Amazon Got Its Customers Data Leaked, Again

On Wednesday, an accident was announced by Amazon, which involved the disclosure of some users’ information including names and email addresses. The company also said that it had fixed the problem.

In a statement from Amazon, its spokesperson claimed, "We have fixed the issue and informed customers who may have been impacted."

The online retailer explained that the accident happened due to a technical error, its system and website were not attacked.

The impacted users got an email from Amazon that told them about the happening. In this notifying email, the company also said users don’t have to change their passwords and neither do they need to do anything else.

Nevertheless, the online retailer did not reveal the number of accounts whose data were exposed nor did it share where the data was disclosed.

Since Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday is coming, the busiest time of the year for a retailer, this is such an extremely sensitive time for any security incident to happen.

For the last two months, this is the second time Amazon has had to announce a data disclosure to its customers.

Back in September, in case you don’t remember or were not aware, a much more serious security incident happen to this e-commerce giant, in which its employees leaked secret data for bribes. After receiving claims of data leaked by Amazon employees, the e-commerce firm conducted an investigation just to find out the claims were true. Particularly, Amazon staff in Shenzhen, China offered internal information, reviewers’ email addresses and a service for removing negative feedbacks and restoring banned accounts on Amazon. The price for this leak was from $80 (Rs 5,690) to $2,000 (Rs 142,250). This action violated Amazon’s policies and happened quite often in China probably because the pay here is small. The data were sold to independent retailers on Amazon’s site to help them raise sales.