An article at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that Amazon has filed a patent application for creating much more detailed, shareable databases of customer information than they currently provide. One of the purposes of the database is to allow Amazon to hone its suggestions about gifts you might purchase for another Amazon user; obviously, there are broader implications, given recent US goverment suits to gain access to online records. Draw your own conclusions.
Such a database would include the gender, date of birth, interests, occupation, education, income level, residence, race and ethnicity of customers for Amazon's "gift clustering" program.
Customers already willingly disclose some personal information on the site -- to create a "wish list" of desired products, for example. The larger potential database would go beyond that.
"Even if a customer does not know demographic information or interests of a possible recipient, the system may be able to access such information from a user profile for the recipient, from past ordering patterns of the recipient, or from publicly accessible databases," the patent application said.
In the article, an Amazon rep denies that Amazon is implementing the program. But the patent makes sense from a business perspective: If you get an idea about an innovative product, patents are a strategic move you can make while you evaluate their worth (patents are relatively cheap for companies). And research has shown that people are alarmingly free with their personal data if you give them an online outlet (see MySpace) or some extremely minor reward for doing so. My guess that if Amazon developed the tech and deployed it, there'd be a relatively small number of protests, and a huge publish rush to embrace it. (Which is too bad, but I've gotten over being amazed by what large numbers of the population will do.)
[via Slashdot]
Posted by johndanseven at August 12, 2006 11:41 PM | TrackBack