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Amazon Posts User Purchasing Data
Mark Denovich writes "Amazon worries those with privacy concerns with its new "feature" thatlets anyone view books, movies, and CDs ordered by amazon.com customers at corporations, nonprofit groups, and government agencies. " Its a neat idea, except that they don't let people opt out. This ought to get crazy.
I hate to say it, but from a consumer's point of view, this is an awfully cool feature. I spent some time playing around with it, and I can see a definite value here.
I'm sure they are in fact aggregating data by domain name - but that's nothing new, anyone looking seriously should know that they're aggregating data on an individual level. That's where all those nice handy "Recommendations" come from. The problem is, well, can I be frank? They're pretty darn useful. That's why they're there. That's why these new features are there.
As long as there's no way of disaggregating it to an individual level, I think this feature is harmless fun. I think that if they put a more aggressive minimum on the number of people aggregated (say 1,000), it would be entirely unobjectionable. I'm sure there are still plenty of groups that big.
I have to say that I'd hate to see this feature go, even though I have a single-person domain name. I don't think we single-person domain holders have anything to worry about, though - a "bestseller" on our list is the sale of a single copy of a single book, and that's not going to get these folks excited.
D
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And the final book that I just bought from Amazon last week was...
1984 by George Orwell. In a few months when they look over my purchase history, trying to figure out why I suddenly stopped shopping there, 1984 is the last thing they'll see.
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Have a Sloppy day!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I'll tell you what I have noticed. I just got back from a 4 day trip out of town, got home, and found 84 messages in my email Inbox. 3 from cron, 4 from people I know. Well over 70 of the messages were spam.
Any time anyone wants personal information about you, beware. It's not that they will see your every move. It's not that they will know what you eat and change your health insurance rates. It's not that they are going to tell your mom where you were last Friday night. What they will do is _eventually_ sell the information.
Information is a commodity, and if they tell you they want it to provide you better service, tell them your happy with the service you get now. "Better Service" is a nice way to say "Targeted Direct Marketing." And for the slow witted, "Targeted Direct Marketing" is sales calls when your eating dinner, 70+ spam mails to sort through when your trying to see what your boss said happened at work when your out of town, and a dozens of dead trees sliced up to make coupons to fill your mail box.
I will choose not to buy from ANYONE who collects such data if I am aware of it. Not because I think they will end up "peeping" or "reporting on me to an athority." I don't think I have anything to hide, but the more junk mail I get, the more I change my opinion on the whole issue. The protest here is in the wrong form, realize, privacy is a part of it... But freedom from "Better Service" is a part too.
They know what they sell and what they don't. They know what ads work and which don't. If they didn't have good service, thier SALES would reflect it, and they sure know how to read those numbers. DO NOT FALL INTO THE TRAP. No matter how well intended, how safe guarded, how secure they say the data will be, someday, some how, someone from marketing will get thier grubby little hands on the data and exploit it for all it's worth.
Uniquely Bestselling Books: Microsoft Corporation
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I find it very telling that Amazon is NOT a Trust-E member. I went looking for the gif and there wasn't one, then I checked http://www.truste.com, and sure enough, they are not a member.
What about people -- such as myself -- who have their own domain name? If I'm reading this correctly, it means that they would essentially be profiling me individually.
\\'
This is scary, but I can see having a lot of fun manipulating the results. For instance get together with my fellow engineers and purchase a book such as Araki: Tokyo Lucky Hole. Suddenly it looks like the number one purchased book at my company are nude photos of oriental sex workers.
The drawback is the lengthly conversation with Human Resources that would result.
The following is a letter I just sent to the nice folks at Amazon.
Hey people:
(I was considering the salutation "Ladies and Gentlemen", but ladies and gentlemen don't behave as you have.)
Don't you guys know that even as I type this, paranoid companies all over Silicon Valley (and believe me, we are all paranoid) are installing blocks to prevent their employees from connecting to Amazon?
