Dive Brief:
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U.S. District Court Judge James Robart on Wednesday rejected Amazon’s argument that complying with a previous court order to hand over customer information in a class action consumer lawsuit would violate the e-commerce kingpin's confidentiality promise to its customers, according to court documents.
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Amazon isn’t a party in the suit against hair products retailer WEN, which has agreed to pay $25 to everyone who bought its conditioner, and up to $20,000 to shoppers who had a bad reaction to it. Attorneys want the Amazon customer information to notify those who bought WEN products on the site about the damages they're due, according to a report from MediaPost.
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While those attorneys promise they’ll keep the customer information private, Amazon said their assurances don’t add up to adequate privacy protection.
Dive Insight:
Most consumer protection efforts are focused on stealth tracking efforts by retailers and other companies, or inadequate protections by businesses of consumer data, according to the Federal Trade Commission. But Judge Robart is prioritizing notification of another consumer right — damages brought on by harmful consumer products — over one retailer’s data protection initiatives.
Amazon in November argued that it should be protected by the discovery demands in the case, in part because it isn’t a party to it, and said that its customers’ right to privacy outweighs the other parties’ interest in its customer information.
“Amazon takes very seriously its customers’ privacy and the security of their confidential information,” Amazon attorneys argued. “Inversely, customers rely on Amazon’s privacy policies and expect their personal data to be safe. Plaintiffs’ demand is doubly intrusive because it forces Amazon to violate its customers’ trust, and it invades those customers’ privacy without notice. Plaintiffs assume that consumers would prioritize notice of a class action settlement recovery over the security of their personal data, but that is not a choice that plaintiffs or this court have the right to make.”
Attorneys for the plaintiffs said that the request for the information was narrow, and that the amount of damages was significant — factors favoring the release of the data. The judge agreed.
“The request is tailored as narrowly as possible to accomplish the goal of providing notice to individuals that may have sustained serious injuries and will be shared only with a sophisticated settlement administrator who possesses the skill and technical capability of protecting the information,” the attorneys said in response to Amazon’s argument, according to Consumerist. It’s not clear whether Amazon will pursue the issue further, but the ruling puts significant strain on the company’s customer-first stance.