Amazon sued over Ring Familiar Faces facial recognition feature

In short: Amazon is facing a class action lawsuit that claims Ring’s Familiar Faces feature stored images of people who walked past a doorbell camera without their permission.

What happened

A class action lawsuit was filed Monday in Seattle by Virginia resident Charles Sigwalt. It accuses Amazon’s Ring doorbell cameras of violating privacy through a feature called Familiar Faces.

Familiar Faces uses facial recognition, which is software that tries to match a face to a saved identity, like a phone that sorts photos by person. Ring says the feature can help users get more specific alerts, such as “Dad is at the door,” instead of a generic “a person is at the door.”

Ring announced Familiar Faces last September and launched it in December. Users must opt in, but critics have argued that people walking by a home did not agree to have their faces scanned. The lawsuit makes the same claim, saying “Millions of other Americans passed by a Ring security camera and unknowingly had their facial recognition information collected.”

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to the report. When the feature was released, Amazon said face data is encrypted (locked with a secret code), never shared, and that unidentified faces are removed after 30 days.

Why it matters

Doorbell cameras often capture sidewalks and streets, not just a homeowner’s front step. This case highlights a basic question many people care about: when you walk past someone’s home, should a device be allowed to save and label your face, even if you are not the customer?

Source: TechCrunch AI