Amazon has agreed to a $25 million settlement with the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission regarding allegations the company violated federal children’s privacy laws through its Alexa personal assistant platform.
In addition to the civil penalty, Amazon.com Inc. and its wholly-owned subsidiary Amazon.com Services LLC (collectively Amazon), have agreed to a permanent injunction as part of that settlement to resolve alleged violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA Rule) and the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC Act) relating to Amazon’s voice assistant, the DOJ and FTC said Wednesday.
The government had alleged that Amazon Alexa unlawfully stores children’s voice recordings and information about children’s locations – and sometimes even flouts requests from parents to have that data deleted.
Alexa is a proprietary voice-activated service that Amazon provides through its Echo smart speakers, its “Alexa App” mobile application, and other devices and applications.
Since May 2018, Amazon’s Alexa-related offerings have included voice-activated products and services directed toward children under 13 years of age, the Justice Department notes.
When a user makes a verbal request of an Alexa-enabled device, Amazon saves the voice recording of the request and creates a written transcript of it.
Since at least May 2018, Amazon violated the FTC Act, COPPA and the COPPA Rule with respect to Alexa and Alexa’s child-directed offerings, according to the government’s complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. The complaint alleges that Amazon retained children’s voice recordings indefinitely by default, in violation of COPPA’s requirement that these recordings be retained only as long as reasonably necessary to fulfill the purposes for which they were collected.
Other alleged violations include making deceptive representations that Alexa app users could delete their or their children’s voice recordings, including audio files and transcripts and their geolocation information, when in fact Amazon on some occasions failed to delete all such information at users’ request. The complaint also alleges that Amazon engaged in unfair privacy practices with respect to Alexa users’ geolocation information and voice recordings, including – in some instances – by failing to honor users’ deletion requests and failing to notify consumers that it had not done so.
“Today’s settlement reflects the department’s dedication to protecting children online,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the DOJ’s Civil Division, said. “The department and the FTC are committed to working together to ensure that companies do not misrepresent to parents how children’s personal information is handled, retained, or deleted, and do not retain that information for longer than reasonably necessary.”
“Amazon’s history of misleading parents, keeping children’s recordings indefinitely, and flouting parents’ deletion requests violated COPPA and sacrificed privacy for profits,” Director Samuel Levine of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, added in a statement. “COPPA does not allow companies to keep children’s data forever for any reason, and certainly not to train their algorithms.”
The stipulated order entered Wednesday by the federal district court imposes injunctive relief that requires Amazon to identify and delete inactive child profiles – profiles that have not been used for 18 months – unless a parent requests that they be retained. Amazon has agreed to notify parents whose children have accounts of this change to its policies.
The order further prohibits Amazon from making misrepresentations about Amazon’s retention, access to or deletion of geolocation information or voice information, including children’s voice information, and mandates deletion of geolocation information, voice information, and children’s personal information upon the request of the user or parent, respectively.
It also requires Amazon to make disclosures to consumers relating to its retention and deletion practices regarding Alexa App geolocation information and voice information, the DOJ says.
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The Most Revolutionary Act 
Only that? All these “assistants” record all voice activity in their surrounding, regardless if it is called Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant etc. Used as spy microphones? Sure, no doubt! Related, first confimed spy activity was with the XBox Kinect, where Microsoft remotely activated the built in camera and … Not to forget built in cameras in laptops and pads. Facebook owns a patent regarding their app, where they remotely can activate the back and front camera on the mobile phone, without the user knowing it.
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There’s lot of evidence of Alexia and other “assistants” spying on their owners, Sasjal, but owing to high court costs, federal prosecutors will only file charges where the evidence is ironcad.
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I don’t know how anyone can enforce such vague restrictions. Electronic technology and the internet raise the bar for everyone, and as always, there are those who will misuse information. Interactive media provides many avenues for exploitation. Is Amazon at fault? Things can go awry at mulltiple points in the chain, probably most the result of the fast evolving nature of the electronic age and our clumsiness in handling so much data confusion.
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The problem in this case, Katharine is that Amazon is selling the data they collect on their customer and to government intelligence agencies with the blessing of the Biden administration and at the moment the only way to put a stop to it is through the courts.
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Ideally, perhaps, but I doubt even the courts can stop the black market, if there are profits to be had. If Amazon can sell that stuff, anyone can re-sell it.
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