Amazon—FTC fined Amazon over $30 million for Alexa children's privacy violations and Ring employee surveillance abuses
In May 2023, the FTC charged Amazon with violating children's privacy law (COPPA) by retaining kids' Alexa voice recordings indefinitely and undermining parental deletion requests ($25M fine). Separately, Ring was fined $5.8M after an employee viewed thousands of videos from 81+ female users' cameras in intimate spaces. Ring's security failures from 2016-2020 also enabled hackers to access consumer accounts and cameras.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digital Safety for Vulnerable Users | -against | secondary | -0.50 |
| Surveillance Technology | +toward | secondary | -0.50 |
| User Privacy | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.295 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (high ×1.5) × confidence (0.59)× agency (negligent ×0.5)
Evidence (1 signal)
FTC charged Amazon with COPPA violations for keeping children's Alexa recordings and Ring privacy abuses
The FTC charged Amazon with violating COPPA by retaining kids' Alexa voice recordings and undermining parental deletion requests ($25M). Ring was fined $5.8M for allowing employees to access consumer cameras in intimate spaces and failing basic security protections.