Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) will pay nearly £25mln to settle two privacy cases that involved staff spying on customers who owned Ring doorbells and Alexa storing recordings without permission.
The e-commerce giant was accused of having unrestricted access to the footage recorded on Ring doorbells.
One claim said that a former Ring staff member in 2017 had used the device to spy on multiple female customers that had the camera placed in bedrooms and bathrooms.
Ring, which was bought by Amazon in 2018 for US$1bln, will pay £4.6mln to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and is now required to be more transparent with customers about data usage.
An Amazon spokesperson said: “Ring promptly addressed the issues at hand on its own years ago, well before the FTC began its inquiry.”
Amazon, which tightened data access rules for Ring staff in 2019, added it does not agree with the FTC’s claims.
Additionally, the US firm agreed to pay £20mln to the FTC to settle a claim that the company had misused recordings saved by Alexa, the voice assistant.
These claims argued that Amazon had not deleted recordings when asked to by parents and instead stored voice transcripts and location data for longer than needed.
The group said it worked closely with the FTC when it launched a children’s version of the voice assistant, adding it has made new changes as part of the settlement.
A spokesperson for the company added: “[Amazon]will remove child profiles that have been inactive for more than 18 months unless a parent or guardian chooses to keep them.”