In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) accused Amazon of violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Rule (COPPA Rule) by misleading parents and Alexa users about its deletion practices. Datas. The company retained the children’s recordings indefinitely and used voice and geolocation data for its own purposes.
The FTC has imposed a $25 million fine on Amazon, which will have to review its data deletion practices and implement strict privacy protections for Alexa, its voice assistant, equipped with artificial intelligence. “Amazon’s story of deceiving parents, retaining children’s recordings indefinitely, and defying parental deletion requests violated COPPA and sacrificed privacy for profit,” said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Consumer Protection Bureau.
The COPPA law states that companies must allow parents to delete data relating to their children and must not keep this data indefinitely, in particular to train their algorithms.
Amazon has kept children’s voice recordings to improve Alexa’s speech recognition and processing capabilities
For parents, this means Amazon has assured users that they can delete voice recordings and geolocation information collected by Alexa through the Alexa app. But the FTC says that was not the case. The order explains that Amazon did not act on the deletion of the data, that it did not inform the parents of this failure and that it did not put in place a system to manage the process of deletion of data.
Amazon said it retained children’s voice recordings to improve Alexa’s speech recognition and processing capabilities, given that children have different ways of speaking than adults.
Alexa users can access and delete voice recordings in the mobile app, as everything they or their children say to the voice assistant is recorded.
The company will have to stop using this data for its algorithms
“COPPA does not allow companies to retain children’s data forever, for any reason, and certainly not to train their algorithms,” Levine added. He also claimed that this retention sacrificed children’s privacy for the benefit of Amazon.
Amazon will have to delete inactive child accounts, certain voice recordings and geolocation information. The company will also have to stop using this data for its algorithms.
Ring connected doorbell accused of illegally monitoring its customers
Ring, an Amazon-owned home security company, was also accused by the FTC of compromising user privacy. According to a separate judgment, Ring failed to provide sufficient privacy protections by allowing its employees and contractors to illegally access its customers’ private videos.
It has happened that employees hack into customer accounts, access their videos and take control of their cameras. The FTC explained that these people not only watch camera feeds, but also hack into the device’s two-way talk function, with documented examples of racist teasing of children, sexual harassment and racketeering.
The FTC says Ring was aware of these actions. But that the company has not taken the necessary measures to put an end to it. The ruling prohibits Ring from profiting from illegal access to its customers’ videos and orders the company to pay them $5.8 million in damages. The company must also delete all customer videos and data collected before January 2018.
Source: “ZDNet.com”