Amazon.com, Inc., $25,000,000
Amazon kept children’s Alexa voice recordings indefinitely, used them to train its algorithms, and ignored parents’ deletion requests, violating COPPA.
Case identifiers
- Respondent
- Amazon.com, Inc. (and Amazon.com Services LLC)
- Agency
- Federal Trade Commission
- Announced
- 2023-05-31
- Monetary relief
- $25,000,000
- Case number
- FTC File No. 192-3086
- Statutes cited
- Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) · COPPA Rule
Key facts
- 1
Alexa retained children’s voice recordings and geolocation data even after parents deleted them from the app.
- 2
The retained data was used for machine-learning model training.
- 3
Amazon also misled parents about its deletion practices.
- 4
$25 million civil penalty plus mandatory deletion of inactive children’s accounts.
What the order requires
Injunctive terms imposed by the Federal Trade Commission. These bind Amazon.com, Inc.'s data practices going forward.
- Required deletion of inactive children’s accounts after 18 months.
- Prohibition on using children’s voice recordings for training machine-learning models after a deletion request.
- Implementation of a COPPA-specific privacy program and geolocation data deletion.
Primary sources
Read the original government documents. These are the authoritative records, everything on this page is derived from them.
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Where this action sits in the tracker
- It is one of 19 FTC actions among the 26 cases in this tracker.
- Of the 19 tracked actions with monetary relief, $25,000,000 ranks number 4 by amount.
- 6 tracked actions were announced in 2023.
- It is one of 3 tracked children's-data actions.
FAQ
What did the FTC charge Amazon.com, Inc. with?+
Amazon kept children’s Alexa voice recordings indefinitely, used them to train its algorithms, and ignored parents’ deletion requests, violating COPPA. The Federal Trade Commission cited Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), COPPA Rule.
How much did Amazon.com, Inc. pay?+
Amazon.com, Inc. had monetary relief of $25,000,000, announced on 2023-05-31. The settlement also imposed injunctive terms (see below).
Does the Amazon.com, Inc. settlement mean my data has been deleted?+
The order requires Amazon.com, Inc. to delete certain categories of consumer data (see injunctive terms). Individual consumers should still exercise state-law deletion rights (CCPA, CPA, TDPSA) to confirm deletion from any remaining successor databases.
How can I read the original FTC order?+
The Federal Trade Commission press release is available at https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/05/ftc-doj-charge-amazon-violating-childrens-privacy-law-keeping-kids-alexa-voice-recordings-forever. The case / matter number is FTC File No. 192-3086.