Amazon sued over Ring cameras

Amazon is facing a class-action lawsuit for allegedly violating privacy rights through its Ring smart doorbells. The lawsuit, filed in Seattle by Virginia resident Charles Sigwalt, claims that the Familiar Faces feature on Ring devices stores images of passersby without their consent, according to Techcrunch.com reports.

The Familiar Faces feature was announced last September and uses artificial intelligence to recognize people who visit a home regularly. The system identifies family members, neighbors, or couriers, sending specific notifications to the user instead of a generic "someone is at the door" alert. Although users must enable this feature themselves, privacy advocates argue that strangers passing by the camera lens have not consented to having their faces scanned.

The lawsuit alleges that millions of Americans have unknowingly become subjects of a facial recognition system while walking past Ring security cameras. Amazon has not yet provided an official comment on the matter. Previously, the company stated that facial data is encrypted and not shared with anyone, and that data from unknown individuals is automatically deleted after 30 days.

This is not the first privacy-related issue for Amazon. In 2023, the company reached a $5.8 million settlement with the FTC (U.S. Federal Trade Commission). It was discovered that employees had unauthorized access to customers' private videos. Ring has also been criticized for cooperating with law enforcement agencies by providing video footage to police without warrants.