
Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes - ikeboy
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-investigates-employees-leaking-data-for-bribes-1537106401
======
clubm8
> _The practice, which violates company policy, is particularly pronounced in
> China, according to some of these people, because the number of sellers
> there is skyrocketing. As well, Amazon employees in China have relatively
> small salaries, which emboldens them to take risks._

Sounds like Amazon is finding out the hard way that you need to pay for
_trust_ , not just skill.

When you pay the absolute bare minimum to your employees, coupled with other
coercive practices, you drastically increase the chances they will steal.

There's a reason casino cage cashiers don't make minimum wage despite it being
a low skill job, and it's not out of the goodness of their hearts.

~~~
userbinator
Don't forget that China is ultimately a far more collectivist society, and
stuff like this happens all the time. The money just provides additional
motivation; people's natural tendency is to share things.

~~~
benologist
Where possible Bezos has Western employees pissing in bottles and penalized
for taking sick days, working without vacations, retirement savings and health
care supplemented with food stamps and tent-camps so it's pretty generous to
blame Chinese culture for toxicity from the top.

~~~
analog31
Indeed, the "data leaks" that Amazon experiences in the US are people taking
pictures of their working conditions and sharing them with the public.

------
WisNorCan
In a company approaching a million employees, someone is doing something
illegal/unethical every day.

At that scale it doesn’t say anything about the culture as you are observing
the outer ranges of a distribution.

~~~
nostromo
That’s why you build systems that don’t allow for abuse whenever possible. And
when it’s not possible, you create an audit trail.

For example, I trust Google to make my individual search history difficult for
employees to access, specific search results difficult to change, and
confidential data difficult to access.

~~~
jjeaff
Do you have any reason to have that trust? Absent any evidence, I'm inclined
to think that they do very little to protect my data. Had they any stringent
controls in place, I feel like their PR or marketing would have communicated
some of the specifics publicly.

~~~
rifung
We definitely have systems in place so that employees can not just randomly
look at customer data, and when it is necessary it is always logged.

Even if we need to debug customer issues we would need a good reason to look
at data over just metadata. There are strict requirements for what can go in
logs and dashboards also as you can imagine.

> Absent any evidence, I'm inclined to think that they do very little to
> protect my data.

Well I think the evidence is mostly that people aren't having their personal
data leaked by Google employees isn't it?

~~~
jlarocco
Are those logs available anywhere? Can users see when Google employees have
looked at their data? Have those systems been audited by a third party to
ensure they're working properly?

I'm sure most Google employees are good people, but your basically telling
everybody to trust you that Google's doing it right, but not providing any
evidence to back it up.

~~~
Latteland
I used to work at google too. End users don't get casually notified when
someone looks at their data. But there are definitely audit logs inside the
company. I worked on a product and you couldn't look at the data without
running a special command, logging in with your account and describing what
you were doing, and they audited those afterwards (didn't happen too much I
guess). Here's an article about someone fired when I worked there
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/8003925/Google...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/8003925/Google-
engineer-fired-for-privacy-breach-after-stalking-and-harrassing-
teenagers.html)

~~~
walshemj
I know of cases in telecoms where a couple of BT workers got 10+ years for
conspiracy - provided information to a gangland hitman to murderer someone's
parents.

And anecdotally in BT you would hope if you got caught for naughty shit you
would rather the Local Police, The Met or The Service caught you instead of
the internal security.

------
mc32
This principally is for Amazon China and not the US where despite years of
complaints Amazon has done little to visibly counter the same effects and
issues.

To wit: "In exchange for payments ranging from roughly $80 to more than
$2,000, brokers for Amazon employees in Shenzhen are offering internal sales
metrics and reviewers’ email addresses, as well as a service to delete
negative reviews and restore banned Amazon accounts, the people said."

While not holding my breath, I hope amazon USA will take its issues in the US
seriously and mitigate fake reviews and the issue with comingling bad and good
inventories.

~~~
amelius
Shouldn't there just be a law stating that doing such things as deleting
negative reviews is fraud?

~~~
mc32
A problem is many reviews are for a lack of a better term, unrigorous. Some
are outright wrong (unrelated to item), vengeful (maybe comes up short,
competitor), and of course astroturfing.

So basically they are a signal, and bad actors act in bad faith, but there are
also just people who don’t review properly or who don’t add context to their
reviews.

A more thorough system would be a bit more expensive. Gor example allowing
either subject or reviewer a right to appeal to an arbiter, etc.,

------
gesman
That's how Costco survives and prospers in Amazon era.

By not exposing customers to shady vendors, misleading metrics and
questionable product rankings based on fake reviews.

