Amazon Employees Are Known To Like To Peek At The Shopping Histories Of The World's Celebrities

Image Credit: Bryan Angelo / Unsplash

JAKARTA - Amazon has not really taken care of the security of its customers' personal data. A recent investigation revealed the facts of how Amazon employees snooped on customer data.

In that investigation, among other breaches, one Amazon employee was found using the system to look up the purchase history of celebrities. Amazon's slogan that claims to put customers first doesn't seem to be well proven, reflecting on cases like this.

The company failed to prioritize protecting its customers' most personal information. Because according to the investigation conducted by Wired media, all customer purchase history is available or accessible by Amazon's entire global customer service team. That means, the company has little security or oversight to prevent employee snooping from happening.

Citing The Verge, Saturday, November 20, a former service manager who did not wish to be named, said he remembers his friends looking to buy from Kanye West and movie stars from the Avengers films, even seeing some dildos in certain celebrity purchase records.

Other staff recalled that their co-workers had searched their ex and boyfriend's purchase history.

“Everyone, everyone does it. They shouldn't have done it, of course," said the former Amazon services manager.

Finally, allegations of employees looking at seller data to develop Amazon's own products raise questions about the integrity of the company.

During an antitrust trial in 2020, Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos insisted that employees don't access that data, but he couldn't guarantee that policies against employees doing so were not violated.

The Wired investigation is a deep dive that shows how customer data can be put at risk if large companies mismanage internal access to it, or carelessly leave it open to outsiders.

While Amazon is often ranked as one of the most trusted companies in the world, this investigation from Wired questions whether it deserves more trust from its customers.