Amazon fined $47 million for hoarding kids’ data, spying through cameras

Amazon has agreed to pay more than $US30 million ($47 million) in fines to US regulators following allegations of historical privacy abuses, including retaining data collected from children after being explicitly asked to delete it.

In one case, the US Federal Trade Commission had alleged that, before mid-2019, the company failed to remove voice recordings, transcriptions and precise location data collected from children via the Alexa voice assistant even after parents requested their removal.

In another case, it said the company’s Ring video doorbells and security cameras had unreasonable privacy practices in January 2020. According to the FTC, Ring employees and contractors were given unrestricted access to view videos taken at users’ homes.

In both cases, the regulators specifically frame the breaches as designed to train Amazon AI and algorithms at the expense of users’ privacy, placing the fines within a trend of lawmakers around the world cracking down on unnecessary data collection and retention.

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