Amazon.com Unit Reaches Settlement in Privacy Lawsuit
Alexa Internet, a subsidiary of Amazon.com , which tracks Internet users’ surfing patterns, settled on Friday a lawsuit that had challenged its privacy practices.
San Francisco-based Alexa said that as part of the settlement, it agreed to delete potentially identifying information from its database and pay up to $40 to class members of the suit whose personally identifiable information is found it its database, according to news reports.
Under the agreement, Alexa’s total payments to class members are capped at $1.9 million.
The company, which monitors Internet users as they navigate the Web and suggests related sites based on surfing patters, intercepted personal information and gave it to Amazon.com, according to one of the complaints filed on behalf of the software’s users. The software maker didn’t admit to any wrongdoing, the reports said.
“None of this information has ever been communicated with Amazon.com,” Alexa President Brewster Kahle said on Friday. “We never used it.'”
Kahle acknowledged in the report that the company does monitor surfing patterns, but does not link the data it collects with individual users. He said the company has also made no secret of its practices.
He also said the company had agreed to settle the lawsuit “because we thought it was the best way to get on with our business.”
The proposed settlement received preliminary approval from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. Amazon.com, which acquired Alexa in 1999, was also named in the complaints.
In addition to challenges from individual users, Alexa has also been the subject of an informal probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, stemming from the allegations that it provided some of the personal data it collected to its parent company, Amazon, and other parties.
