Warning: *Privacy Not Included with this product
Amazon Fire HD Kids Edition
Remember when long road trips meant drawing an imaginary line down the middle of the backseat and punching your sibling whenever they crossed it? Those days are over. Today there are tablets for kids. Amazon's Fire Kids is a tablet targeted at children ages 3 - 7. It comes with a "kid-proof case" in bright, pretty colors and includes built-in parental controls designed to help parents feel better about giving their kids screen time. Toss in a 1-year subscription to Amazon Kids+-, which includes access to a ton of "content kids crave" (which automatically rolls into a $4.99 per month subscription after one year), and you've got your kid squared away for that long drive to Grandma and Grandpa's house.
What could happen if something goes wrong?
Amazon proudly states they are "not in the business of selling your personal information to others." True. But, Amazon doesn’t need to sell your personal information to others when they have their own retail and advertising juggernaut to use your data to sell you more stuff. Because Amazon is in the business of selling you more stuff. And it’s not just Amazon hoping to sell you stuff. Amazon has a whole program for others to sell you stuff on on their sites too. And those sellers get to use that data Amazon collects on you to target you with the stuff they want to sell. So, while Amazon might not be in the business of selling your personal information, they are in the business of collecting as much of your personal information as they can, then selling access to that personal information to others to target you with ads to sell you more stuff.
With Amazon for Kids products, Amazon hopes to collect data on your child with your parental consent. They say they can collect things like name, birthdate, contact information (including phone numbers and e-mail addresses), voice, photos, videos, location, as well as certain activity and device information and identifiers (such as cookies, device serial numbers, and IP addresses)] of your child when they use this device. They use this information on your child to, among other things, provide personalized offerings and recommendations. Yes, they’re learning about your child to target your child with more stuff they’ll want you to buy. They do say they won’t serve third-party interest-based ads when your kids are using an Amazon child profile. So that’s something.
Here's the important thing everyone needs to know about Amazon and their Kids products -- Amazon has proven themselves untrustworthy when it comes to doing what they say they will do to protect kids' (and everyone else's) privacy. In 2023, the US's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charged Amazon with violating children's privacy laws by keeping kids voice recordings and geolocation data indefinitely, undermining parent's deletion requests, and putting people's data at risk. Amazon was required to pay a $25 million settlement. So yeah, Amazon breaking the law by keeping children's voice recordings to train their AI, ignoring parents' deletion requestions, and generally being awful and dishonest about honoring their privacy promises is a pretty good reason to think long and hard about putting an Alexa-abled device anywhere near your kids.
Also, as the parent with your regular, non-Amazon Kids account, Amazon likes to collect a bunch of data on you. Things like: records of your shopping habits, Alexa search requests, the TV shows you watch and when you watch them, the music you stream, the podcasts you listen to, when you turn your lights on and off, when you lock your doors, identifiers such as your name, address, phone numbers, or IP address, your age, gender, your location, audio and visual information like those Alexa-requests or photos you take, the names and numbers of people listed in your contacts. The list goes on and on and on.
And what do they do with all that personal information they collect on you? Well, they use it to target you with advertising, of course. Lots and lots of advertising. They do say they don’t use information that personally identifies you to display interest-based ads (of course, we have to trust them on this, which, given their track record, might not be a wise thing to do). They also use your personal information to identify your preferences and personalize products and services to keep you using those products and services as much as possible. And they say they can share that personal information with a number of third parties.
Let’s talk for a minute about Alexa itself. Amazon's Fired HD for Kids comes with Alexa always happy to help your kid. Amazon does make it possible to automatically delete voice recordings immediately after they are processed, although remember, they got in big trouble for often ignoring these requests. And, Amazon says when you delete your voice recordings, they still can keep data of the interactions those recordings triggered. So, if you buy a something through Amazon Alexa, Amazon won't forget you bought it just because you ask them to delete the voice recording of that purchase. That record of the purchase is data they have on you going forward and may use to target you with ads for more stuff.
