Amazon to pay $30M for violating children's privacy with Ring and Alexa

ATLANTA - One of the big concerns of technology is the ability for it to eavesdrop on our families. Rules are in place. But according to the FTC, Ring and Alexa have broken those rules. 

Amazon owns both Ring and Alexa and has been ordered to pay a combined $30 million fine in two separate cases. 

Ring is the doorbell camera that captures our images and voices at the door. Alexa is the technology form of a virtual assistant. You talk into the device, and it will look for things online for you. It will take down your grocery list. It listens to you.

The Federal Trade Commission in that first complaint against Alexa said that the tech company captured and saved children’s voices, kept them even if parents said not to, then used the data to fine-tune its algorithms.  And you can’t do that.

THE FTC’s director of Consumer Protection put out a bold statement. He said that Amazon has a history of misleading parents, keeping children’s recordings indefinitely, and flouting parents’ requests to delete those recordings. He added that the bureau doesn’t allow companies to keep children’s data forever for any reason.I

In a statement on its website, Amazon wrote that it takes the trust of its customers seriously. Amazon management disagrees with the FTC's allegations, but agreed to the settlement. According to federal court documents, Alexa has 800,000 accounts for children under 13. 

In the other complaint regarding Ring, it claims that when the doorbell video company gave third-party contractors access that some employees peeped in, and that hackers got into systems and harassed children, made sexual proposition, used racial slurs, and more. The feds in this case said that Amazon must crack down and take security much more seriously contractors.