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 COLUMN
They are everywhere you want to be -- and even where you don't want them THEY KNOW WHERE you live. They know what you buy, where you go, and maybe even your friends. In fact, as they've made quite clear with the recent changes to their privacy policy, Amazon.com thinks they own you.
"The privacy policy artfully obscures the fact that it imposes no restrictions at all on [Amazon's] behavior," wrote one reader. "A large notice at the top [saying] 'We can do whatever we want with your information as long as we first say what we will do,' would be more to the point." "Amazon used to give you the option of writing to never@amazon.com so they'd never share your personal information with a third party," wrote another reader. "What's happened to that? It looks like they can share your information with anyone now, and you don't have an option to say no." Early reports about the new privacy policy focused on one particular term saying customer information would be one of the transferred assets "in the unlikely event that Amazon.com" is acquired by another company. That certainly deserves to be a point of controversy because it means Amazon customers won't be entitled to the same protection that privacy watchdogs argued Toysmart.com customers deserved when the online retailer liquidated its assets this year. The more I studied Amazon's new privacy policy, the clearer it became how that particular issue is something of a red herring. Just before the "unlikely event" provision, the policy states quite boldly that customer information is a business asset of Amazon's and that the company can buy and sell assets as it chooses while "we continue to develop our business." And the promise in Amazon's old privacy policy that they would not "sell, trade, or rent your personal information" was replaced by a provision claiming the right to share customer information with "affiliated businesses" -- virtually any company with which Amazon has dealings. And what kind of customer information can Amazon buy, sell, or otherwise transfer? Cleverly enough, this is detailed in secondary documents -- not the main policy. Information that is collected about you includes your e-mail address, postal address, telephone number, credit card information, social security number, driver's license number, purchase history, products you've searched for, your URL clickstream to and from Amazon's site, e-mail addresses of those on your Trusted Friends list, and people, including their addresses and phone numbers, to whom you've shipped purchases. It appears that even information about people who aren't customers can become Amazon's assets. Amazon spokesman Bill Curry argues that I am not interpreting the new privacy policy correctly. "The policy says very clearly that Amazon is not in the business of selling information about its customers," he says. "In the classic mail-order marketing sense, the list is not for sale." Under the policy, Curry points out, Amazon can share information related to the transaction only with business affiliates -- otherwise it must get each customer's consent. Curry adds that Amazon no longer needs a "never" address -- but it will honor people who signed up while it existed -- because the company has removed any doubt about what it might and might not share in the future. "The new policy is more stringent than the old one, because previously we said we might choose to share information in the future," Curry says. "We've removed the uncertainty, so 'never' goes away." I can agree the uncertainty is gone, but only because I think it's certain that Amazon will do as it pleases. I could argue point by point where the loopholes are in the restrictions Curry says Amazon is imposing on itself, but it's not worth the effort. Why not? Because this new one could change at any time. It contains a pointed sneakwrap term: "Our business changes constantly," it reads. "This Notice and the Conditions of Use will change also, and use of information that we gather now is subject to the Privacy Notice in effect at the time of use." Got that? The information they gather now is subject to the privacy policy in effect, then. Got a complaint about how a vendor is treating you? Contact InfoWorld's reader advocate, Ed Foster , at gripe@infoworld.com.  RELATED SUBJECTS  Business NewsE-CommerceSecurityDiscuss this article in our online forums MORE > SPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
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