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Advocacy Groups Claim Amazon's Kid-Friendly Echo Dot Violates Child Privacy Laws

Last year, Amazon launched Echo Dot Kids — which was essentially the exact same as the company’s other devices, but with the bonus of parental controls. Now, child and privacy advocacy groups claim that Echo Dot Kids violates the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by recording and storing kids’ conversations. Organizations involved include Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood (CCFC), Color of Change, Electronic Privacy Information Center, and more. In a complaint submitted to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the groups wrote: “The Echo Dot Kids Edition has the capacity to collect vast amounts of sensitive, personal information from children age 13. For example, voice recordings of children are considered personal information under COPPA. The Echo Dot Kids Edition records children’s voices any time it hears the wake word, and it stores these recordings in the cloud unless or until a parent deletes them.” As its name suggests, COPPA imposes requirements to protect...

Vanessa Taylor

May 10, 2019