Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizen Xiao Zhan for the clue delivery! On the evening of June 1, Beijing time, it was reported that on Wednesday, local time, the Federal Trade Commission announced that Amazon would pay $5.8 million to settle the invasion of users' privacy.

In 2017, a former employee of Amazon's Ring doorbell camera division monitored female users for months by installing cameras in bedrooms and bathrooms, the committee said in a court filing.

In addition, in another complaint, Amazon agreed to pay $25 million to settle violations of children's privacy, according to a court document filed in federal court in Seattle. The allegation alleges that Amazon did not delete the Alexa recording at the request of the child's parents and kept the recording for longer than necessary.

The settlement reached by the FTC is the result of the agency's efforts to hold large technology companies accountable for its policies. Critics say the policies of these big technology companies prioritize profits from data collection over user privacy.

The committee is also investigating Amazon's $1.7 billion acquisition of iRobot, a US consumer robotics company. The deal, announced in August 2022, is Amazon's latest move into smart home devices. In addition, the commission is conducting a separate antitrust investigation against Amazon.

In April 2018, Amazon acquired Ring, a smart doorbell startup, and promised to make some changes to its company's practices.

"while we disagree with the FTC about Alexa and Ring and deny that we have broken the law, reaching a settlement allows us to put these things behind us," Amazon said in a statement.

The FTC said that Ring gave employees unlimited access to customers' sensitive video data. "as a result of this dangerous overaccess and lax attitude to privacy and security, company employees and third-party contractors are able to view, download and transmit customers' sensitive video data."

In one case in 2017, an employee of Ring viewed video data from at least 81 female users and videos of Ring employees using Ring products. "the employee continued to conduct surveillance for several months without being discovered by the company," the committee said in the indictment. " A colleague later discovered the misconduct and eventually fired the employee.

The lawsuit alleges that in May 2018, an employee provided a client's recorded information to the client's ex-husband without consent. In another case, an employee gave the Ring device to the user and watched their video without the user's knowledge.

The agreement between the Federal Trade Commission and Ring will expire in 20 years. As part of the agreement, Ring must disclose to the customer the access of the company and its contractors to customer data.

In February 2019, Ring changed company policy so that most Ring employees or contractors could access customers' private videos only with their consent.

Committee member Alvaro Bedoya (Alvaro Bedoya) told the media that the settlement should send a message to technology companies that it is not illegal for them to collect data. "it's a very clear signal for them," he said.

The total fine of $30.8 million needed to reach a settlement is a drop in the bucket compared with Amazon's first-quarter profit of $3.2 billion.

In a lawsuit filed against Amazon in the state of Washington, the committee said Amazon violated rules that protect children's privacy and prohibit deceiving Alexa users. For example, Amazon told users that it would delete voice records and location information as required, but later failed to do so, according to the lawsuit.

"illegally retained voice records provide Amazon with a valuable database for training Alexa algorithms to understand children's privacy at the expense of children's privacy," the committee said. "

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