Amazon settles with FTC for $25M over violation of children’s privacy and deletion requests

Amazon has agreed to pay a $25 million penalty to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and overhaul its deletion practices to settle accusations that it violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. The FTC alleged that Amazon retained children’s recordings indefinitely, failed to delete transcripts of what they said from its databases when requested to do so by parents and did not delete geolocation data. Furthermore, the company continued with these practices even after discovering the issue in 2018. Amazon is known for its voice interface, Alexa, which has been popular in households worldwide for several years. As a result of this settlement, Amazon has agreed to implement stringer privacy safeguards.
Plus, Amazon is known for its dominant market presence as an online retailer and provider of online services, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and artificial intelligence (AI) platforms.
Moreover, the FTC Commissioners Bedoya and Slaughter, as well as Chair Khan, wrote a statement accompanying the settlement proposal and complaint to particularly call out the retention of data for refining machine learning models practice. The Commissioners sent a clear message that the settlement is independent of other FTC actions, including the one against Amazon subsidiary Ring.