Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium
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Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium
#2I had the exact same experience. I wouldn't mind if they would be sued for this. It's audacious, a dark pattern, user hostile, lazy.
Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium
#3The full, complete set of tedium the author describes is:
* Navigate through a handful of pages.
* Scroll to the bottom of a menu.
* Click an email confirmation link.
* Wait 19 days.
* Click 74 download links.
That last part is pretty dumb! But it's also the only thing that seems remotely tedious, and I'm not sure where at any point he'd be confused. The author implies some sort of issue with the 19 day waiting period, but it seems entirely plausible to me that many of the datasets being requested have "ask an engineer to run through this long manual process" as a dependency.
Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium
#4Probably easier to buy it off the Dark Web.
And what is the Bitcoin to Bezo Bucks conversion rate right now?
Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium
#5> It’s a bit like if you have a stalker who’s been shadowing you around, meticulously documenting everywhere you go, everyone you talk to, and everything you do, who’s now handing you a form to fill out if you want to see the boxes of files they’ve been keeping on you.
This has me thinking. I can get an injunction for a human stalker who's going after me at home, my workplace, following me wherever I go, etc.
According to US law, companies are also people. So, why can't I get an injunction against, say, Facebook/Meta ?
Get enough of these injunctions, and these shitty privacy-invading data blackholes would dry up pretty quick. If they don't, then they'd be liable for violating court orders. That usually never ends up well.
Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium
#6The multiple download buttons is not a dark pattern to prevent you from downloading your data, it’s just bad UX, it’s a feature you add to check a legal box and it doesn’t get priority for usability. Probably someone just shrugged, this is good enough and moved on. They should definitely give you it all in one zip file but “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by a developer rushing to get something done by making it just barely usable” (the fact I worked at AWS as a development manager has nothing to do with the above and is solely my opinion)
Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium
#7The full, complete set of tedium the author describes is: * Navigate through a handful of pages. * Scroll to the bottom of a menu. * Click an email confirmation link. * Wait 19 days. * Click 74 download links. That last part is pretty dumb! But it's also the only thing that seems remotely tedious, and I'm not sure where at any point he'd be confused. The author implies some sort of issue with the 19 day waiting perio…
I very much doubt that there is any human interaction on the Amazon end of this workflow.
What seems more likely is that because this doesn't generate revenue it gets the minimum resources necessary to complete the request within some legally mandated time frame. The request probably sits in queues for most of its life.
If a court order requests these same data, I suspect that it can be produced in under 24 hours
Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium
#8> It’s a bit like if you have a stalker who’s been shadowing you around, meticulously documenting everywhere you go, everyone you talk to, and everything you do, who’s now handing you a form to fill out if you want to see the boxes of files they’ve been keeping on you. This has me thinking. I can get an injunction for a human stalker who's going after me at home, my workplace, following me wherever I go, etc. Accordi…
Because you clicked Yes on their EULA.
Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium
#9Wired Magazine recently did a feature on “Amazon’s Dark Secret” of what this mess looks like from the inside:
https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-failed-to-protect-your-da...
Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium
#10> It’s a bit like if you have a stalker who’s been shadowing you around, meticulously documenting everywhere you go, everyone you talk to, and everything you do, who’s now handing you a form to fill out if you want to see the boxes of files they’ve been keeping on you. This has me thinking. I can get an injunction for a human stalker who's going after me at home, my workplace, following me wherever I go, etc. Accordi…
The difference between a stalker and Amazon is that Amazon does not get any data from you (or at least 99% of what this author could request from Amazon, some ad tracking stuff might be an exception) if you do not willingy give it to them. Don't have an Amazon account and use it do order things or search, talk to Alexa, etc - and they will have no data.