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The article missed one huge factor: date farming by AWS/Amazon. If one has data on pricing and sales across retail and online channels on a national scale, how

The article missed one huge factor: date farming by AWS/Amazon. If one has data on pricing and sales across retail and online channels on a national scale, how risky would a purchase of a retailer really be? Not much, as you can pivot towards high sales, high profit products without doubting your strategy Target, Walmart & other retailers de-risked Amazon's purchase of wholefoods

Gaelan 9y ago
Do we know Amazon's policy on "peeking" into people's AWS data? I feel like they would have something against that in their ToS/Privacy Policy.
- mankash666 9y ago
  They're the system admins on all their managed databases. Think about it
  - SallySwanSmith 9y ago
    and lose any credibility? Lets throw away our entire cloud revenue to look at the raw data rather then scraping the public site? Please. This is tin foil hat crazy
    - icebraining 9y ago
      The public site doesn't give you the sales numbers.
      - SallySwanSmith 9y ago
        Just ask your suppliers for those. It’s not overly secretive
  - foxylion 9y ago
    If they do it there would be someine at some point who would leak information about this. And this will probably much worse than loosing some customers. Nonetheless with Amazon Marketplace they already habe a platform where they know every transaction, price and product from third parties.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - linkregister 9y ago
    Not that Target is well-known to be good at security, but if AWS was discovered snooping on their data that would probably be the end of their business. Not to mention the tsunami of lawsuits launched by other companies spooked by the scandal. I can't imagine any manager or engineer willing to risk their career doing so. Then again, a director at Volkswagen agreed to intentionally cheat emissions tests, so perhaps an Amazon employee would be foolish enough to snoop on Target's data.
    - nodesocket 9y ago
      > but if AWS was discovered snooping on their data that would probably be the end of their business. Not to mention the tsunami of lawsuits launched by other companies spooked by the scandal. I can't imagine any manager or engineer willing to risk their career doing so. Absolutely correct. Mutually assured destruction[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction
    - cm2187 9y ago
      I can't imagine an engineer creating a Diesel engine designed for fraud. But it happened. I'd say that in a company with an aggressive business culture like Amazon this is only more likely.
      - origami777 9y ago
        What's the cost/benefit of them doing that to Target? On the upside they could see what's selling well, what margins they have, etc. What's the net value of that information to their retail unit? I'd say it's probably very small. On the downside, they could lose their most profitable business unit. Check out all the audits they go through. If you're an enterprise customer with this concern you can get access to those audit reports and see if it's one of the things being looked at by an independent third party. Besides, all Target has to do is encrypt the data. Boom, non-factor.
        cm2187 9y ago
        Unless they use the cloud merely as storage, the key will have to reside in the cloud for their servers to do anything useful. So the data is never really encrypted to the cloud provider. I am not saying that the Amazon board will authorize a change in strategy to dig into every customer data. But if I believed that companies internal audit were enough to prevent fraud, there would be no need for a banking regulator for instance.
- jedberg 9y ago
  That absolutely will not look at your data under any circumstance, even if you specifically ask them to. Multiple times I was trying to troubleshoot an issue and asked them to "just log into the database" and they said they have very strict policies against that. There is no way they have any of Target's data.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - hueving 9y ago
    Customer service not doing it in front of a customer is a lot different than Amazon not doing it at all. Doesn't Reddit have a policy against secretly editing user's posts? Didn't precisely that happen during the election by an admin?
    - bdcravens 9y ago
      It was Reddit's CEO: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/nov/25/reddit-ceo-admits-editing-posts-directing-obscene-/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/nov/25/reddit-ceo-a...
  - TroubleTicket 9y ago
    This is naive - they don't need to look at your data to draw inferences from it, they can just monitor and analyze network traffic.
- cm2187 9y ago
  I don't know about Amazon but I remember Microsoft sneaking into personal hotmail accounts to find who was leaking information to the press. Microsoft issued a statement in justification saying that it didn't need a warrant since they consider that the data stored on their services is their, and no warrant is required to search oneself.
  - ovi256 9y ago
    >Microsoft issued a statement in justification saying that it didn't need a warrant Microsoft can not get a warrant in any case: they are not a law enforcement agency.
    - cm2187 9y ago
      Right. The actual statement actually said "court order".
- dx034 9y ago
  Peeking into data would be risky and could be detected. But evaluating server logs is possible without affecting the user. If you know what servers target.com uses and evaluate their load, you can probably learn a lot about their business.
meow_mix 9y ago
Amazon is a company that cares about credibility above all else, plus word travels fast in software engineering circles. Seems unlikely they would risk snooping
- hueving 9y ago
  Realistically it would take a very small team to do this orthogonal to the rest of the aws team.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  Before AWS or their open marketplace model, Amazon provided e-commerce services for established brick-and-mortar retailers (basically, Amazon-run online shops under the established retailers’ names.) They quite aggressively mined this for data that was used competitively for Amazon's own online retail operations. I'm not surprised that this combined with Amazon making a big move into brick and mortar retail would worry existing retailer, especially Target, who along with Borders was, IIRC, one of the noteworthy retailers that had been dependent on Amazon's earlier service.
  - SallySwanSmith 9y ago
    Citation required

