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Schools profit from Amazon privacy settlement

Margaret Kane | January 8, 2003 10:10 PM PST

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Margaret Kane, Technology News
Several law schools and privacy rights groups will benefit from a settlement that Amazon.com subsidiary Alexa Internet reached in 2001. Alexa Internet settled several class-action lawsuits in April 2001, which alleged that it misused consumers' personal information without their consent.

Under the terms of the settlement, Alexa said it would destroy some of the personally identifiable records in its database and pay up to $40 per person to customers whose records were found in the database.According to a court order issued last month, at least one individual applied for the $40 disbursement. Alexa did not release any further information on how many individuals had been awarded money.

The rest of the money was spread among 17 schools and organizations, including the Internet Education Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the University of San Francisco, the University of Washington and Carnegie Mellon University. Grants ranged from $50,000 to $250,000.

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