Amazon Says It is Investigating Claims That Its Employees Are Taking Bribes To Sell Internal Data To Merchants To Help Them Increase Their Sales on the Website (wsj.com) 56
Amazon.com is investigating internal leaks as it fights to root out fake reviews and other seller scams from its website, the company told WSJ. From the report: Employees of Amazon, primarily with the aid of intermediaries, are offering internal data and other confidential information that can give an edge to independent merchants selling their products on the site, according to sellers who have been offered and purchased the data, brokers who provide it and people familiar with internal investigations. 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 may embolden them to take risks. 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.
Amazon is investigating a number of cases involving employees, including some in the U.S., suspected of accepting these bribes, according to people familiar with the matter. An internal probe began in May after Eric Broussard, Amazon's vice president who oversees international marketplaces, was tipped off to the practice in China, according to people familiar with the matter. Amazon has since shuffled the roles of key executives in China to try to root out the bribery, one of these people said.
Amazon is investigating a number of cases involving employees, including some in the U.S., suspected of accepting these bribes, according to people familiar with the matter. An internal probe began in May after Eric Broussard, Amazon's vice president who oversees international marketplaces, was tipped off to the practice in China, according to people familiar with the matter. Amazon has since shuffled the roles of key executives in China to try to root out the bribery, one of these people said.
Corruption in China?!? (Score:4, Funny)
That doesn't sound right.
Re: Corruption in China?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Latest thing I read about was Chinese counterfeit bike helmets flooding ebay. They look like the real thing on the outside, right down to the stickers on the outside, but the crack apart like an eggshell in the standard drop test.
This is a country where makers of infant formula adulterate their products with cheap and toxic ingredients like melamine. Even though it was a huge scandal back in 2008, counterfeit formula remains a huge problem because the country's crony capitalist system is unwilling to enforce serious regulation. The problem doesn't exist in Hong Kong, which has to limit the cross border purchases of formula from Shenzen otherwise there wouldn't be enough formula for Hong Kong families.
The reason China is so dysfunctional when it comes to protecting consumers or the rights of non-Chinese companies is that its government sees its job as promoting Chinese business interests, and its senior politicians have close family ties to those interests. China regularly makes public examples of low level officials, or officials who are on the political outs, but the whole concept of the government as working hand-in-glove with business interests is corrupt.
Again contrast this to Hong Kong. Hong Kong is one of the least corrupt societies in the world, with government corruption indices that put it on par with Belgium or Iceland and significantly less corrupt than the US. China as a whole ranks down near Albania.
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The reason America is so dysfunctional when it comes to protecting consumers or the rights of non-American companies is that its government sees its job as promoting American business interests, and its senior politicians have close family ties to those interests. America regularly makes public examples of low level officials, or officials who are on the political outs, but the whole concept of the government as working hand-in-glove with business interests is corrupt.
FTFY.
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Business as usual, amazons policies are to blame. (Score:2)
The chinese probably view it as business as usual, as you sure can't buy consultation from amazon themselves on what you can sell, what exact documents do you need to prove yourself and all that(photos, company registrations, proof of location, house book, hope your dynamic ip or vpn provider was never attached to any other seller and so forth).
Like, Amazon puts on a face like that they tell you enough on their website, but they really don't and they do that on purpose to battle scammers, but they also scre
secret laws (Score:1)
It's almost like a regime of secret laws (seller regulations) leads to confusion, arbitrary & capricious judgements, and inability to conduct legitimate business without inside connections or bribery. Who knew?!
Maybe it's time for a new standard in transparency. No more allowing big companies with serious market power - the ability to make or break smaller companies - to impose secret laws on their users. These regulations need to be public - so legitimate businesses can understand & follow them, a
Not a matter of data privacy (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing Amazon is pissed of at here is that they're not the ones turning a profit selling the metrics. It's just a matter of employees stealing and reselling company property. That's all. The story is no different from (and no more interesting than) McDonald's employees cooking and selling fries for themselves.
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Exactly. Bezos gets really pissed off if anyone makes money on Amazon operations aside from himself.
