Alexa, Why Are You Like This
Your kid talked to Alexa.
Maybe they asked for a song. Maybe they asked a silly question. Maybe they were just playing, seeing what the glowing cylinder would say back.
You thought it was harmless. Cute, even.
Amazon kept the recordings. They used them to train algorithms. When you found out and requested deletion, Amazon deleted the audio files but kept the transcripts. In different databases. Which they didn't bother to clean up.
Your child's voice, their words, their questions—stored on Amazon servers indefinitely, even after you explicitly said delete.
That's not a bug. That's the business model.
The Amazon Settlement
In May 2023, Amazon agreed to pay $25 million to settle FTC and DOJ charges over how they handled children's data through Alexa.
The findings were damning:
Amazon retained children's voice recordings indefinitely unless a parent specifically requested deletion. Not for a reasonable period. Not for a defined retention window. Forever.
Even when parents requested deletion, Amazon didn't actually delete everything. They removed audio files from some databases but left transcripts in others. The voice was gone; the words remained.
Amazon used children's voice data to train their algorithms. Those recordings of your kid asking about dinosaurs? They helped improve Alexa's voice recognition. Your child was an unpaid data laborer.
Amazon discovered these problems in early 2018 and didn't fix them until September 2019. They knew they were violating children's privacy and continued doing it for nearly two years.
The FTC called voice recordings "biometric data deserving of scrupulous care." Amazon gave them the opposite.
COPPA Exists. Amazon Ignored It.
COPPA—the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act—has been law since 1998. It specifically protects children under 13. It requires:
- Parental consent before collecting children's data
- Clear notice about what data is collected and how it's used
- Reasonable data retention limits
- Parents' right to delete their children's data
Amazon violated all of it.
They collected children's voices without adequate parental consent. They didn't properly disclose how long data would be kept (forever, as it turns out). They ignored deletion requests. They used children's data for purposes beyond what parents agreed to.
COPPA has been on the books for over 25 years. Amazon built a product that systematically violated it and put it in millions of homes.
$25 million fine. Amazon's annual revenue: $575 billion.
That's 0.004%. A rounding error. The cost of doing business.
Ring: When the Camera Watches Back
The same settlement included Amazon's Ring subsidiary. That one's even worse.
Ring makes doorbell cameras and home security systems. Millions of people put them in their homes to feel safer.
What Ring employees could see:
The FTC found that Ring gave employees and contractors unrestricted access to customer video feeds. Not metadata. Not thumbnails. Full video access to people's homes.
One employee viewed thousands of videos of female customers in "intimate areas of their homes." It took Ring months to notice.
What hackers could do:
Ring's security was so poor that hackers broke into customers' live video feeds. Once inside, they:
- Sexually propositioned residents through the two-way audio
- Called children racial slurs while they were in their bedrooms
- Threatened families for ransom by showing they could see inside the home
Ring didn't implement basic security measures like multi-factor authentication until 2019—after years of these incidents. The cameras people bought to feel safe were being used to terrorize them.
The fine: $5.8 million. For a company worth billions. For incidents involving children being racially abused through devices their parents bought.
TikTok: Seven Seconds to Decide If You're a Child
In August 2024, the DOJ and FTC filed suit against TikTok for widespread COPPA violations.
The allegations reveal how little these companies actually try to protect kids:
Human reviewers spent an average of 5-7 seconds determining whether a flagged account belonged to a child. Five to seven seconds to review an account that might belong to a 10-year-old.
TikTok kept accounts of children under 13 unless the child made an "explicit admission of age." If a clearly underage user didn't say "I am 10 years old," TikTok kept the account active.
Kids Mode collected "far more data" than necessary. Even the ostensibly child-safe version of TikTok was building profiles and sharing them with third parties.
Children were allowed to create regular accounts and interact with adults, access adult content, and receive direct messages from strangers.
TikTok failed to honor parent deletion requests. When parents tried to protect their kids by requesting data deletion, TikTok didn't comply.
The potential penalty: $51,744 per violation per day from January 2024 to present.
This isn't TikTok's first COPPA violation. In 2019, when it was still called Musical.ly, the company paid $5.7 million—at the time, the largest children's privacy penalty ever.
They didn't learn. They didn't care. They kept doing it.
Disney: Your Kid Watched YouTube. Disney Watched Your Kid.
In September 2025, Disney agreed to pay $10 million to settle charges that they collected data from children viewing YouTube videos without parental consent.
Disney's apps—including Disney+, ESPN, and others—used YouTube's advertising tools in ways that captured children's viewing data. Information about what kids watched, when they watched, how long they watched—collected and used for advertising purposes.
The parents didn't consent. The kids certainly didn't consent. Disney did it anyway.
