Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data • Hacker News Board

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#191

Post by sitver » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:05 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #65

gruez wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this possible? At the very least you need to store each customer's order history. From there you can work backwards to get sales numbers for a particular product or seller. Access controls don't work either, because at the end of the day it's stored on a server somewhere and someone must have access.

encrypt the data by default and let the third party sellers and customers have exclusive access? Why does Amazon need access to anyone's history?

Well, taxes and accounting for starters.

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#192

Post by spaced-out » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:10 AM UTC

newleaf wrote: post #178

spaced-out wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I would hope that anyone entering in to a market that Amazon, or any big player, is in would already be aware of their competition. Who isn't aware of it though? Every major retailer has their own store brand, and it's been like that since before any of us were born. At least Amazon clearly marks their brand, unlike some companies create brands like "Open Nature" which is clearly meant to disguise their origin.

I don’t really have a problem with this (as you mention, stores have had their own brands forever), but you may be interested to know that not all Amazon brands are clearly marked and there are a lot of them: https://qz.com/1039381/amazon-owns-a-whole-collection-of-sec...

Wow, I didn't know that. Thanks for the info.

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#193

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:11 AM UTC

Larrikin wrote: post #165

knolax wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In certain parts of the world supermarkets are built to be two stories or more so that the ground floor may be rented out to small vendors. I don't see anybody object to that.

Most people prefer to pay a fixed fair price instead of potentially being ripped off because they don't personally know the seller. Haggling constantly is an awful waste of time

[deleted]

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#194

Post by ponker » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:12 AM UTC

run414 wrote: post #145

wiredone wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know of many ex amazon employee anecdotes where people were “taken in the night” (didn’t have a job in the morning), and had their credentials and their teams credentials rotated due to a customer or seller data access overstep. As with most conspiracies the facts don’t add up super well in this case for Amazon - their whole company is based on trust. The cost of losing it would be huge, so they’d be super driven t…

When I worked at Amazon, I personally knew someone who put in their two-weeks notice, and the next day they found out they were fired when their badge didn't work. From anecdotes I've heard, this happens if Amazon suspects a person is leaving to join a competitor. Amazon is very serious about protecting their data.

Fired as in not paid for the two weeks? That’s very unusual but being shown the door when you give notice and having your desk effects delivered to you is not at all uncommon.

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#195

Post by philwelch » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:17 AM UTC

mantap wrote: post #66

philwelch wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is fundamentally a store. Third party sellers on Amazon are the equivalent of Girl Scouts: the store lets them sell cookies on the premises but that’s not what the store is there for. IMO third-party sellers are close to a dark pattern since it’s so hard to distinguish them from actual sold-by-Amazon product listings. Costco does similar things—both my ladder and my blender were things I purchased at Costco un…

Have you been on Amazon recently? Third party sellers dominate it. Amazon is fundamentally a bazaar that does a good job of pretending to be a store, but the mask is starting to slip.

I’ve noticed this when shopping for certain things and I don’t like it. But honestly they were a store first and they still own the entire consumer experience. Whenever a third party seller from Amazon contacts me, I am usually surprised because in my mind, I’m buying from Amazon and not from them.

Third party sellers who use FBA in particular are more like suppliers to whom Amazon can outsource part of their job to. In that case I’d say Amazon is a store, with infinite shelf space, and a very permissive policy about letting suppliers stock some of that infinite shelf space themselves sometimes.

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#196

Post by tehwebguy » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:23 AM UTC

manquer wrote: post #141

tehwebguy wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it abuse for Amazon to compete with their sellers? I don't think so, it's just like Best Buy selling their own brand of TV mounts & HDMI cables and prioritizing them over other brands they carry. There should be rules in place to stop them from effectively defrauding sellers (e.g. terminating accounts / promotions / offers without contract-backed cause, canceling wholesale orders outside of contract). Even outside…

Same reason regular companies cannot be banks in many countries , you would be able to give loans unfairly to your other business even if they are not credit worthy. It is wrong whether it is Best Buy or Amazon to be both marketplace and seller. Even if the controls were somewhat weak in practice, his inability to commit to that even on paper is damning.

I mean it’s like an impossible thing to commit to even if he wanted to, no?

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#197

Post by Lio » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:45 AM UTC

whyenot wrote: post #137

concernedctzn wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, they already lost everyone's trust for allowing the sale of low quality knock offs so who's to say we won't find out about some major privacy violations in the coming years?

Really? Search online for "trust amazon poll" and look at the results. People appear to have an overwhelmingly favorable opinion of Amazon. For example, look at The Verge Tech Survey 2020. 91% of those surveyed had a favorable opinion of the company, and 70% felt they had a positive impact on society. Most of the other polls have similar results.

I trust Amazon to send me a branded SD card or Apple charing cable on time.

I don’t trust Amazon to ship genuine to specification SD cards or original Apple power cables due to the commingling stock issue.

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#198

Post by Lio » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:50 AM UTC

run414 wrote: post #145

wiredone wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know of many ex amazon employee anecdotes where people were “taken in the night” (didn’t have a job in the morning), and had their credentials and their teams credentials rotated due to a customer or seller data access overstep. As with most conspiracies the facts don’t add up super well in this case for Amazon - their whole company is based on trust. The cost of losing it would be huge, so they’d be super driven t…

When I worked at Amazon, I personally knew someone who put in their two-weeks notice, and the next day they found out they were fired when their badge didn't work. From anecdotes I've heard, this happens if Amazon suspects a person is leaving to join a competitor. Amazon is very serious about protecting their data.

In the UK they would have to put the person on “gardening leave”.

Firing in this way when someone’s done nothing wrong would be constructive dismissal and prohibited by law.

The fact that Amazon treats their resigning employees in this way doesn’t increase my trust in them.

It actually just makes them look viscous and petty.

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#199

Post by tomp » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 5:59 AM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #9

fennecfoxen wrote: post #4

Question. What would a system capable of proving “this didn’t happen” look like?

"We have a policy against that" along with "I know of no such occurrences and if I did find out they'd get fired."

I don’t think that’s exactly enough for serious things, like Anti-Money-Laundering or Bribery in finance. The company also needs to make be able to prove they (1) actually implemented reasonable policies to prevent it (e.g. having access controls, educating employees on relevant legislation, etc.) and (2) make sure that they’re not just avoiding the problem (e.g. by telling employees not to do it but then not investigating, or by hiring another local company to do the bribing).

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#200

Post by run414 » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 6:21 AM UTC

jsizzle wrote: post #150

run414 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I worked at Amazon, I personally knew someone who put in their two-weeks notice, and the next day they found out they were fired when their badge didn't work. From anecdotes I've heard, this happens if Amazon suspects a person is leaving to join a competitor. Amazon is very serious about protecting their data.

This is not atypical though, and it happens in non high tech industries. Why is this an issue?

Sorry. I didn't mean to imply a moral judgement on the issue. I was just trying to provide an example that furthers the parent's point on Amazon being very protective of their data.