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Amazon Reveals Embarrassing Purchases To Make Privacy Point

Written by Evan Schuman
April 22nd, 2010
In its latest move to defend itself against state taxation, Amazon.com on Monday (April 19) sued North Carolina officials for seeking customer names, declaring that "the disclosure will invade the privacy and violate the First Amendment rights of Amazon and its customers on a massive scale." To make its case, the federal filing lists several of the North Carolina purchases Amazon considers to be most embarrassing.

There's no small amount of irony that Amazon—which has a well-earned reputation of leveraging every piece of customer information in any way possible to boost sales—is the one making this privacy argument. It's as though Amazon is channeling a classic line from Animal House: "He can't do that to our pledges. Only we can do that to our pledges."

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Posted in CRM, E-Commerce, IT Strategy/Industry, Premium Content, Security/Fraud
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2 Comments | Read Amazon Reveals Embarrassing Purchases To Make Privacy Point

  1. Lee Says:
    April 22nd, 2010 at 9:24 am

    The book titles they mentioned were certainly a lot more suggestive than the ‘embarrassing’ movies or music! And what about the toys and other merchandise they sell?

  2. Kevin Ertell Says:
    April 22nd, 2010 at 11:52 am

    Nice piece, Evan. I love that you managed to work in quote from both Animal House and the Godfather. :-)

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