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Amazon admits it exposed customer email addresses, but refuses to give details

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Re: Amazon admits it exposed customer email addresses, but refuses to give details

#81

Post by SahAssar »

tyingq wrote: post #78
kull wrote: post #62

This is how it looked for me: I few days ago I was shopping on Amazon and they showed me a message, you already purchased this product. See order details. I was surprised since I did not buy it before. After clicking the link, I was shown details of not my order, including name, address and email where a product was shipped to.

Maybe someone released a pretty aggressive page cache to help handle "Black Friday" shopping.

Sounds like the steam cache issue three years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkSslseq9Y8

Re: Amazon admits it exposed customer email addresses, but refuses to give details

#82

Post by aidenn0 »

davewritescode wrote: post #79
kodablah wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same reason you might do a gradual refractor instead of a large software rewrite. The more narrowly scoped a piece of legislation, the more feedback and implementation/enforcement can be tailored to the satisfaction of all before increasing scope (or not if ineffective). In the GDPR's case, it superseded existing data protection legislation because of a somewhat opposite mindset: the scope/consequences/enforcement we…

Writing laws is like writing software in every way except: 1. You have hundreds of code reviewers, many of whom will have their own motivations 2. The code base is hundreds of years old, poorly maintained and often contradictory in its goals. 3. You have hundreds of millions users.

4. the machine that executes the code is ill-defined and will change far before the code you write is retired.

Re: Amazon admits it exposed customer email addresses, but refuses to give details

#83

Post by hbosch »

ben509 wrote: post #11

"Besides the brevity, what's giving people pause is they sign the email http://Amazon.com Why cap the "a" and why no https:// ? Strange" This one is easy to answer: the customer support people aren't particularly technical. In many ways, Amazon is a weird mashup of a traditional retailer and a tech company.

Yeah, this is one of those things that might look weird at first but is probably just a wonky quirk of bureaucratic systems, PR engagement, non-technical writers and probably even autocorrect. It's not far from the realm of possibility that someone tried to sign off a pre-written e-mail with "Amazon.com" and somewhere along the line a token "http://" got added to it by sheer mistake.

That being said, one of the biggest companies in the world should be more attentive when sending out e-mails like this.

Re: Amazon admits it exposed customer email addresses, but refuses to give details

#84

Post by robryan »

amatecha wrote: post #77
edoo wrote: post #12

When I started selling the first gadget I ever made on Amazon I was so excited and was only getting a couple sales a month. If you were one of my customers I looked at your house, judged your grass, found you on LinkedIn and Facebook, Instagram, mortgages, mugshots, everything lol. The sellers also get your full name and address even on fulfilled by Amazon. If you have been on the net long enough this will creep you…

You only get shipping address, not billing address, right? I have always got my Amazon stuff shipped to a work office address, so hopefully have kept the residential (billing) address from sketchy sellers! heh

Just a billing/customer name but no address. Email communication goes via Amazon so they can cut you off from the customer and also so they can remove email addresses and link, but they can't do much if a seller wants to call up or send promotional material in the package.

Re: Amazon admits it exposed customer email addresses, but refuses to give details

#85

Post by behringer »

switch007 wrote: post #24
behringer wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like they did that but TC wants more. I'm not really sure why HN allows techcrunch stories on the front page. TC is tabloid journalism at its finest.

> It sounds like they did Which parts of the specific GDPR requirements did they comply with?

GDPR isn't a US law.

Re: Amazon admits it exposed customer email addresses, but refuses to give details

#86

Post by coolaliasbro »

aidenn0 wrote: post #82
davewritescode wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing laws is like writing software in every way except: 1. You have hundreds of code reviewers, many of whom will have their own motivations 2. The code base is hundreds of years old, poorly maintained and often contradictory in its goals. 3. You have hundreds of millions users.

4. the machine that executes the code is ill-defined and will change far before the code you write is retired.

IMO legislators should spend most of their time (at least until a reasonable "break even" is achieved") striking old, erroneous, irrelevant laws.

Re: Amazon admits it exposed customer email addresses, but refuses to give details

#87

Post by stjohnswarts »

jiveturkey wrote: post #4

based on spam email i have received, that i clearly should not have, i believe this was an exposure to marketplace sellers from whom you have bought a product. I am very careful with my email. i’m not just guessing here. i actually reported it to amazon security. (no answer from them of course.)

Some AI laughed at your email, put a +1 on a category threshold counter and then deleted it. I hope you didn't put too much effort into it.

Re: Amazon admits it exposed customer email addresses, but refuses to give details

#88

Post by YawningAngel »

coolaliasbro wrote: post #86
aidenn0 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4. the machine that executes the code is ill-defined and will change far before the code you write is retired.

IMO legislators should spend most of their time (at least until a reasonable "break even" is achieved") striking old, erroneous, irrelevant laws.

These laws don't cost very much because they get deprecated through less formal mechanisms (they are reinterpreted, or the bodies responsible for enforcing or adjudicating them decline to do so), which makes this a very inefficient use of a legislature's time.

Re: Amazon admits it exposed customer email addresses, but refuses to give details

#89

Post by tyingq »

SahAssar wrote: post #81
tyingq wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe someone released a pretty aggressive page cache to help handle "Black Friday" shopping.

Sounds like the steam cache issue three years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkSslseq9Y8

Ahh, yeah. Steam's explanation: https://store.steampowered.com/news/19852/

Re: Amazon admits it exposed customer email addresses, but refuses to give details

#90

Post by stimmed »

paulcole wrote: post #36
edoo wrote: post #12

When I started selling the first gadget I ever made on Amazon I was so excited and was only getting a couple sales a month. If you were one of my customers I looked at your house, judged your grass, found you on LinkedIn and Facebook, Instagram, mortgages, mugshots, everything lol. The sellers also get your full name and address even on fulfilled by Amazon. If you have been on the net long enough this will creep you…

Yeah, when I used to sell on Amazon about 10 years ago, I'd see celebrities' names and phone numbers. One time Jimmy Kimmel ordered some gimmicky yoga thing and wanted it overnighted to his house along with a gift card. I checked and it was his girlfriend's birthday the next day. I called up offering to gift wrap it at no charge just hoping to talk to him but I ended up getting his assistant. Still offered the gift w…

How servile of you...
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