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The only thing Amazon is pissed of at here is that they're not the ones turning a profit selling the metrics. It's just a matter of employees stealing and reselling company property. That's all. The story is no different from (and no more interesting than) McDonald's employees cooking and selling fries for themselves.
It is a bit different, actually. Sharing data doesn't cause shrinkage, so the company isn't really losing money, here, like McDonald's does when fries go missing.
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profit selling the metrics
You can bet Amazon will squash this right quick. Meanwhile counterfeit products, astroturfing and all manner of other scams are perpetrated endlessly and Amazon can't seem to make a dent in any of it...
Amazon could deal with this easily and quickly; just make the market data readily available and inexpensive for everyone and the "problem" vanishes.
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The only thing Amazon is pissed of at here is that they're not the ones turning a profit selling the metrics. It's just a matter of employees stealing and reselling company property. That's all. The story is no different from (and no more interesting than) McDonald's employees cooking and selling fries for themselves.
The interesting part is that Amazon employees have access to the data. Why is that? Why does any employee have access to any user data that they don't directly need to do their job? Customer service reps should only be able to access data for individual accounts, not bulk data. Engineers building the systems should have access to no user data at all. System administrator access should be split: Most sysadmins should have access only to encrypted data, but not the keys used to decrypt it. The admins that
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Privacy? Security? WTF? (Score:1)
How Dare They Do This!!! (Score:1)
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more likely??? (Score:2, Funny)
Typical (Score:5, Interesting)
This is precisely the sort of thing that workers do in China. It's funny, as I read the summary I thought "Chinese culture is spreading to America?" only to find out it was indeed in China. Yeah, the workers are paid shit and view it as their obligation to make money however they can. Men in particular are viewed as pack mules whose job it is to make money for an entire family. The family ruthlessly badgers the man to make more, make more, make more. When he makes more, they spend more. It never ends.
When he can't make enough in salary, they badger him to - not exactly steal? But use whatever position he has to utilize the employer's resources to make money for his family. Selling data is right up this alley. You can't even call it theft because nobody lost anything. It's win-win: the merchants sell more, the worker makes money he turns over to his family, the family can afford to purchase status symbols that make them look good in the eyes of people they know. This is actually a "good" case because nobody got hurt. Typically in a situation like this some middle manager substitutes shoddy materials in a product and pockets the difference, which can and does result in harm to real people.
" nobody got hurt"? (Score:3, Insightful)
> This is actually a "good" case because nobody got hurt.
From the summary:
> a service to delete negative reviews and restore banned Amazon accounts
So people now buy dangerous, shoddy goods, believing them to be high quality. And nobody got hurt?
A well paid workforce is more resistant to bribery (Score:2)
A well paid workforce is more resistant to bribery. Not impervious, of course, but a least somewhat resistant.
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Indeed, the big problem with a workforce who know they're entirely disposable (and are paid like that) is that they can probably pick up an equally bad job elsewhere. They essentially risk nothing when indulging in some low level corruption (since companies almost never prosecute for fear of exposing the problem) and it's quite clear there's no loyalty running either direction, so there's little emotional cost to "betraying" their employer.
But the same holds for society in general. You want to ensure that
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A well paid workforce is more resistant to bribery. Not impervious, of course, but a least somewhat resistant.
So, you think we need to pay our politicians MORE MONEY?
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Desperate people do desperate things.
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Amazon pay (Score:4, Insightful)
As well, Amazon employees in China have relatively small salaries, which may embolden them to take risks.
Not sure why I have to point this out, but the US employees are in the same boat. Plus, Amazon treats them like crap.
So no sympathy for Amazon in this - it's of their own doing. When you know your employer is raking in big bucks and only dropping you crumbs, you tend to want to find ways to cash in yourself. Amazon does it themselves - these guys just want in on the deal.
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TFS included this quote from the team that wrote TFA:
As well, Amazon employees in China have relatively small salaries, which may embolden them to take risks.
Prompting Curunir_wolf to observe:
Not sure why I have to point this out, but the US employees are in the same boat. Plus, Amazon treats them like crap.
So no sympathy for Amazon in this - it's of their own doing. When you know your employer is raking in big bucks and only dropping you crumbs, you tend to want to find ways to cash in yourself. Amazon does it themselves - these guys just want in on the deal.
