Bre's Blog: PAPA's relevancy to Amazon/eBay's tracking information

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December 01, 2006

PAPA's relevancy to Amazon/eBay's tracking information

Note: I am interpreting “information” as the data amazon/ebay/etc. collects about you such as purchase patterns, recently viewed items, customized display based on google searches, etc.

I believe the PAPA framework is a very thorough analysis and can be applicable in many situations, but while reflecting on it’s relevancy to the WSJ article and the amazon.com data, I don’t think its analysis was meant for this type of information.

When you think of this information in terms of Accuracy, Property, and Accessibility, in my mind they just don’t apply. The PAPA framework used examples of poor accuracy and the theft of intellectual property to show detrimental damage to the injured parties, but in an amazon.com/ebay context, poor accuracy of information might result in bad 'recommendations', while I don’t know if anyone would violate your 'property' by claiming your clicking habits as their own. The amount of 'damage' these two offenses might cause is not substantial enough to warrant even the slightest concern. In terms of accessibility, the PAPA framework describes accessibility in that 'information poor' people may be at a disadvantage in this new age, but this does not apply to our situation. Privacy may be an issue if the information is shared and used for other purposes. For example, if someone bought multiple books/did searches for homemade bombs, and then amazon.com gave this information to the government, that would be an invasion of privacy. However, the online merchants are insisting this data is only used internally, and if this is true, there is no reason for concern.

Honestly, I feel doing things such as generating free shipping if a user in on the fence about a purchase, changing featured items on a webpage based on google searches, attracting first-time buyers with a discount…these are all good business practices! I understand some people feel cheated because they didn’t know this was going on, but let’s be honest, if a car salesman thinks you’re on the fence about something and decides to throw in an upgraded sound system, would people call that unfair? Absolutely not. I think people are failing to understand that they are decision makers; if they don’t want to buy a product on amazon/ebay/etc, they don’t have to! In my opinion, this data collection, if it is used only for the purposes it is intended for, is a great thing. When I log onto 'My Amazon' I am presented with books that are interesting to me, and if I don’t want to buy them, I won't.

Posted by brennels at December 1, 2006 10:39 PM

Comments

I agree with you that if someone bought some merchandise from websites like amazon.com, and if those websites give this information to the government or other agencies, that would be a total invasion of privacy. I hope these online merchants are using the data only internally, and not sharing with other agencies.

Posted by: davidalabama@live.com at April 10, 2008 12:57 PM