Oh, let’s not forget Amazon’s terrible, awful, no-good track record at protecting and respecting their customers' data. So far in 2023 alone, Amazon has been been charged by the FTC in the US for violating children's privacy laws by keeping kids voice recordings and location data for years and undermining parent's deletion requests of their kids data. This resulted in Amazon agreeing to pay a $25 million penalty. Then Amazon got sued by the FTC for enrolling people in Amazon Prime without their consent and then making it way too hard to cancel the subscription. Amazon also had to settle with the FTC again for $5,8 million for poor privacy and security in their Ring cameras that let employees spy on customers through the cameras. Shoot, last year we here at *Privacy Not Included found a security vulnerability in Ring cameras and reported it to Amazon to fix. They, so far as we can tell, have done nothing to fix this security issue. All this and then in September, 2023 the FTC and 17 US state Attorneys General sued Amazon for "illegally maintaining monopoly power."
That's all just in 2023 alone. If you look back further, you'll find more Amazon issues. There’s the Amazon employee who was caught stealing the personal information of over 100 million CapitolOne customers. And that’s not the only time Amazon employees with access to lots of customer data were caught leaking customers personal information. It’s happened quite a few times, actually. And then there’s the Alexa security bug that opened the door for hackers to potentially access users personal information and even their conversation history. These are some of the known privacy and security issues Amazon has had (there could be more unknown ones as well). And we get it, Amazon is a huge company with many products and employees and it’s impossible to secure everything 100% of the time. But that’s the point. When you collect such a vast amount of personal information on people, you’ve got to be super, duper, extra careful to secure it everywhere, all the time. Amazon has shown they can’t always do that.
What’s the worst that could happen? Well, Amazon could get to know your kid's personal information pretty well starting at a young age. Amazon will track your kid's habits unless you opt out--and if you opt out, that means you'll likely lose services and features you probably don't want to lose. You can request Amazon delete your child's data, but again, trusting Amazon to follow through on that is a gamble The only way to be (mostly) sure all this data is deleted--both your child's and your own--is to delete your Amazon account completely. All in all, a product that can potentially collect this much data on young children from a company was a pretty bad track record as Amazon at respecting parents' data requests is one we really have to warn likely comes with *privacy not included.
One more note on Amazon from a privacy researcher’s point of view. Trying to read through Amazon’s crazy network of privacy policies, privacy FAQs, privacy statements, privacy notices, and privacy documentation for their vast empire is a nightmare. There’s so many documents that link to other documents that link back even more documents that understanding and making sense of Amazon’s actual privacy practices feels almost impossible. We wonder if this is by design, to confuse us all so we just give up? Or, if maybe even Amazon’s own employees possibly don’t know and understand the vast network of privacy policies and documentation they have living all over the place? Regardless, this privacy researcher would love to see Amazon do better when it comes to making their privacy policies accessible to the consumers they impact.
Tips to protect yourself
- Parents should not give permission to Amazon to collect Child Personal Information from their child
- Parents should review and adjust the privacy controls for their child's profile.
- Review the content available on your Parent Dashboard.
- Manage Parental Consent page
- Do not sign up with third-party accounts. Better just log in with email and strong password.
- Chose a strong password! You may use a password control tool like 1Password, KeePass etc
Can it snoop on me?
Camera
Device: Yes
App: N/A
Microphone
Device: Yes
App: N/A
Tracks location
Device: Yes
App: N/A
What can be used to sign up?
Yes
Phone
No
Third-party account
No
Parents should look into privacy controls for child profiles.
What data does the company collect?
Personal
"About child: name, birthdate, contact information (including phone numbers and e-mail addresses), photos, videos, location, and certain activity and device information and identifiers (such as cookies, device serial numbers, and IP addresses) About caregiver/owner: Identifiers such as name, alias, address, phone numbers, IP address, your Amazon account log-in information, or a government-issued identifier (e.g. a social security number, which may be required for tax purposes if you are a Seller); personal information, such as a credit card number or other payment information; information that may reveal age, gender, race, sexual orientation, or other protected classifications, for example if you create a child profile, baby registry, or wedding registry, or if an author voluntarily self-identifies their racial identity for cataloging purposes; commercial information, such as purchase and content streaming activity; internet or other electronic network activity information, including content interaction information, such as content downloads, streams, and playback details"
Body related
Child's voice, adult's voice
Social
How does the company use this data?
