Amazon Fires Employee Selling Customer Data Again

In the last few days, the online retailer Amazon seems to have had a data theft. Customers around the world are informed about their email address being passed on to third parties. The responsible employees were dismissed after they became known.

As Amazon confirmed to its colleagues at Vice Motherboard, customers of the world’s largest online mail-order company are currently being contacted to inform them of possible data theft of their email address. This should not – as is so often the case with other companies – be a data leak, but rather a theft and disclosure to third parties by one or more employees. Amazon does not disclose how many customers are affected.

Not the first case of data theft by Amazon employees

The retailer’s customer notice reads: “We would like to inform you that your email address has been passed on to a third party by an Amazon employee in violation of our policies. As a result, the employee was fired and we are supporting law enforcement agencies. None further information about your account was released. This was not caused by you and therefore there is no need for any action on your part. We apologize for the inconvenience and ask for your understanding. ”

This is not the first time Amazon employees have sold confidential customer information to third parties. It wasn’t until January that several employees were laid off after customers’ email addresses and phone numbers were leaked. During the same period, an employee of Amazon Web Services is said to have published passwords and data for AWS customers on Github. The company experienced a similar experience in September 2018, when Chinese employees of the online retailer sold sales metrics in relation to the marketplace in addition to customer data.