The Federal Trade Commission charged Amazon-owned Ring.
This is because it failed to adopt basic safeguards to prevent hackers or employees from accessing people’s devices or accounts.
Amazon in a court filings agreed to pay $30.8 million to settle Ring and Alexa privacy concerns filed by US regulators, including allegations that workers spied on female customers.
The Federal Trade Commission charged Amazon-owned Ring with failing to adopt basic safeguards to prevent hackers or employees from accessing people’s devices or accounts.
Ring’s security flaws, according to the FTC complaint, resulted in “egregious” invasions of privacy, such as female users of home security cameras being “surveilled” in beds or bathrooms.
Disregard For Privacy
Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s office of consumer protection, said, “Ring’s disregard for privacy and security exposed consumers to spying and harassment.
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“Ring would destroy any illegally viewed data and increase security with features such as multi-factor authentication, according to a draft order that must be approved by a federal judge.”
Exploitation From Hackers
Hackers exploited loopholes to not only view video streams but also take control of cameras to mock youngsters, sexually propose adults, and threaten a family with damage if they did not pay a ransom.”
According to the proposed decision, Ring will pay $5.8 million as part of the settlempaent.
“Ring promptly addressed these issues on its own years ago, well before the FTC began its inquiry,” Ring said in response to an AFP query, adding that the charges are false.
According to the FTC, Amazon will pay an additional $25 million in a separate settlement to resolve FTC allegations that children’s voice recordings obtained by Alexa smart speakers were kept when they should have been destroyed.
Levine said, “US law does not allow companies to keep children’s data forever for any reason, and certainly not to train their algorithms.”
According to a proposed ruling, Amazon will identify and destroy any personal information it has retained from kid profiles that are no longer active.
