Amazon is facing a class action lawsuit over Ring’s facial recognition feature

A lawsuit was filed against Amazon on Monday over alleged privacy violations from its Ring doorbell cameras. The class action lawsuit, filed in Seattle by Virginia resident Charles Sigwalt, alleges that Ring’s familiar faces feature stores photos of bystanders without consent.

Ring announced the Familiar Faces feature last September and faced opposition from consumer advocacy organizations like the EFF, as well as Senator Ed Markey (D-MA). But the company went ahead with its plans to launch the feature in December.

The Familiar Faces feature allows Ring users to identify people who regularly come to their homes through AI facial recognition. This way, if a regular guest, such as a family member, postman or neighbor, comes to the door, the device will be able to recognize them and provide more specific notifications like “Dad is at the door,” instead of “There’s someone at the door.” Ring users must opt ​​in to the feature, but privacy advocates have noted that people walking past Ring doorbells have not consented to facial recognition scans. This same concern is at the heart of this class action lawsuit.

“Millions of other Americans passed through Ring security cameras and had their facial recognition information collected without their knowledge,” according to the lawsuit.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. At the time of the feature’s release, the company stated that facial data is encrypted and never shared; Unknown faces are automatically removed after 30 days.

Amazon’s Ring has a history of troubling behavior regarding user privacy. In 2023, Amazon settled with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and paid a $5.8 million fine over allegations that company employees and contractors improperly accessed private videos from women customers; Every employee has full access to every customer video, even if the worker doesn’t need to access that footage, the FTC complaint said. Ring has also maintained its relationships with law enforcement and once gave police the ability to request Ring footage from users without a warrant.

After a Super Bowl ad aired introducing Search Party, an AI-powered feature that uses Ring footage to find missing pets, the company faced similar backlash. Days later, Ring canceled its plans to partner with video surveillance company Flock Safety, which had reportedly provided footage to ICE and other federal agencies. When Ring founder Jimmy Siminoff spoke with TechCrunch after Ring canceled its arrangement with Flock Safety, he noted that the deal would have created too much “workload.”