Thirty thousand Amazon workers could access Alexa data: Report

Tens of thousands of Amazon.com Inc. employees once could listen to voice recordings of Alexa users, according to US regulators.

Some 30,000 Amazon workers had access to audio clips picked up by the company’s voice-activated speakers, the Federal Trade Commission said this week in a complaint about children’s privacy that the company settled for $25 million. The FTC’s tally of employees with access to Alexa recordings covers the period between August 2018 and September 2019, and it’s not clear how many personnel have such access today.

Bloomberg reported in 2019 that thousands of Amazon workers reviewed Alexa voice recordings to improve the software, but the FTC tally demonstrates that access to the recordings went well beyond those employees.