[BreachExchange] Amazon investigating reports of employees leaking data for bribes

[Destry Winant]

https://globalnews.ca/news/4458379/amazon-investigating-reports-of-employees-leaking-data-for-bribes/

Amazon Inc. is looking into whether its employees are selling
confidential data and using other tactics to inflate rankings for
independent retailers.

Sources told The Wall Street Journal that some employees are accepting
bribes from the independent merchants for things like deleting bad
reviews of a product, or providing internal sales metrics and
reviewers email addresses.

The information or actions taken then help the independent retailers’
products appear on the first few pages of Amazon’s search, which the
Journal says would boost their sales.

The bribes are taking place all over the world, though most of them
are in China, WSJ reports.

Responding to the report, an Amazon spokesperson told Global News that
they hold their employees to “a high ethical standard” and that any
employee who violates the code of ethics faces discipline.

“In addition, we have zero tolerance for abuse of our systems and if
we find bad actors who have engaged in this behavior, we will take
swift action against them, including terminating their selling
accounts, deleting reviews, withholding funds, and taking legal
action,” the spokesperson said.

“We are conducting a thorough investigation of these claims.”

According to the WSJ, Amazon’s vice president of international
marketplaces found out about the practice in China.

The employees are offered between US$80 and US$2,000 with the average
rate for a deleted review at US$300.

It’s cheaper to buy the emails of real reviewers, WSJ reports, to
allow retailers to reach out and offer discounts or deals in an
attempt to persuade them to change their review.

Other statistics up for sale? The number of times a product has been
viewed (a.k.a. the amount of clicks), the number of searches, or
advertising information.

Fake or manipulated reviews aren’t new: in 2015 Amazon sued more than
1,000 people for writing fake reviews for money, and another study
found 20 per cent of Yelp restaurant reviews are fake.

“More recently we’re seeing a lot of alarming reports on the
credibility/trustworthiness of reviews on all platforms, not just
Amazon,” Nura Jabagi, MBA and PhD candidate in Business Technology
Management at Columbia University, told Global News.