As good an Amazon.com costumer as I am, I must confess that I had never read their privacy notice until today. In general, I have always been satisfied with Amazon, including their customer service, the variety of products it offers, and its ease of use. Therefore, I was not surprised to find that the privacy notice is clear and has been written with considerable respect towards the user. Nevertheless, it contains three statements which I would rather not see included in the site's policy and which are related to the user’s acceptance of the notice, third-party advertisers, and their suggestion because they can change their policy and thus the reader should visit it frequently.
1. By visiting, you accept. In its introductory paragraph, the Privacy Notice states that:
“By visiting Amazon.com, [the reader is] accepting the practices described in this
privacy notice.”
While I understand that they need to protect themselves from any privacy infringement lawsuits, I don’t think it is fair that “visiting” Amazon.com is enough to confirm acceptance. I wouldn’t be bothered if the sentence read that by “using” or by “becoming a member” of Amazon, the reader accepts the notice. I believe that once the reader becomes an active participant and user of the Web site’s features and especially when he consciously provides his personal information, he can be held accountable of the sites policies. However, if a person is just browsing around, or if he accidently lands on a particular Amazon page, the Web site should not have the right to use his information (including history of products he has looked at or any other surfing history information).
Since Amazon claims that everyone visiting their Web site is implicitly accepting their privacy notice, I think it would be more transparent if they made it clear from the moment a person first reaches their site. For instance, which ever page within the site you first landed on, a message could pop up saying that anyone visiting the Web site is subject to its privacy notice (with a hyperlink to the notice, of course). This way, nobody can claim that they weren’t warned about Amazon’s policies nor can they claim that their privacy was violated. This could become annoying for repeating users, so Amazon would need to make use of its cookie technology to only present the message to non-active or first time users.
2. Third-party Web sites and advertisers, or Internet advertising companies.
Amazon’s privacy notice states that they do not provide any
“personally identifiable costumer information to advertisers nor third-party web sites”
which is a commendable practice. However, they then state that the third- parties that advertise through their website could be using technology to gather information about the Amazon user. In other words, while Amazon is not providing third parties with their database of user information, it is giving them direct access so that they can gather it themselves.
Amazon, not only allows for this to happen, but also claims that it is not responsible for third-party practices and that those third-parties are not covered by the Amazon privacy notice. While it seems reasonable that they want to guard themselves of potential lawsuits, a user who wants to continue using the site, is left with very little options to protect themselves from the advertisers.
3. By the way, we could change this Notice and it’s up to you to find out if we do.
Towards the end of their policy, Amazon warns about the likelihood that because their business changes constantly, their privacy notice could change as well. I consider this a valid statement (especially in such a dynamic business environment we are living in today). However, I don’t think it is neither fair nor responsible on Amazon’s part to tell the reader that they should
“check [their] Web site frequently to see recent changes”.
They go on to say that they “may” send out notices by email, but still consider the reader to be responsible for making sure they become aware of any changes the site makes.
I think that a better way Amazon could approach this situation is that when a change is made to the privacy notice, every costumer (new or returning) that visits the site for the first time since the change, should get a message notifying them about the change and encouraging them to read the privacy policy.
I believe Amazon’s privacy policy has room for improvement in terms of when their policy becomes effective, in terms of what they allow third-party Web sites and advertisers to do when they become part of the Amazon Web site, and in terms of potential alterations to the notice. Nevertheless, overall the site’s privacy policy is quite comprehensive, clear, and respectful, considering the level of sophistication of their site, the amount of features, and the complexity of their business.
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