
Has Amazon been hacked (wrong author attributions) - gshubert17
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1?ie=UTF8&text=Booby+Brown&search-alias=books&field-author=Booby+Brown&sort=relevancerank
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thirtyseven
Amazon 3rd party book sellers can list whatever information they want for the
metadata. This is probably one seller's script gone wrong.

~~~
throwaway2016a
This. Or someone intentionally abusing the feature.

Although I was under the impression Amazon manages the metadata of products
they sell first-party.

Also, interestingly, all these books have different sellers that own the "buy
box".

Makes me wonder how Amazon chooses which seller's description and metadata to
use.

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gshubert17
Yesterday, when I looked up the newest book by Juval Noah Harari, "Homo Deus"
on Amazon, I noticed authorship was attributed to a "Booby Brown". This
author's list had 4,335 titles on it today. I let Amazon know about it
yesterday, and a robot sent this reply:

[http://imgur.com/a/UyvAe](http://imgur.com/a/UyvAe)

~~~
ktta
Yep, 4,335.

[https://www.amazon.com/s/&search-alias=books&field-
author=Bo...](https://www.amazon.com/s/&search-alias=books&field-
author=Booby+Brown)

archive in case amazon fixes it:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20170415003429/https://www.amazon...](http://web.archive.org/web/20170415003429/https://www.amazon.com/s/&search-
alias=books&field-author=Booby+Brown)

~~~
gshubert17
As of April 17, the authorship for "Homo Deus" was fixed, and the list was
down to 4,334. I just had a brief chat with Amazon about the whole list,
asking "I would be grateful if you would contact them, and have the Amazon
team begin to fix this."

Amazon replied, "Yes, definitely, I'll contact them right away and sent all
the details to fix this, you will able to see the changes within next week
starting as fast as possible."

I don't know how this happened, but as long as it gets fixed, I'm good.

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emeraldd
This is interest:

[https://www.amazon.com/Bell-Jar-Harry-
Hill/dp/0571245641/ref...](https://www.amazon.com/Bell-Jar-Harry-
Hill/dp/0571245641/ref=sr_1_36?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492216475&sr=1-36&refinements=p_27%3ABooby+Brown)

[https://www.amazon.com/Bell-Jar-Modern-
Classics/dp/006083702...](https://www.amazon.com/Bell-Jar-Modern-
Classics/dp/0060837020/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_3?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0060837020&pd_rd_r=MXK7XKHT11V9VTEQZV5H&pd_rd_w=ZCWpu&pd_rd_wg=qkdYZ&psc=1&refRID=MXK7XKHT11V9VTEQZV5H)

Two versions of the same book with different authors and covers. Makes me
wonder if someone screwed up putting inventory online for a book store, or is
attempting to pirate books....

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buildbot
If someone had access to change the amazon.com database entries for books,
wouldn't they have access to much more sensitive information? Why would they
make an obvious change like this?

Perhaps this is some internal joke default author name for testing that
somehow slipped out into production.

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amusedonion
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_booby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_booby)

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RijilV
I feel like I just fell for click bait.

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andrewguenther
A hack is probably the least likely explanation for this.

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peternicky
Very weird...I wonder if this is some new scam?

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nefitty
It could just be simple trolling, basically funnelling money away from authors
to some bureaucratic Amazon abyss. If it gets addressed I can only imagine the
trouble that lies ahead for anyone that attempts to claim royalties due.

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murtnowski
No

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Exuma
Lololol. That is funny but not funny.

