Amazon will pay over $30 million to settle Federal Trade Commission (FTC) allegations that its Ring and Alexa divisions violated the privacy of users.

The latest: A lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice on behalf of the FTC said Wednesday Amazon violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act by retaining voice and geolocation information from young users for years despite parents' requests that they delete the data.

• The lawsuit said the company sought to retain the data for "its own potential use," despite repeatedly assured its users that they could delete voice recordings collected from its Alexa voice assistant and geolocation information collected by the Alexa app.
• Under the FTC's proposed settlement with Amazon, which must be approved by a federal court, the company would have to pay a $25 million civil penalty and delete inactive child accounts and certain voice recordings and geolocation information.

Separately, the FTC's complaint against Ring says that the company, despite emphasizing security in promotional materials, had no safeguards in place to prevent employees and hundreds of contractors from having full access to videos from every customer.

Zoom in: Civil rights groups and others have in recent years criticized the company — which has sold millions of doorbell and indoor cameras — for both its security practices and its close ties with law enforcement

• All of the videos were stored unencrypted on Ring’s network and could be downloaded,...

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