FTC Imposes $25M Fine on Amazon for Alexa’s Breach of Children’s Privacy

The Federal Trade Commission(FTC) has announced a penalty of twenty-five million dollars on Amazon over what it claims is a breach of children’s privacy, thanks to its Alexa voice assistant device.

The penalty imposed by the FTC is the largest of its kind for this particular brand of privacy violation and the largest the regulator has ever imposed for privacy violations involving children since it first began evaluating those cases.

The FTC alleges that Amazon allowed third-party app developers to collect voice recordings of children without their parents’ knowledge or consent. Alexa is Amazon’s voice-activated virtual assistant, found in many of its Echo-branded smart speakers.

The FTC’s complaint alleges that Amazon marketed Alexa devices and selected apps as kid-friendly and failed to take adequate steps to ensure that the children’s voice recordings were just as secure as the recordings of adults, and as secure as the rest of the collected data, as required by the FTC Act.

The FTC’s order requires Amazon to delete all recordings of children that the company can identify without parental consent, and to obtain consent before collecting audio recordings or saving data from children. The company is also prohibited from collecting voice recordings from children without parental consent, and from collecting any other personal data from children without parental consent.

Amazon will also have to implement a comprehensive data privacy program, and submit a quarterly report to the FTC so the agency can monitor Amazon’s compliance, and any violations will be subject to an additional fine.

The policy director of the Center for Digital Democracy, Jeffrey Chester, said in a statement that the fine should be used “to fund an independent children’s privacy regulator to police tech companies’ abuses of our kids.”

The FTC warned other companies who use voice recordings to collect data that similar decisions would happen if proper security protocols are not followed. In the words of acting FTC Chair Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, “It is urgent that companies get ahead of this and put in place reasonable security measures to protect consumer privacy, especially the privacy of children.”

This case should serve as a reminder to other companies that children’s privacy is a serious issue. Failure to put adequate protections in place can have significant financial and reputational consequences.