Alexa users, for instance, can stop Amazon from saving their recordings or have them automatically deleted periodically. The company said it retains some information, such as purchase history, after account closure to comply with legal obligations.Īmazon said it allows customers to adjust their settings on voice assistants and other services to limit the amount of data collected.
The only way for customers to delete much of this personal data is to close their account, Amazon said. Asked about the records of Samirah listening to the Quran on Amazon's audiobooks service, Amazon said such data allows customers to pick up where they left off from a prior session. The company said it alerts customers that recordings are stored when they set up Alexa accounts.Īmazon said it collects personal data to improve products and services and customize them to individuals. In a statement, Amazon said it has scientists and engineers working to improve the technology and avoid false triggers that prompt recording. Be fully prepared, Alexa advised the kids, to refute common parent arguments such as "too violent," "too expensive" and "you're not doing well enough in school." The information came from a third-party program used by Alexa called "wikiHow" that provides how-to advice from more than 180,000 articles, according to Amazon's website.
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The recordings included details such as the names of the reporter's young children and their favorite songs.Īmazon captured the children asking how they could convince their parents to let them "play," and getting detailed instructions from Alexa on how to convince their parents to buy them video games. One reporter's dossier revealed that Amazon had collected more than 90,000 Alexa recordings of family members between December 2017 and June 2021 - averaging about 70 daily. Such information can reveal a person's height, weight and health their ethnicity (via clues contained in voice data) and political leanings their reading and buying habits their whereabouts on any given day, and sometimes whom they have met. Alexa-enabled devices make recordings inside people's homes, and Ring security cameras capture every visitor. The data reveals the company's ability to amass strikingly intimate portraits of individual consumers.Īmazon collects data on consumers through its Alexa voice assistant, its e-commerce marketplace, Kindle e-readers, Audible audiobooks, its video and music platforms, home-security cameras and fitness trackers. Seven Reuters reporters also obtained their Amazon files.
Amazon customers can obtain their data by filling out a form on .) customers, and it started making that data available to all upon request early last year, after trying and failing to defeat a 2018 California measure requiring such disclosures. The company gathers a vast array of information on its U.S. At Reuters' request, Samirah asked Amazon to disclose the data it collected on him as a consumer. Samirah was among the few Virginia legislators who opposed an industry-friendly, Amazon-drafted state privacy bill that passed earlier this year. "Are they selling products, or are they spying on everyday people?" asked Samirah, a Democratic member of the Virginia House of Delegates. The company knew every search he had made on its platform, including one for books on "progressive community organizing" and other sensitive health-related inquiries he thought were private. It had records of exactly which part of the Quran that Samirah, who was raised as a Muslim, had listened to on Dec. The e-commerce giant had more than 1,000 contacts from his phone.
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