critical
Amazon tells you they'll delete your voice recordings when you ask. The US government found they kept children's recordings forever, even when parents specifically asked them to delete them. They also kept written copies of what you said after claiming to delete the audio.
critical
Amazon says your Echo only listens when you say the wake word. Researchers found it regularly records and sends audio to Amazon's servers when triggered by TV shows and normal conversation — without anyone saying "Alexa". Amazon also removed the option to keep your voice recordings off their servers.
critical
Amazon says only authorized people handle your data for specific business reasons. The US government found 30,000 Amazon employees could listen to your Alexa recordings without any legitimate need. At Ring (also Amazon), an employee spied on women through their bedroom cameras.
critical
Amazon was caught keeping your children's voice recordings forever, even when you asked them to delete them. They paid $25 million in fines. But their current privacy policy still says they keep your child's recordings to 'improve services' — which is exactly what got them in trouble before.
critical
Amazon says Alexa only listens when you say the wake word. But the Alexa app you must install on your phone asks to read your text messages, see your contacts, make phone calls, track your location in the background, and access your camera. That's way more access than needed to control a kids' speaker.
high
Amazon promises Alexa only activates when it hears the wake word. But security researchers found you can control Alexa with sounds too high-pitched for humans to hear — hidden in YouTube videos or video calls. So someone could secretly command the speaker in your child's room through content your child is watching.
critical
Amazon hired thousands of people in Romania, Costa Rica, India, and Boston to listen to what you said to Alexa. Bloomberg reported in April 2019 that reviewers heard couples having sex, domestic violence, children talking alone, people singing in the shower. The internal tools showed account numbers and first names right next to the recordings. One worker heard what sounded like a sexual assault. Amazon told them it wasn't their job to interfere. Amazon never mentioned human review in Alexa's terms of service -- not until Bloomberg forced them to. You thought you were talking to a machine. You were talking to a room full of strangers with your account number on their screen.
critical
Parents told Alexa to delete their kids' recordings. Amazon said OK -- then kept the transcripts and the AI models trained on children's voices. The delete button was a lie. In May 2023, the FTC fined Amazon $25 million for violating children's privacy law. The FTC's words: "Amazon's hollow promises are not good enough." Amazon also kept children's geolocation data indefinitely -- where your kid was, when, for how long. The same week, Amazon paid another $5.8 million for Ring privacy violations. $30.8 million in fines in one week. The FTC ordered Amazon to delete the children's data AND destroy the AI algorithms trained on it. Your child's voice was training Amazon's AI. The delete button just hid it from you.
critical
One morning in June 2021, your Echo started sharing your internet with your neighbors. Amazon pushed a firmware update that turned every Echo, Ring, and Tile device into a node in Amazon Sidewalk -- a mesh network that donates up to 500 MB of your bandwidth per month. No one asked you. No consent screen. No notification. Your router now serves as a relay for strangers' Amazon devices, and theirs route through your network. Want to opt out? Navigate to Settings, then Account Settings, then Amazon Sidewalk -- four menus deep. You have to know it exists, find it, and disable it on every device. Amazon gave away your internet connection without asking. They call it a "shared network that helps devices work better." Your devices. Your bandwidth. Amazon's network.
critical
Amazon knows exactly what you read, when you read it, how fast you read each page, what you highlight, and what you search for. Your Kindle is not a private reading device — it is a reading surveillance device that reports your entire reading life back to Amazon.
critical
Amazon says you can turn off reading data sync, but the fine print admits data collection continues anyway. The Kindle itself is designed to report your reading habits to Amazon — "disabling" sync only stops the data from going to your other devices, not from going to Amazon.
critical
Amazon does not need to sell your reading data to anyone else because they are the world's largest retailer. They combine what you read with what you buy, what you ask Alexa, and what your Ring camera sees. Your reading habits — which reveal your deepest interests and concerns — feed Amazon's advertising machine.
critical
Amazon says the Echo Show is designed to protect your privacy, but the companion app demands access to your text messages, phone calls, contacts, and background location — capabilities that go far beyond controlling a smart display.
critical
Amazon promises you can delete your voice recordings and control your data, but the FTC caught them keeping children's recordings forever — even after parents asked them to delete them. Amazon was fined $25 million. They also removed the option to keep voice recordings off their servers entirely.
high
Amazon says face recognition data stays on your device, but the Echo Show constantly communicates with Amazon's servers and keeps logs of when it detects people. The camera must stay on all the time for these features to work, meaning it's continuously watching your home.
critical
Amazon promised you could delete your children's voice recordings, but the government found they kept those recordings forever — even after parents asked them to delete. Fire TV uses the same Alexa system. Amazon was fined $25 million for this, and 30,000 employees could listen to recordings without any reason.
high
Amazon says they don't sell your data, but the Fire TV remote app tracks your precise GPS location and the device constantly talks to Amazon's advertising servers. A TV remote doesn't need to know where you are — the location data is used for targeted advertising.
