Global Courant
Tech giant agrees to settlement after employee allegedly spied on women using Ring cameras in bedrooms and bathrooms.
Amazon has agreed to pay out $30.8 million to meet claims that it is violating customer privacy, including spying on women in their homes.
The tech giant agreed to pay out $5.8 million after the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said a former Amazon employee spied on female customers for months in 2017 using Ring security cameras placed in bedrooms and bathrooms .
Amazon agreed to a separate $25 million settlement over allegations that it violated children’s privacy by failing to delete Alexa smart speaker recordings at the request of parents and retaining the recordings longer than necessary.
Samuel Levine, the director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said Amazon had “sacrificed privacy for profit.”
“Ring’s disregard for privacy and security exposed consumers to espionage and harassment,” Levine said in a statement Wednesday.
Amazon said it disagreed with the FTC’s characterizations and denied breaking the law, but that settlements would put the case behind it.
“Our devices and services are built to protect customer privacy and put customers in control of their experience,” said the Seattle-based company.
Ring, which is owned by Amazon, was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying it “addressed these issues on its own years ago, long before the FTC began its investigation.”
Under FTC orders, Ring would delete all illegally viewed data and introduce security features, including multi-factor authentication, while Amazon would not use deleted geolocation and voice information for its products and establish a privacy program for the use of geolocation.
The proposed orders must be approved by a federal judge.
