Amazon will have to defend itself for having collected and resold extremely sensitive personal data. A complaint filed in California — which has privacy laws similar to those of the EU — accuses the company of having hidden access to smartphone data via Amazon Ads SDK, a tool that developers integrate into their applications to display targeted ads.
Privacy at risk?
This code allegedly allowed Amazon to collect detailed geolocation data, but also sensitive information such as religious affiliation, sexual orientation or even health problems of users. The plaintiff, Felix Kolotinsky, is pointing the finger at the Speedtest app, which measures his cellular and Wi-Fi speeds. He is seeking damages of up to $5 billion for millions of Californians.
“In effect, Amazon tracked consumers and cross-referenced a massive amount of personal data about them, without their knowledge or consent,” the complaint states. Speedtest is of course far from the only app affected, as Amazon’s SDK is widely used by developers.
Amazon has not responded to the lawsuit, which will now wind its way through the California legal system. The lawsuit has the merit of recalling the existence of these bits of code that can actually collect a large amount of personal data, without anyone really knowing what they do with it.
Source: Reuters
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