high
Amazon markets the Fire TV Stick as a streaming device, but under the hood it's packed with advertising and tracking infrastructure. It phones home to Amazon's ad servers, metrics collectors, and analytics endpoints constantly. It also listens to what you're watching to build a profile for advertisers.
critical
Amazon promised that the intimate photos you took in your underwear for body fat scanning would be deleted from their servers automatically. But the FTC caught Amazon keeping kids' voice recordings forever despite similar deletion promises with Alexa. There's no proof the body scan photos were actually deleted as claimed.
critical
Amazon said your voice recordings for mood analysis never leave your phone. But the app has permission to record audio AND send data to the internet in the background, plus it contains advertising trackers. There's nothing technically stopping the app from sending your voice data to Amazon's servers despite their promise.
high
Amazon said they'd never use your health data for advertising. But the Halo app itself contains Amazon's own advertising tracker and requests access to your advertising ID — the identifier used to target you with ads across different apps. If health data truly wasn't used for marketing, why include ad trackers in a health app?
Twitch
Streaming · 7 contradictions
Serious concerns
critical
In October 2021, a hacker dumped 125 gigabytes of Twitch's internal data on 4chan with the hashtag "#DoBetterTwitch." It wasn't a sophisticated attack — it was a server misconfiguration. The leak included Twitch's entire source code, internal security tools, and an unreleased Steam competitor codenamed "Vapor." Evidence from a 2014 breach — right after Amazon bought Twitch — was still visible, suggesting Twitch never fully cleaned up from the first hack. The attacker called it "part one." Amazon's response: "we're confident no credentials were exposed." The source code was.
critical
The 2021 Twitch leak exposed exactly how much every single creator earned. CriticalRole: $9.6 million. xQc: $8.4 million. Summit1g: $5.8 million. But it wasn't just the millionaires — small creators making $200 a month had their income published alongside the top earners. The exposure triggered harassment campaigns, doxxing attempts, and stalking fears. Twitch's privacy policy promised creator financial data was confidential. A single server misconfiguration turned every streamer's bank statement into a 4chan post. Amazon, a $1.7 trillion company, couldn't configure a server correctly.
high
Amazon bought Twitch for $970 million in 2014. Now your Twitch viewing habits merge with your Amazon purchase history, Alexa recordings, Ring doorbell footage, and Whole Foods shopping. Amazon sells Twitch ad inventory programmatically — advertisers target you on Twitch based on what you bought on Amazon last Tuesday. Watch a cooking stream? Amazon knows you just bought a frying pan. You signed up to watch people play video games. You got enrolled in Amazon's cross-platform surveillance advertising network.
high
Watch a cooking show on Prime Video — Amazon recommends kitchen gadgets. Watch a documentary about anxiety — Amazon suggests supplements. Watch a pregnancy movie — baby products appear in your feed. Amazon is the only streaming service that can sell you what you just watched. Your viewing habits are a shopping signal, and Amazon connects every screen to your cart.
high
You paid $139/year for Prime. That included ad-free streaming. Then Amazon added ads and charged you $2.99/month extra to remove them. 200 million people were downgraded overnight. The ad-free experience you paid for became a premium add-on. Amazon didn't add a cheaper tier — they made the existing tier worse and charged you to restore it.
high
Amazon's ad business made $46.9 billion in 2023. Prime Video is now part of that machine. Unlike Google and Facebook, who guess what you want to buy, Amazon knows what you actually bought. Advertisers target you based on your real purchase history while you watch TV. The ads know what's in your cart. The most powerful ad targeting in history, playing between episodes.
critical
The FTC fined Amazon $25 million for keeping children's voice recordings after parents asked them deleted. Fire Kids tablets ship with Alexa built in — the same Alexa the FTC found violated COPPA. Amazon sells a tablet specifically for children, preloaded with software that was fined for illegally retaining children's data. That is the product design.
high
Amazon sells a tablet for $60 and puts ads on the lockscreen. Pay $20 to remove them. Pre-installed Amazon apps cannot be deleted. No Google Play Store — only Amazon's app store. The tablet is cheap because you are the product. Every tap, every search, every video feeds Amazon's profile of you. The discount is the data collection fee.
high
Your Fire Tablet tells Amazon what you read, what you watch, what you search, what you browse, what apps you open, and how long you use them. This feeds into the same profile as your shopping cart, your Alexa commands, and your Ring camera. One $60 device contributes to the most detailed consumer profile any company has ever assembled.
high
Amazon tracked one user's Kindle activity across 90,000 recorded interactions — every tap, every page turn — and uses it to target ads. Turning off Reading Insights hides the dashboard but does not stop the data collection.
medium
Kindle privacy settings are split across multiple menus, and even after opting out, Amazon keeps all the reading data already collected — your 90,000 interactions stay on Amazon's servers indefinitely.