"A look at the intimate details Amazon knows about us"
Friday, 19 November 2021 11:27 GMT
By Chris Kirkham and Jeffrey Dastin
Nov 19 (Reuters) - As a Virginia lawmaker, Ibraheem Samirah has studied internet privacy issues and debated how to regulate tech firms' collection of personal data. Still, he was stunned to learn the full details of the information Amazon.com Inc has collected on him.
The e-commerce giant had more than 1,000 contacts from his phone. It had records of exactly which part of the Quran that Samirah, who was raised as a Muslim, had listened to on Dec. 17 of last year. The company knew every search he had made on its platform, including one for books on "progressive community organizing" and other sensitive health-related inquiries he thought were private.
"Are they selling products, or are they spying on everyday people?" asked Samirah, a Democratic member of the Virginia House of Delegates.
Samirah was among the few Virginia legislators who opposed an industry-friendly, Amazon-drafted state privacy bill that passed earlier this year. At Reuters' request, Samirah asked Amazon to disclose the data it collected on him as a consumer.
The company gathers a vast array of information on its U.S. customers, and it started making that data available to all upon request early last year, after trying and failing to defeat a 2018 California measure requiring such disclosures.
Seven Reuters reporters also obtained their Amazon files. The data reveals the company's ability to amass strikingly intimate portraits of individual consumers.
Amazon collects data on consumers through its Alexa voice assistant, its e-commerce marketplace, Kindle e-readers, Audible audiobooks, its video and music platforms, home-security cameras and fitness trackers. Alexa-enabled devices make recordings inside people's homes, and Ring security cameras capture every visitor.
Such information can reveal a person's height, weight and health; their ethnicity (via clues contained in voice data) and political leanings; their reading and buying habits; their whereabouts on any given day, and sometimes whom they have met.
One reporter's dossier revealed that Amazon had collected more than 90,000 Alexa recordings of family members between December 2017 and June 2021 – averaging about 70 daily. The recordings included details such as the names of the reporter's young children and their favorite songs.
Read the rest at Thompson Reuters Foundation.