This has nothing to do with the "fulfillment" staff (i.e. - the warehouse workforce). The individuals who are selling confidential information (and, apparently, unauthorized account restorations) are office workers. They can't be mere drones, either, because access to that data is undoubtedly restricted to the ranks of managers and above. That makes them better-paid than the average Chinese Amazonian. They're simply greed
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the Chinese have, for literally centuries, been known as the "Jews of Asia"
Wish i could upvote 5 times
Because you're a racist anti-Semite too?
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When an AC responded:
Wish i could upvote 5 times
To my post as a whole, Curunir_wolf took the following quote out of context:
the Chinese have, for literally centuries, been known as the "Jews of Asia"
Then sneered:
Because you're a racist anti-Semite too?
You're an Olympic-quality conclusion-jumper.
You also neatly managed to dodge my point - so, congratulations on achieving the Full Slashdot.
What I stated about the historical characterization of Chinese business practices (which is not exclusive to the West [malaysia-today.net]) is fact.
Just because I happen to have read history, does not mean I approve of such characterizations, however commonplace they once were. I hav
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congratulations on achieving the Full Slashdot.
:) Thanks!!
Just because I happen to have read history, does not mean I approve of such characterizations, however commonplace they once were.
Still, it was a good quip, wasn't it? I mean, I don't get setups for those kinds of digs very often. I thought that came out pretty sharp! So thanks for that.
Rule 10 Be precise in your speech
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I've been dealing with Amazon for 8 years. Trust me, they are drones. Spend some time on the seller forums.
A glaring example of this from earlier this year is when a seller called in to get help with a policy issue. The person "at" Amazon wound up using the Amazon forums and unknowingly cited a forum post from the caller themselves as an answer.
If you see anything online abo
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kingbilly responded
I've been dealing with Amazon for 8 years. Trust me, they are drones. Spend some time on the seller forums.
A glaring example of this from earlier this year is when a seller called in to get help with a policy issue. The person "at" Amazon wound up using the Amazon forums and unknowingly cited a forum post from the caller themselves as an answer.
If you see anything online about Amazon Customer Service being outsourced, note that isn't limited to buyer interactions. It is the entire marketplace platform. People who can end your business of multiple employees, because they are in fact drones who don't understand left from right.
The people who answer the phone are not managers. Most of the time - and this goes for basically every tech company across the board - they are, indeed, drones, reading from a script, without the authority to wipe their own butts.
And that's exactly my point ...
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Not sure why I have to point this out, but the US employees are in the same boat. Plus, Amazon treats them like crap.
Is this true of the office workers who might have access to bulk data? The stories about low pay and bad work environments have all been about people working the warehouse floors. Judging by the job offers from Amazon that have come my way, what you say isn't true of professional and managerial positions.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Score:2)
Latin is no longer widely used, but the ancient Romans weren't stupid.
Of course (Score:1)
Why would you build shit in China (Score:1)
Say you are a French Company building quadcopters using cheap Chines labor. Before the design is finalized the plans will be in the offices of a Chinese competitor who will out class your product and build it Cheaper.
Chines are loyal to Chines. The rest of the world should follow their lead. It it cheaper in the short term to build in China. In the long run you are mortgaging your future. There is something seriously wrong if it is cheaper to build shit 12000 miles away and float it over an ocean in a
Expected (Score:2)
This is a risk you run if you underpay your employees as they become easy targets.
An outside source offers any of your employees half of their yearly salary if they'll do them a tiny ' favor ' and of course they're going to find someone who will jump on it.
Especially dangerous for all of your outsourced / offshore employees where you're paying them $20 a day.
Offer one of them $10k and they'll do anything you want.
Think about that when you outsource the positions who have access to critical or sensitive part
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wierd reviews (Score:2)
I do enjoy it when the reviews get to be tongue-in-cheek, there are plenty of examples. But I only just saw the reviews for these apple headphone adaptors [amazon.com] which are apparently...
The best martial art training product...
An excellent popup tent
If you like your whiskey neat and your rifles wooden, this ones for you
I wonder how much you have to pay to get reviews like that