Amazon’s Privacy Rules Deceived Users, FTC Says

Amazon.com Inc. and its Alexa Internet unit probably deceived consumers when its Internet software secretly passed on personal information to the company, the Federal Trade Commission said.

But the FTC said it will not take any action against the online bookseller because one of the software programs in question--the comparison shopping service ZBubbles--no longer is operational and Alexa has changed its stated privacy policy.

Alexa and ZBubbles’ privacy statements had said the tracking information was anonymous and could not be correlated with an individual person. Now Alexa’s policy states that personal information sometimes is collected, but that the company doesn’t try to identify the user.