Tech

Amazon Class Action Lawsuit: What if Your Devices Are Actually Listening to You in Secret?

You talk about something, then an ad on it shows up on your device! How?

Published

5 years ago

January 10, 2022

A recent class-action lawsuit targeted at Amazon’s Alexa claims that the company’s Alexa devices improperly capture and store consumers’ biometric data, including voiceprints. “Lead plaintiff April Schaeffer claims Amazon uses devices equipped with the Alexa virtual assistant, such as its Amazon Echo smart speaker and Fire tablet — in addition to much other company’s products — to capture and store voiceprints and create transcriptions.”

What does Amazon do with the transcriptions?

Personalized advertisements are a big part of every big tech company’s products, be it Amazon, Google, Apple, or others. Usually, personalized ads are given to you based on your search history, clicks, and various other data points. However, as this lawsuit inherently suggests, at least Amazon in the case of this lawsuit, takes the voiceprints of the customers, transcribes their speech, and uses these to further personalize their suggestions and products which can be considered a violation of consumer privacy rights. “Amazon is in violation of BIPA by not making a public policy available on how it intends to permanently destroy biometric identifiers, and has instead sold, leased, traded, or otherwise profited off them, the class action lawsuit alleges.”

What about the customers of Amazon?

“Amazon Alexa users are unable to stop the devices from collecting voiceprints unless they mute the device or deactivate it — both of which defeat the purpose of the device, according to the class-action lawsuit.” As the customers’ hands are tied in this kind of a situation, they tried to test the device on these inadvertent activation words. They claim that “a group of researchers discovered more than 1000 words that incorrectly trigger smart speakers.”

It just goes further to prove that we do not know how much of our data we are sharing with big tech companies and how much they know about our day-to-day life. To end with a thought-provoking question, do you prefer personalization or security?

You can check the lawsuit at Amazon Alexa Devices Take Voiceprints, Misuse Biometric Data, Says Class Action – Top Class Actions.