Amazon Secretly Spies on Consumers’ Fire TV Viewing Habits, Class Action Lawsuit Alleges

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A proposed class action lawsuit alleges Amazon secretly tracks and analyzes virtually all content displayed on televisions running the e-commerce giant’s Fire TV operating system and monetizes the data through targeted advertising, all without consumers’ informed consent.

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The 43-page complaint contends that Amazon has violated state and federal law by surreptitiously installing automatic content recognition (ACR) software onto Amazon-branded Fire TVs and third-party televisions that utilize the Fire TV operating system.

According to the lawsuit, the Fire TV software tracks not only what apps a consumer uses and how long they use them, but also every piece of content displayed on the screen and the audio output through a TV’s speakers. The Fire TV ACR software also shares with Amazon information about content from a connected gaming system, DVD/Blu-ray player, computer, or third-party streaming device, the case adds.

“Through the use of this ACR technology,” the class action lawsuit says, “Amazon knows every video you watch, which parts of those videos you watch, which parts you rewind, and every word you hear.”

Worse, the suit alleges that the software also collects private information inadvertently displayed on screen, such as emails, addresses, or financial information, and combines it with other data to compile detailed user profiles, allowing Amazon to target consumers with advertising “based on highly sensitive attributes such as religion, political affiliation, and ethnicity.”

With access to personal viewer data, Amazon’s ACR technology creates a “digital fingerprint” via deep-learning software that identifies brands, faces, objects and other audiovisual elements on screen, the filing says. Once this digital fingerprint is compiled, it is matched with a database of movies, TV shows, advertisements and other related content.

The lawsuit claims that Amazon uses this data to support its multibillion-dollar advertising business and increase profits by enabling advertisers to target consumers based on their viewing habits and online shopping behavior.

“Amazon’s unique competitive advantage in the advertising market is its ability to combine television viewing data collected through Fire TV with first-party e-commerce shopping data from Amazon.com,” the complaint expands. “This allows Amazon to offer advertisers behavioral targeting, in-market audience targeting, and life event targeting that no other advertising platform can match—all powered by the viewing data secretly collected from Fire TV users.”

The suit further claims that Amazon’s alleged data-collection practices contradict the company’s assurances that it “never sells or rents customers’ personal data.”

The lawsuit argues that Amazon’s conduct violates several state consumer protection statutes and the federal Video Privacy Protection Act, a 1988 law designed to restrict the disclosure of personally identifiable viewing information without informed viewer consent.

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According to the complaint, many data-sharing settings are enabled by default during the Fire TV setup process, and users must navigate multiple settings menus to opt out. The lawsuit characterizes this process as a “quintessential” dark pattern designed to discourage users from disabling tracking features and to manipulate consumer consent.

The Amazon Fire TV class action lawsuit looks to represent all individuals in the United States who owned or used an Amazon-branded Fire TV or third-party Fire TV, and whose sensitive information was collected through the ACR tool without their actual or informed consent.

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