As for your "top 7 questions" you list on your "Purchase Circles" web page, are you really claiming that these are questions that real people are asking you? I'm sure that the real "top 7 questions" you are getting are:
My wife and I have frequently bought books from Amazon. We will not buy another book until two things happen:
I have also recommended that out network support staff cut off our company from Amazon. People can buy books from home if they really want to.
When a telemarketer calls, it's an opportunity to be silly without worrying about offending anyone. What are they going to do -- quit calling?
1. If you play a musical instrument, put the receiver in front of your instrument and start practicing. It doesn't even matter if you play well. I suggest picking an instrument you just started on that day.
2. If your spouse gets stuck with one, have fun! We made one guy really uncomfortable because I kept yelling at my spouse to get off the phone and fix my chicken pot pie NOW. Having a Texas area code and a convincing accent helped.
3. Make up something exciting going on outside and narrate. Car crashes, SWAT team raids, and dog attacks are all good "Ohmigod!" interrupters. Once they've been derailed from their script, see if they're able to get back to it.
4. Wait a few beats, then start echoing their script back to them. See how long they keep going.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
We don't currently sell or rent users' non-aggregated specific personal information to third-party companies, but we may decide to do so in the future. If this were to happen, Chapters.ca would announce such a plan by e-mail and ask you to "opt in".
Chapters.ca will only email you to opt in to "non-aggregated" information. Sadly Amazon is claiming that this information is aggregated, while I would slighly dissagree, simply because corporations legally are very close to being an individual. So if Chapters took on the same idea, such a practice would fit into their privacy policy.
It's better than nothing at least. It means that the companies promise not to do "bad stuff" with your data, and you can hold them to that promise in court later (since they are required by Trust-E to put their privacy policy in writing online).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
One aspect of intelligence gathering is pattern analysis. Observe what the opposition is doing, find a pattern that fits.
In this case, observe what, say, Intel people are buying, use that information to determine what they are working on. If you can cross-reference this by the division they are in within the company, you have a very good tool.
The only way that a company like Intel can protect themselves from this is to bar their employees from buying at Amazon. I would not be surprised to see this happen.
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I'm desparately afraid that this will have the same impact on Amazon.com as requiring cookies did for Hotmail; ie, no one is going to care.
Unfortunately for the consumer, the only way to avoid this sort of Big-Brotherish 'Since you've done business with us, now we own you' outlook is to not shop with them... and they are the largest bookseller on the Internet. This is hopefully going to cause some users to reconsider their relationship with Amazon, as they realize that Amazon is not only taking their money for books that they've bought, but also letting other companies capitalize on the user's buying habits.
Having this sort of information available on the Internet is roughly analogous to having your name printed in the phonebook, however with Amazon, you don't get the opportunity to opt out of it.
Of course, by having your name in the phonebook, you're not opening yourself to a range of people who are going to mine your buying habits and spam you with offers of stuff they know you want to buy; verily, that's illegal in the US.
Personally, I have never and will never buy books from Amazon, nor any other online bookstore. I believe that the only true way to shop for books is to go to a local bookseller and peruse the stacks for a tome that catches your fancy. I don't even go to those immense chain stores, because I dislike supporting huge corporations at the expense of local storeowners. I don't shop at Wal-Mart either, for the same reason.
From what I can see, although not particularly fair to initiate without asking domain owners, this is pretty harmless.
There is no information about specific users or specific things purchased by specific users... it is just an aggregate collection. It is essentially the same as saying what the best selling items are on their site, except this is broken down into meaningful catagories...
I don't see why there is a big fuss over it
Josh
If you give an organization your email address, and they use it to spam you, this is a bad thing, but it is not a privacy violation (unless they sell the address to someone else).
So it's bogus to say that TrustE is not a good privacy policy because it doesn't prevent people from "one bite per customer" spamming. Instead, ask for something like TrustE as a minimum.
The article is wrong about them not allowing an opt out. I just opted out and it was easy. All I had to do was jot a note on my Palm Pilot saying "Never order anything from Amazon.com". There are plenty of other places to buy books and everything else they sell.
Now the FBI is going to find out about all those copies of Catcher in the Rye I've bought!
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.