For years, Amazon has been keeping something from you.

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Illustration by Tyler Comrie

For years, Amazon has been keeping something from you: It’s handled your information much less carefully than it handles your packages.

That’s one of the key takeaways from Reveal reporter Will Evans’ stunning new investigation, based on internal documents prepared for Amazon’s top leaders: its CEO, CFO and general counsel.

But this isn’t one of those data security stories about hypothetical risks. The documents, and interviews with former information security officials, show the threats were real and they were pervasive.

Some examples:
* Employees used their data privileges to snoop on the purchases of celebrities like Kanye West.
* Employees took bribes to help shady sellers sabotage competitors’ businesses, doctor Amazon’s review system and sell knockoff products to unsuspecting customers.
* The names and American Express card numbers of up to 24 million customers had sat in the wrong place on Amazon’s internal network for years, with the security team unable to establish definitively whether they’d been unduly accessed.
* A Chinese data firm had been harvesting millions of customers’ information in a scheme reminiscent of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica debacle.

In short: Amazon had thieves in its house and sensitive data streaming out beyond its walls.

Our new podcast and digital story dig deep into the causes and consequences of Amazon’s data failures.

Listen: Amazon Leaks ([link removed])

Read: Inside Amazon’s Failures to Protect Your Data: Internal Voyeurs, Bribery Scandals and Backdoor Schemes ([link removed]) (in collaboration with WIRED)

This story is the latest in our series investigating Amazon ([link removed]) . Our previous stories have led regulators to crack down on Amazon’s workplace safety practices and inspired California to create a new law taking aim at the production quotas behind the company’s workplace safety crisis.

We hope you’ll check out these new stories and share them with your networks. And we’re grateful that you follow and support this work.

Thanks,

Andy Donohue

Executive Editor

The truth won’t reveal itself. Help us deliver the stories that make a difference. Donate today.
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