That voice-activated device in your home is always listening, and for families with young children, it’s raising questions about how easy it is for those devices to make purchases. Virginia legislators were looking to rein in those devices Monday morning.
Matt Mullin's three-year-old daughter Grace loves Paw Patrol and Baby Shark.
But when Grace asked her family’s voice-activated Amazon Alexa to play her favorite song, her father said it did something else.
“Alexa instead asked her to sign up for an Amazon Music subscription," Mullin, brother of former Delegate Mike Mullin, told members of the House subcommittee on Communication. "And she said ‘yes! Play ‘Baby shark’”
While the song may have been added to Grace's playlist, the cost of a new services was added to Mullin's credit card.
“I discovered this almost six months later when I received an email informing me my Amazon costs were going up,” he said.
That’s what inspired Fairfax Delegate Holly Seibold to pitch a bill that would make opting in, not opting out, for voice-activated purchases the standard on such devices.
“How many other Virginians have also had this consumer fraud happen to them as well?" Seibold asked. "And how much money has Amazon made on these unwanted purchases?”
But Erica McCann with Amazon said the devices already have the ability to turn off such purchases.
“During device setup, our customers are notified about voice purchasing and how to enable controls,” she told the committee.
Seibold said it can take more than a dozen clicks to turn those purchases off. That wasn’t enough for her fellow lawmakers, however, as her bill is already dead for the session.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
