The Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice charged Amazon with saving recordings of children from Alexa devices, violating national federal law and the privacy rights of children.

The two agencies found that Amazon had prevented parents from exercising their rights to request the deletion of children's data under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. This law protects children 13 or younger from having their data misused. The Big Tech retail giant will have to pay $25 million in fines and be forced to delete any remaining data it may have from children. The company will also have to notify users about the action and delete inactive Alexa accounts connected to children and is barred from being deceptive about how it handles geolocation and voice data.

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"Amazon's history of misleading parents, keeping children's recordings indefinitely, and flouting parents' deletion requests violated COPPA and sacrificed privacy for profits," said Samuel Levine, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, in a statement. "COPPA does not allow companies to keep children's data forever for any reason, and certainly not to train their algorithms."

The FTC also released an order claiming that Ring, an electronic doorbell owned by Amazon, had surveilled its users and failed to stop hacking attempts. The company will have to pay $5.8 million in consumer refunds to cover the unlawful access to customer video.

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Amazon is not the only Big Tech company to face recent enforcement action by the FTC for its data collection practices. The agency this month found via a third-party review that Meta violated COPPA and several other privacy orders.