Amazon agrees to settle children’s-privacy charges for $25M as regulators sleuth out data misuse

Servers get served… This week Amazon agreed to settle FTC charges that it illegally stored children’s data (like voice recordings and locations) gathered from Alexa devices. The commission said that 30K Amazon employees had access to Alexa transcripts in 2018 and 2019, and that children’s data was used to train Alexa to better understand kids' lingo. That would be a violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA. Amazon denied it broke the law.

• Pay up: If the settlement is approved, Amazon will pay a $25M fine and be required to delete any saved children’s data.

• Separately: Amazon agreed to pay $5.8M in refunds to Ring customers to settle FTC allegations that employees had illegally viewed Ring footage. Amazon said it had fixed the issue before the commission looked into it.

The kids aren’t alright… While $25M is a drop in the bucket for Amazon, it’s part of a bigger regulatory push to crack down on misuse of kids’ data by tech giants. Last year, “Fortnite” maker Epic Games settled with the FTC for $520M, partly over claims of unlawfully collecting children’s info, and Google agreed to pay a $170M penalty for YouTube channels harvesting kids’ data.

• Thinking ahead: Several recent bills aim to bar platforms from targeting ads to under-13-year-olds, mostly by setting and enforcing age restrictions.

• Red flag: The bills seek to protect kids’ mental health, not just their data. But experts warn that age-verification processes could require more info to be shared with platforms.