Amazon Fires Employees over Insider Data Leaks

E-commerce giant Amazon has reportedly fired a number of employees accused of providing independent sellers with inside company information.

The Hill reports that e-commerce giant Amazon has fired a number of employees accused of giving insider company information to independent merchants, these firings come as the company attempts to further crack down on seller scams. Several Amazon workers in the U.S. and India were fired recently after they allegedly accessed company data which was used by disreputable merchants, the firings happened after Amazon began an investigation into suspected data leaks and bribes of company employees.

Amazon’s investigation of employee bribes and data leaks is reportedly focusing on India, as a result of the investigations, some customer support workers in China and India have had their access to an internal database limited. The database provides large amounts of information on product performance, trending keywords and a number of other factors that could be useful to merchants.

Thousand of suspect products reviews have been deleted by Amazon as it attempts to clean up its platform, many sellers also found their access to customer data severely limited. The company is also working on shutting down methods which force certain products to rank higher in search results. Amazon provided a statement to The Hill saying:

We have strict policies and a Code of Business Conduct & Ethics in place for our employees. We implement sophisticated systems to restrict and audit access to information. We hold our employees to a high ethical standard and anyone in violation of our Code faces discipline, including termination and potential legal and criminal penalties. In addition, we have zero tolerance for abuse of our systems and if we find bad actors who have engaged in this behavior, we will take swift action against them, including terminating their selling accounts, deleting reviews, withholding funds, and taking legal action.

But the company is still reportedly battling sellers attempting to sabotage the work of other merchants on the platform by filing fake copyright or trademark infringement cases. It’s being reported that some sellers are allegedly illegally gaining access to Amazon wholesalers accounts in order to gain access to databases of product listings.