Amazon Faces Class Action Over Ring Facial Recognition Feature

Amazon is facing a class action lawsuit in federal court over claims that its Ring doorbell cameras used facial recognition technology to scan, identify, and store people’s faces without their consent.

The complaint was filed on June 1 by Virginia resident Charles Sigwalt in federal court in Seattle, where Amazon has one of its headquarters. Sigwalt claims Ring’s “Familiar Faces” feature creates a digital faceprint of visitors who appear in front of enabled cameras, allowing the system to recognize them later without their knowledge or consent.

According to the lawsuit, Sigwalt’s facial data was collected while he visited friends and family members who had Ring cameras using the feature. He claims he never bought a Ring device, never agreed to Ring’s terms of service, and never gave Amazon permission to collect or store his biometric information.

Amazon acquired Ring in 2018 for about $1 billion. Familiar Faces is an optional Ring feature that provides personalized doorbell alerts. Instead of receiving a generic alert that a person is at the front door, a Ring customer can label frequent visitors and receive a notification identifying a specific person. Ring says users can turn the feature on or off and manage the faces stored in their personal directory.

Consent is the central problem raised by the complaint because the person using the Ring camera is not always the person being identified. A homeowner may choose to activate Familiar Faces, but Sigwalt argues that visitors, delivery workers, and passersby did not agree to have their faces converted into biometric data. According to the complaint, Amazon needed permission from the person whose biometric information was allegedly collected, not only from the customer using the device.

The case falls within a growing area of biometric privacy litigation, where the legal focus is not only on whether someone was recorded, but whether identifying data was created without permission. A standard security camera may record a visitor’s image at the door. Facial recognition software can go further by creating a faceprint that allows the system to identify that person again. Sigwalt claims Ring created that kind of data without giving visitors notice or a choice, raising concerns because a faceprint cannot be changed like a password if exposed.

Privacy advocates and lawmakers have raised concerns about the feature since Ring announced it. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has warned that facial recognition connected to residential cameras could expand surveillance concerns and expose biometric data if the information is accessed by hackers or shared outside the user’s control. Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts has also criticized the technology, arguing that it could collect biometric information from people who never agreed to facial scanning.

Ring has also faced criticism over law enforcement access, neighborhood surveillance concerns, and partnerships involving camera networks. The lawsuit follows earlier federal scrutiny of Ring’s privacy and security practices.

In 2023, the Federal Trade Commission accused Ring of allowing employees and contractors broad access to customers’ private videos and failing to protect users from hackers who accessed cameras and accounts. Ring later agreed to a $5.8 million settlement with privacy and security requirements, while Amazon denied wrongdoing.

Sigwalt is asking the court to allow the lawsuit to proceed as a class action, which would let him pursue claims on behalf of others who allegedly had their facial data collected by Ring’s facial recognition system.