~~~
anoncoward111
Yes but Costco only has a specific set of things that I'm looking for,
sometimes in too high quantities and at a price point that is not particularly
amazing

~~~
reaperducer
_Yes but Costco only has a specific set of things that I 'm looking for_

I think, as a society, we're going to have to get away from the notion that
buying everything in one place is the ideal.

We distribute computing, diversify investments, and decentralize everything
from government offices to manufacturing. I think a certain amount of
decentralization in shopping is OK if it means I don't have to deal with
Amazon's counterfeit products, fake reviews, and conmen.

If I have to go back to the days of buying my groceries at the grocery store,
my hardware at the hardware store, and my computers at the computer store, I'm
OK with that.

I travel out of my way to go to a real butcher where I can see the cows going
in the back of the building, and the results in the cold case in front. I know
the meat hasn't been frozen ( _cough_ Whole Foods _cough_ ), isn't in storage
so long it has to be pumped full of gas to keep its color, and if I want
exactly six ounces of something, I watch the guy cut it fresh right in front
of my eyes.

He's also an asshole, but I'd rather deal with his attitude than the perils,
known and unknown, of a retail experience 100% controlled by an algorithm with
no pride or ethics.

~~~
Kalium
Is it perhaps possible that your priorities might not find a reflection in all
hearts?

Many people do not regard the time, energy, and resources that go into the
logistics of managing many vendors to be good investments for them. This can
be compared to distributed computing, somewhat distributed manufacturing,
distributed government, and diversified financial portfolios. Each of the
items you so correctly, wisely, and rightly point to comes with significant
cost efficiencies and significant energy in reducing any inefficiencies
introduced.

I know a great many people who appreciate very high-quality meat of the sort
you describe. The number who are willing to invest significantly into the
personal logistics required to obtain it could potentially be a somewhat
smaller number. To say nothing of the price premium generally demanded by such
a specialist, or the impact this might have on household budgets with limited
flexibility.

It's worth thinking about why department stores might have became popular,
long ago, displacing a series of highly specialized expert vendors. It's
perhaps even possible that an analogy of a distributed computer system might
lead a lesser intellect than yours astray.

~~~
reaperducer
_Many people do not regard the time, energy, and resources that go into the
logistics of managing many vendors to be good investments for them_

I don't disagree with this at all. I was one of those people for many years.
But more and more I'm not that person anymore.

I don't think it's a good thing that one method (the all-centralized
Amazon/Wal-Mart/Costco/Meijer hypermarket) be elevated to the status that it
has, where it's seen as the epitome of retail evolution. It has been allowed
to destroy other forms of retail because it uses euphemisms like "disrupt"
instead of "destroy" and "value added" instead of "predatory." It pretends to
be a tech company and not a retailer that's really really good and developing
and implementing technology.

Just because the Amazon monster is wanted by a certain group of people doesn't
mean that the other methods don't have value. That's why there's such a
movement among hipsters (are they still a thing?) and others to shun the mass
market in favor of more thoughtful methonds, online or otherwise.

I think Amazon is great, and I still use it on occasion, but we shouldn't
deify a business model. As you noted, department stores were once the
fashionable thing. One day Amazon's methods will also seem passé.

~~~
Kalium
Is it perhaps possible that Amazon has been so very successful because they
have indeed added value by reducing the personal logistics required of a great
many people? Coupling that with equivalent or better prices is a substantial
addition of value, rather than predatory, in the eyes of many.

From personal experiences, I do not view taking the time out of my day to go
to the household goods store for toilet paper, paying 10% more than Amazon
charges, and transporting it home to be of greater value than Amazon's
offering. Of course, there are exceptional scenarios where this might shift
(e.g., out of toilet paper), but I expect a great many people would agree with
my approach. I understand you and some others may prefer to pay extra in both
money and time with your local generic housewares vendor.

You're absolutely right that other approaches have value to some people. It
may be worth considering that not all people are likely to agree with the
status-seeking behavior patterns of the hipsters, even when they take the form
of favoring things purportedly thoughtful.

And obviously - so obviously I thought it never needed to be said by anyone -
no business model should ever be deified. We do seem to be at a local maximum
in some ways, that's all.