$10 million. Disney's annual revenue: $88 billion.
Genshin Impact: When Games Target Kids
In January 2025, Cognosphere—maker of the massively popular Genshin Impact—agreed to pay $20 million for COPPA violations.
Genshin Impact is nominally a game for teens and adults. In practice, it's packed with child-appealing content and has a massive underage player base.
The FTC found that Cognosphere:
- Collected data from players they knew were under 13
- Failed to obtain parental consent
- Allowed children to make in-game purchases
The settlement requires Cognosphere to block children under 16 from making in-game purchases without parental consent.
Note: that's under 16, not under 13. The FTC is starting to recognize that COPPA's age threshold is too low for modern threats.
The Voice Assistant Problem
Let's talk about what voice assistants actually are.
They're always listening. That's how they work. The device has to hear the wake word ("Alexa," "Hey Siri," "OK Google"), which means it has to process audio continuously.
In theory, only audio after the wake word is recorded and transmitted. In practice:
False triggers happen constantly. Words that sound like wake words trigger recording. Your private conversations get captured and sent to servers.
Human reviewers listen to recordings. All the major voice assistant companies have been caught having employees listen to user recordings for "quality improvement." Your voice. Your home. Your kids. Reviewed by contractors you'll never meet.
Children can't meaningfully consent. A 5-year-old asking Alexa for their favorite song doesn't understand they're providing voice data to a corporation. There's no informed consent. There's just a child talking to a toy.
The entire product category is built on surveillance. The companies have tried to add privacy protections after the fact, but the fundamental architecture is "always listening, always recording."
What Your Kids' Data Is Worth
Why do these companies want children's data so badly?
Lifetime customer value. Brands that capture children early tend to keep them. The data helps companies understand how to market to your kids for the next 80 years.
Behavioral patterns. Children's media consumption, interests, and preferences predict adult behavior. That data is valuable to advertisers planning for future markets.
Algorithm training. Children's voice data is particularly valuable for training speech recognition—kids speak differently than adults, and there's less training data available.
Direct monetization. In-app purchases, targeted advertising, premium content—children are lucrative customers if you can reach them.
COPPA was supposed to make this harder. Instead, companies found it was cheaper to violate the law and pay fines than to actually protect children.
What Parents Can Do
For voice assistants:
Delete voice history regularly. All major assistants have options to auto-delete recordings after 3 months or less. Enable this.
Opt out of human review. Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri all have settings to prevent your recordings from being used for "improvement." Find them. Use them.
Mute when not in use. Most devices have a physical mute button. Use it when you're not actively giving commands.
Don't put them in kids' rooms. If you have voice assistants, keep them in common areas. Not bedrooms. Not playrooms.
Consider removing them entirely. The convenience isn't worth the surveillance if you have children.
For social media and apps:
Assume every app is lying about age verification. They are. TikTok's "5-7 seconds" review is the norm, not the exception.
Use parental controls at the device level. Don't rely on app-level age gates. Use iOS Screen Time or Android Family Link to actually restrict what kids can access.
Check what data has been collected. Submit data requests under COPPA for any platforms your children use. You might be horrified.
Report violations. The FTC accepts COPPA complaints. File them. Volume matters for enforcement priority.
For games:
Disable in-app purchases. Require a password for every purchase. No exceptions.
Review privacy settings in every game. They're usually buried. Find them anyway.
Check for data collection even in "kid" games. Many games marketed to children have extensive tracking. Read privacy policies.
The Bottom Line
Your children are the most valuable demographic in advertising. Their data is worth more than yours because companies have longer to exploit it.
Amazon kept your kid's voice forever and only stopped when regulators forced them. TikTok spent 5-7 seconds deciding if users were children before serving them to advertisers. Disney tracked kids across YouTube without telling anyone.
COPPA has been law for 25 years. These companies violated it systematically, knowingly, and profitably. The fines are cost of doing business. The behavior continues.
Voice assistants are always listening. Social media platforms are barely trying to keep children off. Games are designed to extract money and data from the youngest players.
Your kids are not customers to these companies. They're products. Their attention, their voices, their data, their emerging preferences—all packaged and sold.
The law says companies need parental consent to collect children's data. In practice, they collect first and settle with regulators later.
You can't rely on companies to protect your children. You can't fully rely on the law. You have to be the line of defense.
Check the settings. Delete the data. Remove the devices. Have the conversations.
Your kids deserve better than being training data for an algorithm.
Sources: FTC/DOJ settlement with Amazon over Alexa (May 2023); FTC settlement with Ring (May 2023); DOJ/FTC complaint against TikTok (August 2024); FTC settlement with Cognosphere/Genshin Impact (January 2025); FTC settlement with Disney (September 2025); reporting on voice assistant human review practices.