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Amazon has agreed to pay over $30 million to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to settle a couple of lawsuits alleging privacy violations. Its Ring home security unit will pay $5.8 million against an FTC complaint that alleges the company of spying on its users by allowing its employees and third-party contractors full access to videos recorded by its products. Separately, the e-commerce giant will pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit that alleges it of illegally retaining children’s information through the Alexa voice assistant.
Amazon settles the FTC lawsuit against Ring
In its complaint against Ring, the FTC said that the company gave all of its employees and “hundreds of Ukraine-based third-party contractors” full access to customer videos. It allowed access “regardless of whether the employee or contractor actually needed that access to perform his or her job function”. Employees could even download the videos and share them with others whenever they want. The lawsuit also highlights several cases of Ring employees illegally spying on users without the company’s knowledge.
While most of these privacy violations happened before Amazon acquired Ring, the FTC alleges that Amazon failed to implement proper security measures at least a few years into its ownership of the company. “Before January 2020, Ring systematically failed to appreciate and control for the risk of at least two types of well-known online attacks: credential stuffing and brute force,” the complaint states. As a result, more than 55,000 US customers suffered from such attacks between January 2019 and March 2020.
The FTC filed this lawsuit in the US District Court of Colombia on Wednesday. Ring immediately agreed to settle the case outside of court and pay the consumer protection body $5.8 million in penalty. In a statement, the company said that it has “strong policies and controls” that restrict employees from accessing customer videos. “If we discover any employee violating our policies, we take appropriate and swift action, which can include firing the individual and referring them to law enforcement,” it added. Ring has previously fired a few employees for policy violations.
Amazon will also pay $25 million in FTC settlements over Alexa privacy violation
Amazon has settled one more case with the FTC this week. The second lawsuit, which was filed by the Department of Justice on behalf of the FTC, alleges violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. The complaint states that the company illegally retained “thousands of children’s information through their profiles with the Alexa voice assistant”. It kept those young users’ voice and geolocation information for years and prevented their parents from deleting the data (via).
The e-commerce biggie will pay $25 million to settle this case. It will also delete inactive child accounts and “some voice recordings and geolocation information”. The company is prevented from using that illegally retained information to train its algorithms. “We take our responsibilities to our customers and their families very seriously, and we will continue to invent more privacy features on behalf of our customers and ensure they are aware of the controls and options available to them,” Amazon said in an official statement. Both settlements are pending court approval.