Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition Is Reportedly Recording Kids Illegally

On May 9, 19 groups on consumer advocate and privacy announced their plan on filing a complaint against Amazon with the FCT (Federal Trade Commission).

They alleged that the Echo smart speaker which was explicitly designed for kids of Amazon is collecting personal information and voice recording illegally. This is just another one in the list of allegations against Amazon for violating user’s privacy.

The complaint which is 96-pages long is full of examples showing how the Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition violates the COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) which is a law to prevent data companies from collecting children’s info without asking for their parents’ permission.

Similar to what it does with its Alexa devices, Amazon keeps the Echo Dot’s voice recordings in the cloud indefinitely. In order to delete the data, parents need to go through a troublesome review process. It is not as simple as a deleting button as parents would need to listen to every piece of recordings to figure out what kind of info has been collected or they would have to reach out to customer services to delete their child’s complete profile.

The complaint also criticizes the retail giant for doing a lousy job of clarifying which third-parties get access to collected data.

In the company’s statement sent to The Washington Post, Kinley Pearsall – the company's spokeswoman said that the Echo Dot Kids Edition of the company is “compliant with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act” but did not tackle any specific allegations in the complaint.

Of course, this is not the first time for Amazon to get into trouble for being irresponsible with user data, but it is for sure the first time the problem is related to kids. Maybe, this complaint will possibly change the whole situation where user’s privacy is in concern since it involves kids.