Echo Dot Kids: Does it violate your child’s privacy? [2023]

Introduction – Echo Dot Kids

The Echo Dot Kids Edition tracks the formula of the popular Amazon Fire Kids Edition tablets.

The standard Echo Dot comes with a protective rubber case, a 1-year and 2-year Free-Time Unlimited subscription.

Basically, Amazon’s promise to replace the device in case of damage, no doubt.

In terms of technology and functionality, the Kids Edition Dot is the same as the standard Echo Dot, which has been around for nearly two years.

Basically, it has seven long-range microphones for receiving voice commands, a built-in speaker to play Alexa’s voice responses or music.

However, it also can connect to a more prominent speaker via Bluetooth or audio cable.

What makes the Kids Edition unique?

• New FreeTime service, pre-activated, can also be enabled on existing Echo, Echo Dot, and Echo Plus devices, adding parental controls to Alexa.
• Therefore, it is a kid-friendly content, and an optimized kid-friendly experience.
• As with many Alexa services, it’s unclear if and when FreeTime will be available on third-party Alexa devices like the Sonos One.
• However, the company said it wouldn’t be available on Alexa devices with screens like the Echo Spot and Echo. It shows.

Does Amazon’s Echo Dot Kids Edition violate your child’s privacy?

• A Coalition of Children’s Rights Organizations urges US regulators to investigate whether Amazon.com Inc.’s Echo kids smart speaker is breaking Privacy law.
• The Ad-Free Childhood Campaign and the Center for Digital Democracy are planning to file a complaint.
• Complaint is that Amazon’s Echo Dot Kids Edition violates children’s privacy rights.
• According to the complaint, the company retains the voice recordings indefinitely.
• And, in some cases, retains their data even after users have tried to delete them.
• However, these actions violate the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, said Josh Golin, the CCFC executive director.
• Basically, Amazon has the money to pay the best corporate privacy lawyers money can buy.
• And also, it seems odd that it was done in a way that violates COPPA in many ways,” said Golin, who added.
• However, they seem to be designed to confuse parents rather than protect their children’s privacy.
• In a statement sent by email, an Amazon spokesman said, “FreeTime on Alexa and Echo Dot Kids Edition is compliant with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

The company directed customers to its Alexa website if they needed more information

• US Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who helped write the CUP, wrote a letter to the FTC and other senators.
• The new results raised “serious concerns about the extent to which the Echo Dot Kids Edition complies” with the law elements.
• CCFC was among groups criticizing Amazon a year ago when the Seattle-based company first released a kid-friendly version of its famous Echo line of smart speakers.
• The hockey puck-sized devices encased in colorful rubber grommets come with Amazon Alexa voice software.
• It also has features like parental controls and ad-free radios.
• And also, it included is a year of Amazon FreeTime, a subscription service that offers a carefully curated selection of kid-friendly apps.
• Last year, the CCFC argued that these devices violate children’s privacy and pose a risk of parental transfer to software controlled by the company.
• The Boston organization brought in lawyers from the Georgetown Law Institute of Public Representation to study Amazon’s privacy practices.
• Last year, the CCFC argued that these devices violate children’s privacy and pose a risk of parental transfer to software controlled by the company.
• The Boston organization brought in lawyers from the Georgetown Law Institute of Public Representation to study Amazon’s privacy practices.
• On the contrary, in the complaint the groups argue that Amazon does not correctly verify parental consent for data collection.
• Therefore, it does not accurately disclose what personal information it collects and how Amazon and third parties use that data.

15% of Alexa apps designed for kids contain a privacy policy link

• Proponents also argue that the privacy feature, which allows parents to delete children’s information elements.
• And also, it doesn’t seem to erase that knowledge from the software’s memory.
• The researchers attempted to erase the facts they had previously asked Alexa to remember.
• And also remember the entire history of the software’s voice recording.
• However, only to discover that Alexa could still speak the software’s phone number, address, and other personal information.
• The only way to delete all personal information collected about a particular child is to delete that child’s
  profile entirely in their tests.
• “We tried different ways, for several periods, to fix something, but it still comes back,” said Angela Campbell.
• She is the co-director of the Georgetown Institute of Law.

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There seems to be nothing but stopping the service to stop it

• Amazon says most kids-focused skills or Alexa apps don’t have a privacy policy because they don’t collect
  personally identifiable information.
• Basically, the company claims that the skills associated with FreeTime do not have access to user data and do not collect data.
• And also, the Amazon focus is the latest attempt by children’s advocacy groups to get the FTC to study significant-tech companies’ privacy behavior.
• However, Similar complaints to the regulator over the past year have been directed against Facebook Inc.
• And also, the FTC, the leading federal agency tasked with enforcing privacy laws.
• It declined to comment on the complaint it did not receive.
• Musical.ly, the popular teen video app now known as TikTok, agreed to pay $ 5.7 million earlier this year.
• Payment is to settle claims of illegal collection of children’s personal information.