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Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

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Re: Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

#71

Post by walshemj »

Latteland wrote: post #64
jlarocco wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are those logs available anywhere? Can users see when Google employees have looked at their data? Have those systems been audited by a third party to ensure they're working properly? I'm sure most Google employees are good people, but your basically telling everybody to trust you that Google's doing it right, but not providing any evidence to back it up.

I used to work at google too. End users don't get casually notified when someone looks at their data. But there are definitely audit logs inside the company. I worked on a product and you couldn't look at the data without running a special command, logging in with your account and describing what you were doing, and they audited those afterwards (didn't happen too much I guess). Here's an article about someone fired…

I know of cases in telecoms where a couple of BT workers got 10+ years for conspiracy - provided information to a gangland hitman to murderer someone's parents.

And anecdotally in BT you would hope if you got caught for naughty shit you would rather the Local Police, The Met or The Service caught you instead of the internal security.

Re: Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

#72

Post by scarmig »

jlarocco wrote: post #54
rifung wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We definitely have systems in place so that employees can not just randomly look at customer data, and when it is necessary it is always logged. Even if we need to debug customer issues we would need a good reason to look at data over just metadata. There are strict requirements for what can go in logs and dashboards also as you can imagine. > Absent any evidence, I'm inclined to think that they do very little to pro…

Are those logs available anywhere? Can users see when Google employees have looked at their data? Have those systems been audited by a third party to ensure they're working properly? I'm sure most Google employees are good people, but your basically telling everybody to trust you that Google's doing it right, but not providing any evidence to back it up.

For enterprises, yes, with the significant caveat that some types of data look ups cannot be communicated to the customer because they're at the request of the government.

Re: Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

#73

Post by y4mi »

mediterrenean wrote: post #70
clubm8 wrote: post #14

> The practice, which violates company policy, is particularly pronounced in China, according to some of these people, because the number of sellers there is skyrocketing. As well, Amazon employees in China have relatively small salaries, which emboldens them to take risks. Sounds like Amazon is finding out the hard way that you need to pay for trust , not just skill. When you pay the absolute bare minimum to your em…

I do not think this is due to low wages. Quality of ones morality is not necessarily measured by ones wage. If one is corruptible/corrupt there’s always a price point (or some other excuse) one falls for it.

Do a minimum wage job for a few months and you'll be surprised how quickly this changes.

If everyone treats you like shit and you get a shitty wage as well... Well, a lot happens to your mind

Re: Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

#74

Post by shard972 »

wmeredith wrote: post #69
paulpauper wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or not let low-level Chinese employees have access to secrets. Apple is known for being very punitive against leakers and is very secretive. It seems to work for then.

Is this sarcasm?

Why would it be? Seems reasonable to not let low-level chinese employees access to company secrets given their track record.

Re: Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

#75

Post by EpicEng »

mediterrenean wrote: post #70
clubm8 wrote: post #14

> The practice, which violates company policy, is particularly pronounced in China, according to some of these people, because the number of sellers there is skyrocketing. As well, Amazon employees in China have relatively small salaries, which emboldens them to take risks. Sounds like Amazon is finding out the hard way that you need to pay for trust , not just skill. When you pay the absolute bare minimum to your em…

I do not think this is due to low wages. Quality of ones morality is not necessarily measured by ones wage. If one is corruptible/corrupt there’s always a price point (or some other excuse) one falls for it.

>If one is corruptible/corrupt...

Which is pretty much everyone.

Re: Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

#76

Post by detaro »

amelius wrote: post #13
mc32 wrote: post #5

This principally is for Amazon China and not the US where despite years of complaints Amazon has done little to visibly counter the same effects and issues. To wit: "In exchange for payments ranging from roughly $80 to more than $2,000, brokers for Amazon employees in Shenzhen are offering internal sales metrics and reviewers’ email addresses, as well as a service to delete negative reviews and restore banned Amazon…

Shouldn't there just be a law stating that doing such things as deleting negative reviews is fraud?

What about fraudulent negative reviews?

Re: Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

#77

Post by aikah »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #19
gesman wrote: post #10

That's how Costco survives and prospers in Amazon era. By not exposing customers to shady vendors, misleading metrics and questionable product rankings based on fake reviews.

Yes but Costco only has a specific set of things that I'm looking for, sometimes in too high quantities and at a price point that is not particularly amazing

> at a price point that is not particularly amazing

This is a fitting description for most Amazon products today. It's a good deal at all. It's conveniant because they have a good delivery platform but Amazon prices are seldom the bests.

Re: Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

#78

Post by GenericsMotors »

MrLeap wrote: post #63
GenericsMotors wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because crypto is only useful insofar as it can be converted into useful fiat currencies, which means that it can be tracked.

Tons of bullion exchanges will allow you to buy precious metals with cryptocoin. How trackable is it if someone uses a new wallet for each transaction, and has their gold bars shipped to model homes and abandoned property within ~25-50 miles of their location? If you're speaking in absolutes, you're not using your imagination! I can think of tons of schemes to anonymously extract real world spending power from crypto…

None of those are particularly expedient, but you have a point.

Crypto, the not-so-fast bullion-based international payment system. Perhaps the perpetrators might have better luck sending each other USD notes by mail instead.

Re: Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes

#80

Post by scarface74 »

nostromo wrote: post #17
WisNorCan wrote: post #6

In a company approaching a million employees, someone is doing something illegal/unethical every day. At that scale it doesn’t say anything about the culture as you are observing the outer ranges of a distribution.

That’s why you build systems that don’t allow for abuse whenever possible. And when it’s not possible, you create an audit trail. For example, I trust Google to make my individual search history difficult for employees to access, specific search results difficult to change, and confidential data difficult to access.

For some strange reason that I can’t put my finger on, as creepy as I think Google’s whole business model is an the amount of data they track especially for Android users, I still trust them not to let any random employee to access customer data.
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