Amazon Exposed Customer Names, Emails in Tech Error

By Melissa Campanelli

Amazon.com exposed some of its customers’ names and email addresses on Wednesday because of a "technical error," according to emails the company sent to affected customers. BetaNews, which first reported the incident, said affected customers received an email that said Amazon had " … inadvertently disclosed your name and email address due to a technical error." The email then went on to say, "The issue has been fixed. This is not a result of anything you have done, and there's no need for you to change your password or take any other action."

Puzzled customers, some of whom thought it was spam, shared screenshots of the emails online and on Amazon's forums Wednesday morning. Amazon has since released a statement that said, “We have fixed the issue and informed customers who may have been impacted.” The company also said the incident was not a breach of its website or any of its systems, and emphasized that it decided to exercise caution by emailing customers to let them know. It did not, however, reveal the number of accounts affected or which countries the users are located in. Twitter users across Europe and the U.S. have reported receiving the email, and forum posts suggest that the error affected consumers rather than business accounts on the platform.

Total Retail's Take: While some news reports have speculated that the the "technical error" could be a phising attack or another type of data breach, or that it's related somehow to reports earlier this fall of Amazon firing an employee for sharing customer emails with third-party sellers, it's likely that it was just plain old human error. Regardless, there's some schadenfreude in knowing that Amazon, the online behemoth, isn't immune to inadvertent programming errors (especially right before the biggest shopping weekend of the year). Unfortunately, these types of errors may become even more likely for companies, both large and small, in the future. In a statement, Ilia Kolochenko, CEO and founder of web security company High-Tech Bridge said that as "our IT systems become more convoluted and intricate every day, [they will] inevitably [cause] more human errors."

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Melissa Campanelli Author's page Melissa Campanelli is Editor-in-Chief of Total Retail. She is an industry veteran, having covered all aspects of retail, tech, digital, e-commerce, and marketing over the past 20 years. Melissa is also the co-founder of the Women in Retail Leadership Circle.