“While we disagree with the FTC's allegations regarding Alexa and Ring, and deny wrongdoing, these settlements put these matters behind us,” Amazon said in a statement to entrepreneur in that time.
whether Amazon employees or hackers access personal footage from your Ring camera without your consent, you may be entitled to a large payment.
US Federal Trade Commission is releasing $5.6 million in refunds to some Ring customers after it discovered that employees and contractors were illegally accessing private video content to use for algorithm training and other internal purposes.
Amazon-owned Ring was also accused of failing to implement adequate security protections to prevent hackers from accessing users' accounts and views without their consent.
“These practices led to egregious violations of user privacy,” the FTC said in Thursday's announcement.
In June 2023, Amazon settled two privacy-related lawsuits with the FTC, one related to Ring and one alleging that it violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act Rule (COPPA Rule) with its Alexa voice assistant. Amazon was ordered to pay more than $30 million in civil penalties and refunds from customers.
The FTC said it will distribute $5.6 million in approximately 117,044 PayPal payments to customers who possessed certain types of Ring devices during the alleged unauthorized use. Affected customers must make their payments to PayPal within 30 days.
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Amazon did not release a statement on the matter this week, but said Associated Press that affected customers were notified if their data was “exposed in a third-party, non-Ring incident” by hackers. The company did not comment on allegations of employees and contractors having access to customer data.
Amazon it was upstairs up 71% year over year as of Friday afternoon.