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

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

#221

Post by adamsvystun »

rv-de wrote: post #218
granzymes wrote: post #48

"Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said Wednesday he can't guarantee employees have never used sales data from individual third-party sellers to develop the company's own products" There's no way he could make that guarantee. How can you prove a negative? The best Amazon can do is have policies, logs and access controls and punish employees if they break those policies. And Bezos committed to doing that.

That is what is meant by "guaranteeing". They way you interpret the term nothing ever and anywhere could be truly guaranteed and the term becomes useless.

There is a difference between guaranteeing that employees have never used sales data from individual third-party sellers, and guaranteeing that you have all the policies, access controls and punishments. It seems that Bezoz couldn't guarantee the former, while he probably can guarantee the later.

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

#222

Post by Hokusai »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #139
_acco wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key is "access controls." The best Amazon can do is ensure brand managers don't have access to this data. Rep. Jayapal was pressing on this, and Bezos mentioned policy but never access control.

> The best Amazon can do is ensure brand managers don't have access to this data This is easier said than done. Data exists in multiple places. It transforms in the form of reports and presentations. Policing this is expensive, which is why it almost only happens under regulatory pressure.

> Policing this is expensive, which is why it almost only happens under regulatory pressure.

I completely agree. Before GDPR, many companies did not knew who was accessing the data, what was the reason to store it and if there was any value to that data. Now, I have seen an increase in understanding of which data the companies have.

I have worked adapting services to the GDPR. The reality is that it is very cheap to design systems with 100% data accountability. The main problem is to adapt old systems full of technical debt where nobody knows if the data is used or not, or even how up to date it is.

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

#223

Post by Hokusai »

Gently reminder that Amazon uses to astroturf social sites. If this post sees a unfair amount of pro-Amazon statements is possible that is part of Amazon's PR strategy.

- "Amazon workers are being paid to defend the company on Twitter": https://mashable.com/article/amazon-warehouse-twitter-defens...

But do not call on people just for siding with Amazon most people are just expressing their own opinion freely and deserve respect. Just adjust how you read the threads to account for biased results on voting and side representation.

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

#224

Post by [deleted] »

concernedctzn wrote: post #123
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…

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?

[deleted]

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

#225

Post by alasdair_ »

wiredone wrote: post #100
ashtonkem wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies regularly use this trick to get away with crimes. They might explicitly forbid something illegal, not setup the actual guard rails that would prevent it, and then give employees every single possible incentive to break the rules. The moment they're caught they can act shocked, shocked, to discover that gambling was going on in this establishment, and then throw the line level workers under the bus. This is…

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…

“ their whole company is based on trust. The cost of losing it would be huge, so they’d be super driven to stamp it out.”

This was the exact argument put forth by defenders of Goldman Sachs when it was alleged they were screwing over their own customers in the financial crisis.

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

#226

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

granzymes wrote: post #48

"Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said Wednesday he can't guarantee employees have never used sales data from individual third-party sellers to develop the company's own products" There's no way he could make that guarantee. How can you prove a negative? The best Amazon can do is have policies, logs and access controls and punish employees if they break those policies. And Bezos committed to doing that.

What? No. They were asking if there were basically access controls in place and he just said there are policies.

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

#227

Post by lb1lf »

Xixi wrote: post #205
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.

In France the standard notice for engineers is three months, and goes both way. It's not unheard of for a corporation to pay the three months notice when firing someone, without the employee actually coming in anymore, precisely to avoid theft, or the moral hazard towards other employees. But what's the rational the other way around? When an employee resigns, they obviously know that they are resigning before actuall…

It is basically CYA.

If the employee should later indeed be found to have taken IP or other assets during their last weeks at work, it would reflect poorly on whomever decided they should work during the resignation period.

Hence, you let them go immediately, so you can shrug and say 'well, we did what we could' in case of problems down the road.

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

#228

Post by WalterBright »

ashtonkem wrote: post #83
granzymes wrote: post #48

"Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said Wednesday he can't guarantee employees have never used sales data from individual third-party sellers to develop the company's own products" There's no way he could make that guarantee. How can you prove a negative? The best Amazon can do is have policies, logs and access controls and punish employees if they break those policies. And Bezos committed to doing that.

Companies regularly use this trick to get away with crimes. They might explicitly forbid something illegal, not setup the actual guard rails that would prevent it, and then give employees every single possible incentive to break the rules. The moment they're caught they can act shocked, shocked, to discover that gambling was going on in this establishment, and then throw the line level workers under the bus. This is…

Any large organization (that includes government organizations) is going to have some level of crime in it. "Guaranteeing" there isn't any hanky-panky going on somewhere in it is an absurd requirement.

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

#229

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#230

Post by throwaway2245 »

granzymes wrote: post #48

"Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said Wednesday he can't guarantee employees have never used sales data from individual third-party sellers to develop the company's own products" There's no way he could make that guarantee. How can you prove a negative? The best Amazon can do is have policies, logs and access controls and punish employees if they break those policies. And Bezos committed to doing that.

Bezos committed to doing [none of] those things only after Amazon was called out by the US Congress and the international press seems like an extremely important distinction.

Amazon hasn't been doing it (why not?), and isn't doing it (why not?), but Bezos has committed to "look into it very carefully". Great (sarcasm).

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