"In its complaint, the FTC said Amazon used "manipulative, coercive or deceptive user-interface designs known as 'dark patterns' to trick consumers into enrolling in automatically renewing Prime subscriptions".
It said the option to purchase items on Amazon without subscribing to Prime was more difficult in many cases. It also said that consumers were sometimes presented with a button to complete their transactions - which did not clearly state it would also enroll them into Prime."
"Rite Aid facial recognition misidentified Black, Latino and Asian people as 'likely' shoplifters
Surveillance systems incorrectly and without customer consent marked shoppers as 'persons of interest', an FTC settlement says
Johana Bhuiyan and agencies
Wed 20 Dec 2023 14.29 EST
Last modified on Thu 21 Dec 2023 12.04 EST
Rite Aid used facial recognition systems to identify shoppers that were previously deemed "likely to engage" in shoplifting without customer consent and misidentified people - particularly women and Black, Latino or Asian people - on "numerous" occasions, according to a new settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. As part of the settlement, Rite Aid has been forbidden from deploying facial recognition technology in its stores for five years."
Clear rules are needed to govern what social networks can do with the massive amount of personal data they collect and how they inform their users about their practices, said Sen. Charles Schumer, who has asked the FTC to articulate a set of guidelines. Facebook claims it offers users "powerful" privacy tools, but Paul Stephens of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse suggested consumers need a PhD to understand them.
"Amazon is to pay $25m (£20m) to settle allegations that it violated children's privacy rights with its Alexa voice assistant.
The company agreed to pay the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) after it was accused of failing to delete Alexa recordings at the request of parents.
It was found to have kept hold of sensitive data for years.
Amazon's doorbell camera unit Ring will also pay out after giving employees unrestricted access to customers' data."