Amazon was sued on Monday over alleged privacy violations from its Ring doorbell cameras.

The class action lawsuit, filed in Seattle by Virginia resident Charles Sigwalt, claims that Ring’s Familiar Faces feature stores images of passersby without consent.

Ring announced the Familiar Faces feature last September and faced pushback from consumer protection organizations like the EFF, as well as Senator Ed Markey (D-MA).

But the company moved forward with its plans to launch the feature in December.

While Ring users must opt into the 'Familiar Faces' feature, privacy advocates and the lawsuit itself highlight that individuals merely walking past these devices have not provided their consent for facial recognition scans.

The lawsuit asserts that “Millions of other Americans passed by a Ring security camera and unknowingly had their facial recognition information collected.”

Amazon did not immediately comment on the lawsuit, but at the time of the feature's release, the company stated that all face data is encrypted, never shared, and unidentified faces are automatically deleted after 30 days.

This is not the first instance of privacy concerns surrounding Amazon’s Ring, and the company has a documented history of behaviors raising questions about user privacy.

In 2023, Amazon has settled with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), paying a $5.8 million fine over allegations that their staff and contractors had improperly accessed private videos from women customers.

The FTC's complaint revealed that all employees had unrestricted access to customer videos, irrespective of their need for it.

Ring also previously maintained controversial relationships with law enforcement, at one point granting police the ability to request Ring footage from users without a warrant.

Further incidents include a public backlash after a Super Bowl ad introduced 'Search Party,' an AI-powered feature for finding lost pets using Ring footage.

Days later, Ring canceled a planned partnership with video surveillance company Flock Safety, which had reportedly shared footage with ICE and other federal agencies.

Ring founder Jamie Siminoff later indicated to TechCrunch that the canceled deal would have created too much of a “workload,” rather than citing privacy concerns as the primary reason.