Online Social Networks and E-Commerce - MIT Computer Science ...

Clarence Lee and Shirley Fung
demonstrate a compelling need for the information and we believe the request may compromise customer
privacy interests.” Even though there is a good amount of privacy protection on sale, we believe that there
are other kinds of sensitive data collected by Amazon.com that might not be protected any specific law.
Purchase History
By purchasing, bidding, or auctioning items on Amazon, the history of such actions are stored on Amazon
servers. Information stored include the timestamp of purchase, shipping and billing information (i.e.
credit card information), and items that you have purchased. These records are covered as sale records
with limited privacy protection.
Wish Lists
Customers may also choose to use online wish lists for holiday shopping and wedding registries. These
wish lists stores the products that he/she is interested in, and is very informative for figuring out
individual consumer behavior and market demand.
Browsing History and Other Automatic Information
The Web site also collects information whenever the user interacts with Amazon.com. As noted in
Amazon.com’s Privacy Notice, examples of the automatic information collected on the Web site are
(Amazon.com, 2007):
• Internet Protocol (IP) address of the user
• login, email address, password
• browser type, version, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform
• time zone setting,
• full Uniform Resource Locator (URL) click stream to, through, and from Amazon.com
• date and time of the clicks, cookie number
• products viewed or searched for
• cookie data
• session information
o response times
o download errors
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