On 31 May 2023 the US Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department charged Amazon with breaking the US children's privacy law over its Alexa voice assistant.
According to the complaint, Amazon kept children's voice recordings indefinitely and undermined parents' requests to delete them. When a parent deleted the audio, Amazon "failed to delete transcripts of what kids said from all its databases". It used the data to improve its algorithm.
The FTC's Samuel Levine said Amazon's history of "keeping children's recordings indefinitely, and flouting parents' deletion requests violated COPPA and sacrificed privacy for profits." Amazon agreed to a $25 million civil penalty.
What it shows
Pressing delete in an app deletes what the app shows you. Copies elsewhere, like transcripts, logs and training data, can stay behind. A deletion is the company's claim until something proves it.
For your own record
Send the deletion request in writing, name the copies you want gone (recordings, transcripts, anything derived from them), and keep the date and the reply. That dated request is what a regulator measures a company against.