The fine which was handed down by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also related to security lapses relating to its doorbell camera Ring.
In the Alexa case, the FTC said Amazon had retained children’s recordings indefinitely to refine its voice recognition algorithm. The US government agency said that even when a parent requested the information be deleted Amazon often kept the transcripts.
The FTC said that with its actions Amazon had violated child privacy laws and ordered the company to delete inactive child accounts as well as voice information and geolocation data.
FTC consumer protection chief Samuel Levine said the tech giant had sacrificed “privacy for profits” in “flouting parents’ deletion requests.”
In the case of the Ring doorbell camera, the FTC claimed Ring (which is a subsidiary of Amazon) had allowed its employees and contractors to access the private videos of consumers. It also claimed that lapses in security had enabled hackers to take control of some customer accounts.
Amazon was fined $25 million for the Alexa violations and Ring was ordered to pay $5.8 million. Both fines must approved by US courts before they can take effect.
In a blog post on its site Amazon defended itself, saying that it built Alexa with strong privacy protections and customer controls and that Ring addressed the privacy and security issues before the FTC began its inquiry.