Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Rethinks Purchase Circles
Dredd13 writes "Amazon.Com announced today that they are rethinking their position on Purchase Circles. They are going to permit people to remove their purchases from being added to Purchase Circles, as well as allowing companies to opt-out of the Purchase Circle listings. Personally, I think that it should be explicitly opt-in for companies, because it is far too easy for a company to have its secrets unknowingly leaked to the world via its book purchases. If a precedent is set allowing Amazon.Com to do this, then before a company allows purchases from an online retailer, they may have to spend time and energy researching the company making sure silly things like Purchase Circles don't affect them. " Opt-out sure is an interesting choice. I know one of my old employers is actually quite upset by the whole idea of purchase circles.
At first I thought this was a horrible thing for Amazon to do. Then I played with it a little and now I'm not sure what I think.
.gov people.
I think government purchases are supposed to be totally open, so I don't think about can really complain about being able to see what was sold to
And I kind of like having the tables turned on the mega-corporations. When I think of the possible profiles they can build on me, what's the harm with seeing what their buying habits are like? Plus it's funny seeing that the #4 book to Ford is about how Chrysler got to be the hottest car company (or something like that).
At the very least, it might make the big corporations a little more sensitive to the privacy concerns of their customers. But then again, if there's a buck to be made...
And for all the consipracy buffs out there, any guesses why Amazon did this? I don't think it would take a psychic to predict people would have a problem with this.
-EC
I've refused to shop at Spamazon for quite some time due to their penchant for spamming. Cases in point go back at least as far as early 1998 and are widely documented on Dejanews.
A better write-up of their business practices can be found at the page of Peter Seebach, a long-time n.a.n-a.e (news.admin.net-abuse.email) regular.
Finally, there's Spamazon's practice of shilling for themselves on USENET - an "astroturf" campaign eerily reminiscient of Micros~1's "independently-written letters to the editor" stunt. (Available through Dejanews - Start here or search for Message-ID <3584e5cc.1368345@news.sirius.com>.
While I'm as disgusted at the "purchase circles" idea as anyone, I'm not at all surprised. Spamazon doesn't think in terms of customers; merely in terms of targets for additional marketing. Take your business elsewhere. (Many on n.a.n-a.e have recommended Powell's. I concur.)
Actually corporations have the exact same rights. Corporations are basically considered a person. Companies also need some degree of privacy. Let's say company X has delt with Microsoft exclusively for years, they are getting tired of being controlled by microsoft and see linux as a way out of that controll. Company X starts buying a lot of linux books from amazon.com, Microsoft, being the evil empire that it is, regularly checks up on what books it's "partners" (read slaves) are buying. Microsoft notices that company X is buying said linux books, microsoft knows that company x might be thinking of some sneaky way to get away from them. microsoft in some way manages to crush company x before they have a chance to impliment their "linux liberation plan." In short, companies need privacy too.
-matt
These are NOT books purchased by the corporation. They are simply the purchased of free and private citizens who happen to have email provided to them by their employers.
Ok, SOME of these might actually be the "corporate" purchases. But they can't be distinguished. Do you really think the PG&E bought its employees "Who Moved My Cheese" as part of their severance package?
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
about having to read about this on Yahoo, while nothing appears on the Amazon site about it.
It makes me feel this is just a trial balloon, so if this concerns you, be sure to keep those cards and letters coming.
D
----
The important thing here is that the Net was used effectivley here by consumers to MAKE A DIFFERENCE. Perhaps for the first truly recordable, documented time ever, consumers didn't have to rely on government, privacy groups, or "merchant goodwill" to protect their data. Rather, a bad idea was brought to the online world's attention, out in the open air...and for the first time ever, a mass of customers was able to act as one body in forcing a change.
This kind of "sunlight is the best disinfectant" policy in action is one of the brightest hopes I've ever had for the Net. It's wonderful to see it in action. The moral of the story is: KEEP BEING OUTRAGED and ACTING ON YOUR IMPULSES TO EMAIL OFFENDING PARTIES! Hey...we all helped make at least some differences in the whole RedHat IPO/E*Trade situation. Now this.
We're those people on the Internet that Congress was warned about! *grin*
Power to the E-ple.
I still don't see an invasion of privacy, even if AMZN is throwing darts at a board to generate the list. I'm under the assumption that they're already selling individual sales data, probably with some choice demographics.
/. ers compared lists for a given company/area? Let's check to see if the lists aren't being doctored based on our own purchase history. For example: San Francisco, 8/26/99:
I would like for some folks to explain why publishing (regional) summary sales data is a Bad Thing.
Have any x-number of
1)The Silicon Boys
2) Nudist on the Late Shift: And other true tales of Silicon Valley.
3)The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing
4)Cryptonomicon
5)Memoirs of a Geisha
6)Burn Rate: How I survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet
7) The Beach
8) Turn of the Century
9) Our Dumb Century {"Holy f-ing Cow! Man lands on f-ing Moon! haha}
10) Jacques Pepin's Kitchen: Encore w/ Claudine
...does everybody get the same results for San Fran (the city, not metro)?
"Semi-Solid" evidence like this is a foggy stained-glass window into a company's state of being, not an open window, and I doubt that AMZN is pulling the feature due to customer feedback.
After the last /. post, I sent am email to Amazon. Strangely enough, the timing is about right.
Here's the contents:
--------------------
Dear Amazon:
I should let you know that this new feature has been posted on Slashdot, an online forum for "geeks", where this is sure to raise some eyebrows about privacy conserns. You are sure to get a lot of knee-jerk reaction about this, so I thought I'd try to present a more balanced statement.
I realize that profiling goes on all the time. The value of profile data is extremely high from a marketing perspective, and I find it interesting that you are releasing this information to the public at large. Amazon.com has
always been innovative in my mind, and this seems to continue the to idea that you "buck the trend."
What I think needs to be done in any case is to update your privacy policy to include a clause about what and how you use profiling information. As it reads right now, it could be misread that you are breaking your own policy by offering such a service. Also the clarification would be helpful for many of us with privacy conserns, and perhaps a method for the die-hards to opt out.
I applaud amazon.com for it's openess with profile information, after all, it can be useful to consumers as well - but I think your policies need to be ironed out a little more.
Sincerely,
Michael Wilkinson
Amazon.com customer