Amazon Sued for Secretly Recording Alexa Users Hundreds of Millions of Times

A federal judge just allowed wiretapping claims to move forward in a class action lawsuit accusing Amazon of secretly recording Alexa users' private conversations.

The lawsuit, filed in 2021, alleges that Alexa-enabled devices — including the Echo, Echo Dot, and Echo Show — are prone to "false wakes," where the device mistakenly activates and begins recording even though nobody said the wake word. According to evidence cited in the case, false wakes have allegedly occurred hundreds of millions of times since Alexa devices were introduced, affecting roughly 1% of all recordings.

The plaintiffs allege Amazon kept recordings from these accidental activations, allowed human employees to review them, and in some cases retained transcripts even after users requested deletion.

U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik dismissed claims under Washington's Consumer Protection Act, ruling that Amazon had adequately disclosed how false wakes work and that the company retained Alexa data. However, Judge Lasnik allowed federal wiretap claims to proceed for users who did not personally register the Alexa device in their home — meaning someone else in the household set it up and agreed to Amazon's terms on their behalf. State wiretap claims under Florida and Maryland law also survived.

The judge found that whether Amazon's interception of false wake recordings qualifies as "intentional" under federal wiretap law is a question for a jury to decide.

In a separate case in Illinois, a federal judge certified a class of roughly 1.2 million Alexa users alleging Amazon violated the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act by creating voiceprints without consent.

There is no settlement in either case yet, so there is no claim to file right now.

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