WASHINGTON: A former employee of Amazon.com’s Ring doorbell camera unit spied for months on female customers way back in 2017 with cameras placed in bathrooms and bedrooms, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said in a court filing Wednesday when it announced a $5.8 million settlement with the company over privacy violations.
The company also agreed to pay $25m to settle allegations it violated children’s privacy rights when it failed to delete Alexa recordings at the request of parents and kept them longer than necessary, according to a court filing in federal court in Seattle that outlined a separate settlement.
The FTC settlements are the agency’s latest effort to hold Big Tech accountable for policies critics say place profits from data collection ahead of privacy.
The FTC is also probing Amazon.com’s $1.7bn deal to buy iRobot Corp (IRBT.O), which was announced in August last year in Amazon’s latest push into smart home devices, and has a separate antitrust probe underway into Amazon. Amazon, which purchased Ring in April 2018, has promised to make some changes in its practices.
“While we disagree with the FTC’s claims regarding both Alexa and Ring, and deny violating the law, these settlements put these matters behind us,” Amazon.com said in a statement.
The FTC said Ring gave employees unrestricted access to customers’ sensitive video data: “As a result of this dangerously overbroad access and lax attitude toward privacy and security, workers and third-party contractors were able to view, download, and transfer customers’ sensitive video data.”
In one instance in 2017, a worker of Ring viewed videos made by at least 81 female customers and Ring workers using Ring products. The FTC said, “Undetected by Ring, the worker continued spying for months.”
The complaint said, In May 2018, a worker gave information about a customer’s recordings to the person’s former husband without consent. The FTC said, In another instance, a worker was found to have given Ring devices to people and then watched their videos without their knowledge.
