videos of the personal spaces of consumers’ homes, including their bedrooms and their children’s bedrooms - recorded by devices that Ring sold by claiming that they would increase consumers’ security.”
At any rate. while Amazon agreed to the settlement, it said it denied the allegations and stated it did not violate any laws. “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,” the company said in a statement.
Reuters reported that Amazon is paying $5.8 million to settle the case related to Ring and will pay $25 million to settle the children's privacy rights allegations saying it failed to delete the voice recordings on Alexa despite requests from parents.
Photo by: Nicolas J Leclercq/Unsplash
