Earlier this month, Amazon hit the headlines, after it admitted that its staff could listen to customer conversations through Alexa smart speakers.
Now, a report has revealed that these staff could also have access to customers’ addresses.
The report, by Bloomberg , claims that five employees familiar with the programme admitted to having access to location data, that in some cases, could easily reveal customers’ home addresses.
It said: “Team members with access to Alexa users’ geographic coordinates can easily type them into third-party mapping software and find home residences, according to the employees, who signed nondisclosure agreements barring them from speaking publicly about the program.”
Amazon admits staff listen to customer conversations through Alexa smart speaker
While it remains unclear whether any reviewers actually did track down any customers, two members of staff expressed concerns about the access to Bloomberg.
The location data is collected by Amazon to help Alexa to make more accurate responses.
For example, if users ask which restaurants are nearby, Alexa can use the location data to suggest local restaurants.
In response to the report, Amazon said that it has ‘zero tolerance’ for abuse of its systems.
A statement said: “Access to internal tools is highly controlled, and is only granted to a limited number of employees who require these tools to train and improve the service by processing an extremely small sample of interactions.
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“Our policies strictly prohibit employee access to or use of customer data for any other reason, and we have a zero tolerance policy for abuse of our systems.
“We regularly audit employee access to internal tools and limit access whenever and wherever possible.”
Despite this, during a demonstration to Bloomberg, one of the Amazon staff was able to input a customer's coordinates into Google Maps, revealing their address in a matter of seconds.
This suggests that should other staff want to abuse the system, it wouldn't be difficult.
Mirror Online has contacted Amazon for comment.
