What intimate data does Amazon collect from its customers and how it does it

by

As a lawmaker in the US state of Virginia, Ibraheem Samirah has studied Internet privacy issues and debated the regulation of private data collection by technology companies. Still, he was surprised to learn all the details Amazon.com had collected about him.

The company had more than a thousand contacts from its phone. He also had records of exactly what part of the Qur’an he heard on December 17th of last year. Amazon also knew all the research he had done on the company’s platform, including a search for books on “progressive community organizing” and more sensitive health-related ones that he believed were private.

“Are they selling products or spying on ordinary people?” questioned Samirah, a member of the Democratic Party in the Virginia legislature.

Samirah was among the few Virginia lawmakers who opposed an industry-friendly Amazon state privacy bill. The text was approved earlier this year. At Reuters’ request, Samirah asked Amazon to release the data it collected about him.

The company gathers a wealth of information about its US customers and began making this data available to everyone, upon request, early last year. The move came after Amazon tried, and failed, to defeat a 2018 measure in California that required such disclosures. (Amazon customers in the US can get their details by filling out a form on Amazon.com.)

Seven Reuters reporters also obtained their respective files held by Amazon. The data reveals the company’s ability to bring together incredibly intimate portraits of consumers.

The company collects data through its Alexa voice assistant, its marketplace, Kindle, audiobooks through Audible, its video and music platforms, home security cameras and physical activity monitors. Alexa-enabled devices record inside people’s homes, and Ring security cameras capture all visitors.

This information can reveal a person’s height, weight, and health status; their ethnicity (via cues contained in voice data) and political leanings; your reading and shopping habits; her whereabouts on a given day and, sometimes, who she met.

A reporter’s dossier shows that Amazon collected, through Alexa, more than 90,000 family recordings between December 2017 and June 2021 — an average of about 70 per day. Recordings include details such as your young children’s names and favorite songs.

The company recorded children asking how to convince their parents to let them “play” and receiving detailed instructions from Alexa on how to persuade them to buy video games. Be fully prepared, Alexa advised the children, to refute common parenting arguments such as “it’s too violent,” “too expensive” and “you’re not doing well in school.” The information came from an external site used by Alexa called “wikiHow”, which provides instructions on how to do something through more than 180,000 articles, according to the Amazon site.

Amazon says it doesn’t own wikiHow, but that Alexa sometimes responds to requests using information taken from websites.

Some recordings involved conversations between family members, who used Alexa to communicate between different parts of the house. Several recordings captured children apologizing to their parents after being warned. Others registered the little ones, 7, 9 and 12 years old, asking Alexa about terms like “pansexual”.

In one recording, a child asks, “Alexa, what is a vagina?” In another: “Alexa, what does slavery mean?”

The reporter did not realize that Amazon was storing the recordings prior to the release of the data.

Amazon says Alexa products are designed to record as little as possible: it starts after the trigger word, “Alexa”, and ends when the user’s command reaches the end. The reporter’s family records, however, sometimes captured longer conversations.

In a statement, Amazon said it has scientists and engineers working to improve the technology and prevent false triggers that lead to recording. The company said that it alerts customers to the storage of recordings when the Alexa account is set up.

In addition, the company said that collecting personal data serves to improve products and services and personalize them for individuals. Asked about Samirah’s records of listening to the Koran, Amazon said such information allows customers to pick up where they left off before.

The only way for consumers to delete much of this personal data is to close their accounts, Amazon said. Still, the company said it retains some information, such as purchase history, even after the account closes due to legal obligations.

Amazon also said it allows customers to tweak settings on voice assistants and other services to limit the amount of data collected. Alexa users, for example, can prevent the company from saving the collected content or choose to automatically delete it periodically. It is also possible, according to the company, to disconnect their contacts or calendars from the devices, in case the customer does not want to use Alexa’s call or calendar functions.

A customer can choose not to have their Alexa recordings analyzed, but must navigate through a series of menus and two prompts that say, “If you turn this off, speech recognition and new features may not work well.” Asked about the warnings, Amazon said consumers who limit data collection may not be able to customize some features, such as music playback.

Samirah, 30, won an Alexa at the end of last year. He said he used the product for only three days before returning it after noticing the recordings collected.

The device had already gathered all of his phone contacts as part of a calling feature. According to Amazon, Alexa users must give permission to access phone contacts. To delete their Amazon account records, customers must disable this access, not just delete the Alexa app.

Samirah said he was also nervous that Amazon had detailed records of his reading sessions in audiobooks and on Kindle. Finding information about how he heard the Koran, he said, made him think about the history of US police and intelligence agencies, which keep Muslims under surveillance for suspected terrorist links after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

“Why do they need to know this?” he asked. Samirah’s term ends in January, as he has not been re-elected to the position.

US security agencies sometimes look for data about technology companies’ customers. Amazon says it complies with search warrants and other related court orders, but opposes “excessive or inappropriate requests.”

Company data for the three years ending June 2020, the most recent available, show that the company has complied at least partially with 75% of subpoenas, search warrants and other court orders that targeted US customer data. 38% of these requests were fully answered.

Last year, the company stopped disclosing how often it responds to these requests. Asked why, Amazon said it expanded the scope of the report to make it global and made reporting on each country simpler.

Amazon has stated that it is obligated to comply with valid and binding decisions, but that its aim is to release “the minimum” required by law.

Amazon’s Privacy Policy, a document that contains more than 3,500 words and links to more than 20 other pages, gives the company ample freedom to collect data. Amazon said the policy describes the collection, use and sharing of data “in a way that is easy for consumers to understand.”

This information collected can be very personal. Kindle, for example, accurately tracks a user’s reading habits, showed another reporter’s Amazon data file. The release included records of more than 3,700 reading sessions since 2017, including timestamps — to the millisecond — of content consumed. Amazon also tracks highlighted or searched words, pages turned, and promotions viewed.

The record showed, for example, that a member of the reporter’s family read “The Mitchell Sisters: A Complete Romance Series” on August 8, 2020, from 4:52 pm until 7:36 pm, flipping through 428 pages.

.

You May Also Like

Recommended for you