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Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

theintercept.com

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Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#51

Post by naoqj »

Sujan wrote: post #21

It's not very often that each and every point in an article just feels "fabricated" or over the top. It starts with finding the page: Amazon -> Customer Service -> Search for "personal data" -> Search result #1 is "Request Your Personal Information" which nicely explains what to do and links directly to that page. The need to verify or activate a data request via clicking a link? Of course required so some third part…

>I get that it is scary that a big company keeps all the data you gave to them.

Situation in 2022: it is scary that someone has something I willingly gave them.

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#52

Post by mindslight »

jen20 wrote: post #43
Sujan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is certainly a political decision that can be made, I agree and would actually be happy about that. If that happens, I am sure Amazon will invest the time and money to comply with that. At the same time it will put many smaller business out of business though, as they do not have the resources to do that. Even the current state of having to fulfill data requests is quite a problem for mayn of them.

> they do not have the resources to do that. Good - the aim is for them to not store personal data in the first place, much less build business models that rely upon it. Rather than allowing the population to take on the negative externality of surveillance capitalism, it is absolutely right that the burden must fall on those creating the problem. I don't see this as any different to the complain that small restauran…

You're giving the argument too much credit. It's more akin to a large restaurant arguing that small restaurants could be put out of business by health inspections, so maybe we should hold off on the idea. Rather, keeping a clean kitchen is something they all should be doing anyway from the get go.

Any pain for Amazon in Amazon's process is entirely Amazon's fault. If systems are built with the requirement of letting users export their data, then the additional effort to do so is trivial. This argument about the GDPR essentially boils down to technical debt from companies that played fast and loose with personal information, and we shouldn't entertain it.

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#53

Post by GekkePrutser »

Sujan wrote: post #25
jen20 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But there is no reason for them to do that. If that is not their business goal, perhaps the GDPR needs to be strengthened and strongly enforced until it is.

That is certainly a political decision that can be made, I agree and would actually be happy about that. If that happens, I am sure Amazon will invest the time and money to comply with that. At the same time it will put many smaller business out of business though, as they do not have the resources to do that. Even the current state of having to fulfill data requests is quite a problem for mayn of them.

Those smaller businesses will just use a standard webshop package that will incorporate this feature because most of their customers will want it.. The same way these companies use stuff like Magento or PrestaShop instead of rolling their own.

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#54

Post by jkaplowitz »

whoknew1122 wrote: post #31
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #3

The 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…

Distributed systems store information in different databases and warehouses. You don't want your Amazon.com retail data co-mingled with Alexa data for multiple reasons. Two of the preeminent security concepts is least privilege and data segregation. Your data exists in different files and databases. That's why you get multiple files containing your data. And let's ignore that the zip archives contain files of differe…

74 zip files could themselves be added unmodified as 74 individual entries within a parent zip file, optionally, for ease of download convenience. The hashes of those 74 zip files within the parent zip file would be just as auditable as with the current process.

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#55

Post by GekkePrutser »

gorgoiler wrote: post #35

HN probably aren't required to let me download my data, but it sure would be nice. Does that option exist, on this site?

I'm sure it does as many third party clients offer features where you can read back your own posts etc.

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#56

Post by whoknew1122 »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #54
whoknew1122 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Distributed systems store information in different databases and warehouses. You don't want your Amazon.com retail data co-mingled with Alexa data for multiple reasons. Two of the preeminent security concepts is least privilege and data segregation. Your data exists in different files and databases. That's why you get multiple files containing your data. And let's ignore that the zip archives contain files of differe…

74 zip files could themselves be added unmodified as 74 individual entries within a parent zip file, optionally, for ease of download convenience. The hashes of those 74 zip files within the parent zip file would be just as auditable as with the current process.

That's true, but then people will complain that they had to unzip 75 files instead of 74. The real issue here is that there are 74 files. Which is an issue without a good solution.

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#57

Post by [deleted] »

alex_young wrote: post #47
whoknew1122 wrote: post #19

Clicking on the author's byline, it says the author is a 'security researcher focusing on privacy issues revolving around source protection, counter-forensics, and privacy assurance.' I would assume, therefore, the author would have at least passing knowledge of security and web applications. > Amazon at this point makes some intonations about how this email verification step is necessary because your privacy and sec…

Perhaps all of this would be a lot easier if you actually built some simple automation to process requests. What could possibly take 3 days to process? The only plausible reason is that you’re wasting developers time on what really belongs in one of the myriad tools AWS itself provides for such tasks.

[deleted]

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#58

Post by GekkePrutser »

Sujan wrote: post #10
noasaservice wrote: post #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. 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.

This totally disregards the concept of shadow profiles..

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#59

Post by jjulius »

naoqj wrote: post #51
Sujan wrote: post #21

It's not very often that each and every point in an article just feels "fabricated" or over the top. It starts with finding the page: Amazon -> Customer Service -> Search for "personal data" -> Search result #1 is "Request Your Personal Information" which nicely explains what to do and links directly to that page. The need to verify or activate a data request via clicking a link? Of course required so some third part…

>I get that it is scary that a big company keeps all the data you gave to them. Situation in 2022: it is scary that someone has something I willingly gave them.

Define "willing" in this context, though. You, myself and most people on HN have a really good idea of what data we willingly give Amazon, while the average person does not. Is it really an accurate statement that people willingly give them their data when they don't actually know what they're giving?

Re: Getting my personal data from Amazon was weeks of confusion and tedium

#60

Post by naoqj »

jjulius wrote: post #59
naoqj wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I get that it is scary that a big company keeps all the data you gave to them. Situation in 2022: it is scary that someone has something I willingly gave them.

Define "willing" in this context, though. You, myself and most people on HN have a really good idea of what data we willingly give Amazon, while the average person does not. Is it really an accurate statement that people willingly give them their data when they don't actually know what they're giving?

What data does Amazon have that you haven't given them?
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