Amazon collects shocking amount of data from customers: report

Amazon's exceptional growth relies heavily on the massive amount of data it manages to collect from its customers. Information is picked up through its devices and services including its website, shopping app, the Kindle e-reader, the Ring doorbell, and Echo smart speaker amongst several others.

According to a report in The Guardian, the biggest source of data for Amazon is its 200 million Amazon Prime users, whose data it collects to understand its customers and their habits. Third parties also make use of Amazon's algorithm to target ads.

The Amazon devices and services can store your name, address, all your orders, things you watch on Prime, and recordings of your instructions to Alexa. A BBC journalist recently found out that Alexa had stored the transcriptions of all 31,082 interactions his family ever had with the device.

"From this information, Amazon can work out where you work, where you live, how you spend your leisure time, and who your family and friends are," says Rowenna Fielding, the director of data protection consultancy Miss IG Geek.

The data collected from your content streaming habits can reveal your religion, politics, culture, and even economic status. Kindle e-reader data can reveal what you read, how fast you read it, and even the parts you highlight.

Will Richmond-Coggan, an information and privacy law specialist told the publications that one should assume that any piece of information which one shares with an Amazon product will automatically be known to its other entities as well.

Meanwhile, Amazon claims that it uses all this data only to improve and enhance user experience and that it is "thoughtful about the information we collect."

If you wish to know which pieces of information the company has stored about you, you can ask the company for a copy of your data by applying under a "data subject access request." One can also use browsers such as DuckDuckGo or Brave to stop not just Amazon but other tech firms like Google from collecting your data.