Amazon Accused Of Snooping On Reviewer’s Social Media Profile

Retail giant Amazon is facing allegations that it is spying on the social media profiles of customers who try to submit product reviews.

Writer Imy Santiago claims that a book review that she wrote was rejected by Amazon because she followed the book’s author on social media.

After trying to post the book review several times and being met with responses such as ‘the review could not be posted in its current form’ and ‘you are not eligible to review the product’, Santiago contacted Amazon expecting a simple explanation.

A reply from Amazon stated: “we cannot post your Customer Review for [book title deleted] by [author deleted] to the Amazon website because your account activity indicates that you know the author”.

Santiago claims that the only link that she has with the author is that she follows them on social media.

While Santiago hasn’t specified which social media platform she’s referring to, she did mention in her email to Amazon that she followed authors on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

If true, this raises the possibility that Amazon is trawling social media accounts to identify such links.

Santiago, who published her first novel in January 2015, contacted Amazon again to express her frustration and to ask for further explanation.

Amazon reportedly responded: “We removed your Customer Reviews because you know the author personally. Due to the proprietary nature of our business, we do not provide detailed information on how we determine that accounts are related”.

The retailer added a rather curt sign-off, saying: “We cannot share any further information about our decision and we may not reply to further emails about this issue”.

Amazon has strict rules in place to ensure that its reviews are authentic and useful, but the possibility that it is monitoring reviewer’s social media profile raises serious privacy concerns.

Amazon has been contacted for a statement.

(Image credit: Sky News)