Samuel Levine, director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission claims that Amazon has violated COPPA by illegally keeping recordings of children and misleading their parents on the matter.
“Amazon’s history of misleading parents, keeping children’s recordings indefinitely, and flouting parents’ deletion requests violated COPPA and sacrificed privacy for profits... COPPA does not allow companies to keep children’s data forever for any reason, and certainly not to train their algorithms,” Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection Samuel Levine.
According to a complaint from the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued on May 31, 2023,, Amazon has mishandled the personal data of millions of Alexa users, particularly children under the age of 13. Amazon's Echo smart speakers and Alexa app have been accused of retaining voice recordings and transcripts indefinitely, including the personal data of inactive child users, in violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Despite the company's privacy assurances, it reportedly failed to fully delete children's data upon request and continued to keep transcripts, a breach of COPPA. Furthermore, Amazon's practice of retaining user voice and geolocation data even after deletion requests, is an unfair and deceptive practice under Section 5 of the FTC Act.
According to a press release from the FTC, in response to the allegations, Amazon maintains that their data retention practices were intended to enhance the functionality and responsiveness of Alexa and Echo devices. The company asserted that they kept children's voice recordings to fine-tune Alexa's speech recognition and processing abilities, as children's speech patterns and accents differ from adults. The retained voice data was considered a valuable resource for training Alexa's algorithms to understand children more accurately, thereby improving user experience.
However, according to the release, in light of the charges, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have enforced strict measures requiring Amazon to reform its data deletion practices. To comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), Amazon will need to delete inactive child accounts, as well as specific voice recordings and geolocation information. Furthermore, Amazon will be barred from using this data to train its algorithms. This proposed court order, subject to federal court approval, is aimed at safeguarding users' privacy and ensuring adherence to COPPA regulations.
According to his FTC bio, Samuel Levine is the Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, with previous roles at the FTC and Illinois Attorney General's office. A graduate of Harvard Law School and Washington University in St. Louis, Levine has a distinguished career in public service and consumer advocacy, earning him the Gary Bellow Public Service Award. His work emphasizes affordability and accountability in higher education and challenging illegal foreclosures.
