Own an Amazon Cloud Cam? Amazon workers might be watching your home footage

Who didn’t see this coming? In a report published today on Bloomberg, Amazon workers may be watching your Cloud Cam footage. I mean, hey, if Google, Apple, and Facebook are tuning in to your data and voice queries, why shouldn’t Amazon watch your cam footage?

To be fair, Amazon isn’t doing it with ill intentions. Well, that’s the idea, at least. According to the report, Amazon has a team of employees in India and Romania that review clips that are submitted by users looking to troubleshoot issues with the Cloud Cam.

The report says that Amazon uses these videos to improve the performance of its Cloud Cam, to help with things like detecting a home intruder or regular home activity. It’s noted that Amazon’s review team checks up to 150 video clips per day.

Now, here’s where things get a little dicey

A couple of people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg, in some cases, video clips of private interactions like sexual activity are being reviewed by Amazon’s team too. Those sorts of clips are flagged and deleted.

Amazon later told Business Insider in a statement:

“We take privacy seriously and put Cloud Cam customers in control of their video clips. Only customers can view their clips, and they can delete them at any time by visiting the Manage My Content and Devices page.”

The weird part here is that Amazon’s terms of service for the Cloud Cam doesn’t mention that workers could watch footage recorded by the device, but to be fair, it does state that users grant Amazon permission to “review your Cloud Cam recordings to provide technical support.” So yea, there’s that.

So, if you don’t want your Cloud Cam footage being watched from some Amazon employee in India or Romania, don’t submit any troubleshooting footage, and if you do, just know you can delete them in the Manage My Content and Device Page on Amazon.

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Kevin Raposo

Kevin is KnowTechie's founder and executive editor. With over 15 years of blogging experience in the tech industry, Kevin has transformed what was once a passion project into a full-blown tech news publication. Shoot him an email at kevin@knowtechie.com or find him on Mastodon or Post.