Amazon Database
Amazon.com is developing a system to gather and keep massive amounts of intimate information about its millions of shoppers, including their religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity and income.
The database, which would combine information disclosed voluntarily by customers with facts gleaned from public databases, conceivably would give Amazon a larger or more detailed profile of its customers than any other retailer.
The Seattle-based company, with 59 million active customers, said it has no immediate plan to implement such a program. Its ability to do so emerged in a detailed patent application with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, disclosed Thursday.
A privacy expert said customers should be wary about Amazon having the capability to gather such a large amount of detailed information.
She said the data could end up in the hands of the myriad retailers that do business with the company, or with government officials or hackers.
"Amazon never ceases to amaze me," said Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C.
"If they create this database, it will be used for other purposes. ... They are really creating something worth a great deal of value that will help their company."
The patent disclosure comes at a time of heightened awareness over online security and a rash of recent security breaches.
AOL recently published a list of more than 650,000 user queries that revealed names, addresses and Social Security numbers, and the company this week apologized and removed the data, but it's unknown how many copies of the sensitive information were made.
Amazon's pending patent, which would bar competitors from replicating the company's process for gathering information, details how it could compile data from customers to create a profile of products that a person might want to buy.
Such a database would include the gender, date of birth, interests, occupation, education, income level, residence,
The database, which would combine information disclosed voluntarily by customers with facts gleaned from public databases, conceivably would give Amazon a larger or more detailed profile of its customers than any other retailer.
The Seattle-based company, with 59 million active customers, said it has no immediate plan to implement such a program. Its ability to do so emerged in a detailed patent application with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, disclosed Thursday.
A privacy expert said customers should be wary about Amazon having the capability to gather such a large amount of detailed information.
She said the data could end up in the hands of the myriad retailers that do business with the company, or with government officials or hackers.
"Amazon never ceases to amaze me," said Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C.
"If they create this database, it will be used for other purposes. ... They are really creating something worth a great deal of value that will help their company."
The patent disclosure comes at a time of heightened awareness over online security and a rash of recent security breaches.
AOL recently published a list of more than 650,000 user queries that revealed names, addresses and Social Security numbers, and the company this week apologized and removed the data, but it's unknown how many copies of the sensitive information were made.
Amazon's pending patent, which would bar competitors from replicating the company's process for gathering information, details how it could compile data from customers to create a profile of products that a person might want to buy.
Such a database would include the gender, date of birth, interests, occupation, education, income level, residence,