Gaelan 9y ago

Do we know Amazon's policy on "peeking" into people's AWS data? I feel like they would have something against that in their ToS/Privacy Policy.

mankash666 9y ago
They're the system admins on all their managed databases. Think about it
- SallySwanSmith 9y ago
  and lose any credibility? Lets throw away our entire cloud revenue to look at the raw data rather then scraping the public site? Please. This is tin foil hat crazy
  - icebraining 9y ago
    The public site doesn't give you the sales numbers.
    - SallySwanSmith 9y ago
      Just ask your suppliers for those. It’s not overly secretive
- foxylion 9y ago
  If they do it there would be someine at some point who would leak information about this. And this will probably much worse than loosing some customers. Nonetheless with Amazon Marketplace they already habe a platform where they know every transaction, price and product from third parties.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- linkregister 9y ago
  Not that Target is well-known to be good at security, but if AWS was discovered snooping on their data that would probably be the end of their business. Not to mention the tsunami of lawsuits launched by other companies spooked by the scandal. I can't imagine any manager or engineer willing to risk their career doing so. Then again, a director at Volkswagen agreed to intentionally cheat emissions tests, so perhaps an Amazon employee would be foolish enough to snoop on Target's data.
  - nodesocket 9y ago
    > but if AWS was discovered snooping on their data that would probably be the end of their business. Not to mention the tsunami of lawsuits launched by other companies spooked by the scandal. I can't imagine any manager or engineer willing to risk their career doing so. Absolutely correct. Mutually assured destruction[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction
  - cm2187 9y ago
    I can't imagine an engineer creating a Diesel engine designed for fraud. But it happened. I'd say that in a company with an aggressive business culture like Amazon this is only more likely.
    - origami777 9y ago
      What's the cost/benefit of them doing that to Target? On the upside they could see what's selling well, what margins they have, etc. What's the net value of that information to their retail unit? I'd say it's probably very small. On the downside, they could lose their most profitable business unit. Check out all the audits they go through. If you're an enterprise customer with this concern you can get access to those audit reports and see if it's one of the things being looked at by an independent third party. Besides, all Target has to do is encrypt the data. Boom, non-factor.
      - cm2187 9y ago
        Unless they use the cloud merely as storage, the key will have to reside in the cloud for their servers to do anything useful. So the data is never really encrypted to the cloud provider. I am not saying that the Amazon board will authorize a change in strategy to dig into every customer data. But if I believed that companies internal audit were enough to prevent fraud, there would be no need for a banking regulator for instance.
jedberg 9y ago
That absolutely will not look at your data under any circumstance, even if you specifically ask them to. Multiple times I was trying to troubleshoot an issue and asked them to "just log into the database" and they said they have very strict policies against that. There is no way they have any of Target's data.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- hueving 9y ago
  Customer service not doing it in front of a customer is a lot different than Amazon not doing it at all. Doesn't Reddit have a policy against secretly editing user's posts? Didn't precisely that happen during the election by an admin?
  - bdcravens 9y ago
    It was Reddit's CEO: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/nov/25/reddit-ceo-admits-editing-posts-directing-obscene-/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/nov/25/reddit-ceo-a...
- TroubleTicket 9y ago
  This is naive - they don't need to look at your data to draw inferences from it, they can just monitor and analyze network traffic.
cm2187 9y ago
I don't know about Amazon but I remember Microsoft sneaking into personal hotmail accounts to find who was leaking information to the press. Microsoft issued a statement in justification saying that it didn't need a warrant since they consider that the data stored on their services is their, and no warrant is required to search oneself.
- ovi256 9y ago
  >Microsoft issued a statement in justification saying that it didn't need a warrant Microsoft can not get a warrant in any case: they are not a law enforcement agency.
  - cm2187 9y ago
    Right. The actual statement actually said "court order".
dx034 9y ago
Peeking into data would be risky and could be detected. But evaluating server logs is possible without affecting the user. If you know what servers target.com uses and evaluate their load, you can probably learn a lot about their business.

meow_mix 9y ago

Amazon is a company that cares about credibility above all else, plus word travels fast in software engineering circles. Seems unlikely they would risk snooping

hueving 9y ago
Realistically it would take a very small team to do this orthogonal to the rest of the aws team.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 9y ago
Before AWS or their open marketplace model, Amazon provided e-commerce services for established brick-and-mortar retailers (basically, Amazon-run online shops under the established retailers’ names.) They quite aggressively mined this for data that was used competitively for Amazon's own online retail operations. I'm not surprised that this combined with Amazon making a big move into brick and mortar retail would worry existing retailer, especially Target, who along with Borders was, IIRC, one of the noteworthy retailers that had been dependent on Amazon's earlier service.
- SallySwanSmith 9y ago
  Citation required