Incidentally, where would you draw the line between "tech company" and
"company that's really, really good at developing, deploying, and gaining
economic efficiencies from technology"?

------
lgats
[https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/amazon-investigates-
employe...](https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/amazon-investigates-employees-
leaking-data-for-bribes-1537106401)

~~~
koolba
That redirect site is priceless.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Although you pay a privacy hit (facebook gets it) this one
([https://outline.com/AsPP9t](https://outline.com/AsPP9t)) not so much. And of
course Blendle.com for when you are willing to pay to read one article in the
WSJ but don't want to subscribe.

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/nhMMI](http://archive.is/nhMMI)

------
onetimemanytime
Not surprising, here's a scenario: It's 2007. A poker company, a credit card
aff site or a lawyer referral service offers $250K cash to a Google Search
employee for tips on how to rank #1 for their top keywords. Even $1 Million if
it lasts for x months. All you need is b*lls, er audacity, which exists in
certain pockets, and a little time to find a connection. I think they would be
takers. Ranking on top would be worth (back then at least) tens of millions so
why not share the FU money?

------
3pt14159
I've been wondering why this doesn't happen more often now that the crypto
game has figured out international payments.

~~~
GenericsMotors
Probably because crypto is only useful insofar as it can be converted into
useful fiat currencies, which means that it can be tracked.

~~~
MrLeap
Tons of bullion exchanges will allow you to buy precious metals with
cryptocoin. How trackable is it if someone uses a new wallet for each
transaction, and has their gold bars shipped to model homes and abandoned
property within ~25-50 miles of their location?

If you're speaking in absolutes, you're not using your imagination!

I can think of tons of schemes to anonymously extract real world spending
power from crypto coins..

~~~
GenericsMotors
None of those are particularly expedient, but you have a point.

Crypto, the not-so-fast bullion-based international payment system. Perhaps
the perpetrators might have better luck sending each other USD notes by mail
instead.

------
asdf1234tx
On a some what related note, I read that google allows people to read my
email. Google itself, and third parties.

I've got friends who store important authentication, financial, and legal
information in their emails.

Makes me wonder about some of the btc thefts where the vector was never
determined, and the victim was fairly competent.

~~~
Ivoirians
If you read that original WSJ article, Google allows companies to access your
email if you give them access to your email. As in, if you install e.g. Kiwi
[1] and agree to let them manage your inbox, then they have API keys that they
could use to read your emails. Sometimes users just give their
username/password to the 3rd party.

But, like I said when the original story came out, those headline writers
really know what they're doing. "Google allows 3rd parties to read emails"
directly implies your incorrect interpretation. Like, even on the original
article, people who hadn't read it were expressing shock in the comment
section that their personal emails were being read by Google engineers.

[1] [https://www.kiwiforgmail.com/](https://www.kiwiforgmail.com/)

------
dmix
> Amazon has worked hard to stop sellers from gaming its systems, but it can
> sometimes be a Whac-A-Mole situation as swindlers get more creative

This is true in all security problems.

------
pmcollins
I was puzzled this week when I received an email offering me $30 to delete an
accurate, but negative review I posted a few weeks ago. I also received yet
another counterfeit item recently. Retailers should be happy about the rate at
which Amazon is squandering trust.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Wait, think twice? When the bounty is $30 apiece? I'm going to go write me a
minivan

------
clubm8
This sounds interesting, does someone have a non-paywalled source?

~~~
throwawaymath
Sure: [https://outline.com/AsPP9t](https://outline.com/AsPP9t)

------
itwy
> casino cage cashiers don't make minimum wage

They actually do. Google it. It's below minimum.

~~~
paulcole
How can it possibly be below minimum?

~~~
perl4ever
I found no evidence they are paid less than minimum wage, but I did find some
claims casino-goers in the US are expected to tip cashiers, so perhaps the
assumption is they are paid a tipped minimum wage instead of a regular one?
That is not how jobs seem to be advertised though.

~~~
mikestew
I’m no high roller, nor even much of a casino customer anymore, but having
cashed in many tens of thousands of dollars of chips it would have never
occurred to me to tip a cage cashier. They seem so disinterested in the fact
that I’m standing there, it is not like they’re _trying_ for tips. Nor have I
even heard it mentioned. Now, I’m not a complete rube as I tip table and wait
staff (heavily, if I’ve won big). But the person doing what I expect a casino
to do: exchange their fake money for fiat? Never.

