Amazon suffers customer data breach in run-up to crucial shopping weekend

By

Robin Driver

Published
Nov 22, 2018

With Black Friday, one of the most important shopping days of the year, only two days away, e-commerce giant Amazon.com, Inc. has exposed several customers’ names and e-mail addresses on its website due to a “technical error”.

 
In a short statement made on Wednesday, the company assured, “We have fixed the issue and informed customers who may have been impacted.”

Affected Amazon users received an e-mail from the company, which has since been widely shared on social media, stating: “We’re contacting you to let you know that our website inadvertently disclosed your email address due to a technical error. The issue has been fixed. This is not a result of anything you have done, and there is no need for you to change your password or take any other action.”

Despite the e-tailer’s reassurances that those impacted by the breach need not take any further action, both Amazon users and digital experts have voiced their concerns over the gravity of the data leak.
 
Indeed, Richard Walters, chief technical officer of cybersecurity firm CensorNet was quoted in British newspaper The Guardian as saying that “Cyber-criminals can do a lot of damage with a large database of names and emails.”
 
“If you’ve been affected, make sure you change your passwords quickly,” he urged.
 
With retailers gearing up for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it’s difficult to think of a worse time for Amazon to have dropped the ball on security, as the slip-up will no doubt undermine consumers’ confidence in the platform going into the biggest shopping weekend of the year.
 
This situation could well be further compounded by the fact that the e-commerce company was affected by a similar breach just over a month ago.

Amazon has not yet revealed the exact nature of the technical error that caused the data breach, nor how many of its users were affected.