How can you control your data?
What is the company’s known track record of protecting users’ data?
In September 2023, FTC filed a lawsuit against Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power.
In July 2023, Apple and Amazon were fined by Spain antitrust watchdog.
In June 2023, Mozilla published a major vulnerability in Ring Doorbell.
In March 2023, FTC and DOJ charged Amazon with violating Children’s Privacy Law by keeping kids’ Alexa voice recordings forever and undermining parents’ deletion requests.
In 2023, the company also agreed to pay $5.8 million in customer refunds for alleged privacy violations involving its doorbell camera Ring.
In 2022, Paige Thompson, a former Amazon employee accused of stealing the personal information of 100 million customers by breaching banking giant CapitalOne in 2019, was found guilty by a Seattle jury on charges of wire fraud and computer hacking.
In July 2021, the Luxembourg National Commission for Data Protection issued a 746 million euro fine to Amazon for allegedly violating the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
In August 2020, security researchers from Check Point pointed out a flaw in Amazon's Alexa smart home devices that could have allowed hackers access to personal information and conversation history. Amazon promptly fixed the bug.
In October 2020, Amazon fired an employee for leaking customer email addresses to an unnamed third party.
In October 2019, Forbes reported that Amazon employees were listening to Amazon Cloud Cam recording, to train its AI algorythm.
In April 2019, it was revealed that thousands of employees, many of whom are contract workers and some not even directly employed by Amazon, had access to both voice and text transcripts of Alexa interactions.
Child Privacy Information
Can this product be used offline?
User-friendly privacy information?
Amazon has a complicated and difficult to navigate mess of privacy policies, privacy notices, privacy FAQs, and other privacy information.
Links to privacy information
Does this product meet our Minimum Security Standards?
Encryption
Strong password
Password-protected Amazon account is needed to set up Alexa.
Security updates
Manages vulnerabilities
Amazon has a bug bounty program.
Privacy policy
"The new Music Maker app allows children to become composers by combining a number of different instruments and sound effects into their own composition, while being assisted by the app's AI."
Is this AI untrustworthy?
What kind of decisions does the AI make about you or for you?
Is the company transparent about how the AI works?
Does the user have control over the AI features?
Dive Deeper
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FTC and DOJ Charge Amazon with Violating Children’s Privacy Law by Keeping Kids’ Alexa Voice Recordings Forever and Undermining Parents’ Deletion RequestsFederal Trade Commission
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Amazon to Pay $25 Million to Settle Children’s Privacy ChargesNY Ties
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Amazon faces $30 million fine over Ring, Alexa privacy violationsBleepingComputer
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Amazon to Pay $30M for Ring and Alexa Privacy Violations: Tips for Protecting Your Smart Home DataCNet
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FTC Takes Action Against Amazon for Enrolling Consumers in Amazon Prime Without Consent and Sabotaging Their Attempts to CancelFederal Trade Commission
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Mozilla Publishes Ring Doorbell Vulnerability Following Amazon’s ApathyMozilla Foundation
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Amazon settlements highlight concerns about digital privacy protectionsYahoo! News
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Hey, Alexa! What are you doing with my data?Federal Trade Commission
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FTC Sues Amazon for Illegally Maintaining Monopoly PowerFederal Trade Commission
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Amazon Echo’s privacy issues go way beyond voice recordingsThe Conversation
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Amazon Kids+ Terms & ConditionsAmazon
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Amazon HD Tablet Parental ControlsInternet Matters
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Amazon Fired Employee for Leaking Customer EmailsVice
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Amazon hit with major data breach days before Black FridayThe Guardian
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