Class-Action Lawsuit Targets Amazon for Alexa's Private Conversation Recording

New Delhi (The Uttam Hindu): After Google and Facebook, now the giant e-commerce company Amazon has also got into legal troubles in the matter of tampering with the privacy of users. The company's popular voice assistant 'Alexa' has been accused of recording the private conversations and conversations of millions of users. In this case, a US federal judge has given the green signal to a class-action lawsuit against Amazon.

This decision was given by US District Judge Robert Lasnik on Monday, July 7. He said that there are sufficient legal grounds to file a nationwide lawsuit against Amazon to compensate the users for the financial losses they have suffered and to stop the alleged violation of privacy. This lawsuit represents the interests of millions of users who use one or more Alexa devices.

The lawsuit, filed in 2021, alleges that Amazon intentionally designed Alexa to intercept billions of private conversations and use these voice recordings for its commercial benefit. The petitioners claim that this is a direct violation of Washington's consumer protection rules.

Amazon launched its voice assistant Alexa in 2014, which works on commands like 'Hi Alexa'. However, the court found that it can listen to private conversations even without any command.

Amazon has not yet commented on this matter. However, the company has denied these allegations several times before. Amazon has claimed that Alexa has been designed to respect the privacy of users and there are security measures to avoid it being activated accidentally. But after this new order of the court, the company will now have to face these allegations in the form of a lawsuit.

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