A lawsuit filed in a federal court in Seattle alleges that Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant records children who use it without their consent and saves recordings permanently, the Seattle Times reported. The complaint, filed on behalf of a 10-year-old girl from Massachusetts on Tuesday, seeks class-action status and alleges that Amazon’s practices violate privacy laws in eight states - Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington. A class action is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member of that group. The proposed class in this suit is minors in the eight states “who have used Alexa in their home and have therefore been recorded by Amazon, without consent.” Amazon stores recordings 'permanently and without consent' The lawsuit alleges that: Amazon saves a permanent recording of the user’s voice, in contrast to other makers of voice-controlled computing devices, which either don’t store recordings or delete them after a short time. Alexa devices record and transmit any speech captured after they are activated by a “wake word”, even if the speaker is someone who didn’t buy the device or install the associated app on their phone. Alexa is capable of identifying speakers based on their voices and Amazon could choose to inform users who had not previously consented that they were being recorded and ask for consent. It could also deactivate permanent recording for users who had not consented. “But Alexa does not do this,”…
