Comments on: Amazon Accepts Blame, Denies Hacker Infiltrated Their System

By: troyS

troyS — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:44:14 +0000

Irregardless, support independent booksellers! Book Soup, Vromans, Small World, Skylight…

By: Joanne

Joanne — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:16:26 +0000

Amazon are lying! … For a start straight ‘Erotica’ was still appearing and ANTI-gay books with ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ in the title were coming up first in the search.

By: Meagan

Meagan — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:46:45 +0000

I really do hope that there is a reasonable explination for this. I become continually apalled at the lack of acceptance in this world today. First Prop 8 and now this. It’s so frustrating when I spent yesterday morning talking to my 10 year old son about acceptance, love and not judging people for things you may not fully understand, and I turn around and have the media and closed minded, judgemental and egomaniacle people undermining me and teaching our children that being judgemental and superior is okay. It breaks my heart and makes me so angry.

By: Ally

Ally — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:30:17 +0000

I wouldn’t think a major corporation that takes hundreds of people’s credit card numbers a day would want to admit to being hacked… This whole thing just seems very silly on Amazon’s part. How exactly is someone going to be offended by a book title?? If it isn’t your taste, don’t buy it…done and done. People can be ridiculous sometimes. There comes a point when trying to be “PC” goes too far the other way and becomes offensive.

By: Winona

Winona — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:13:32 +0000

As a cataloger myself, I know just how much can change with one keystroke – so while I guess I understand just a little more than I did yesterday, I’m still wary here.

By: It's Trent, Bitch!

It's Trent, Bitch! — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:59:43 +0000

@dan — I don’t see the correlation. even if the mormon church was behind the prop 8 fiasco, what does that have to do with one person/author? sure you can infer that she “did something wrong” but to extrapolate that just because she is mormon she should be … what? punished? that’s like saying all gays are the same. also, there is no hiding of the fact that meyers is mormon, that fact is known. i see your point but not everything can be black and white. i’m sure, dan, that someone that you know and care about is homophobic whether you know it or not.

By: rossy

rossy — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:16:04 +0000

Why does it have to be a hacker that did this & not a glitch? I mean really, computers aren’t 100% foolproof to start with… & before everybody started to rely on them, “errors” were always a possibility (i.e. God help an accountant misplacing a decimal by accident!) when doing business.
-
I liked downloading free demo games to see if I like them enough to buy them… I stopped because there were ones with defects that ended up crashing my computer. Ditto with the purchase of my 1st ever PC game: “DOOM 3″ – I had to take the 1st one back for an exchange because it didn’t work. It happens WITHOUT it anybody “doing it” with malice aforethought.

By: dan

dan — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:29:19 +0000

It’s great to see you so involved in getting behind what exactly happened at Amazon, I only wish you would do the same about all the “Twilight” stories you post seeing the author is Mormon -which we all know the Mormon church helped the prop 8 fiasco. Be great to be consistent on all these important matters.

By: Gabi

Gabi — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:58:54 +0000

That will kinda suck considering you just plopped down $360 for their new Kindle ;)

By: Hannah

Hannah — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:49:05 +0000

My guess is they were embarressed someone could hack into the system so easily and don’t want it to seem as if the accounts could also be in danger.

By: meg

meg — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:45:21 +0000

yikes! i just bought something from amazon today! i certainly hope this was the doing of some hacker and not amazon! i would like assume that a website that promotes literacy and reading would not try to restrict GLBT literature in this manner, but you never know what ridiculous things some people might do! please keep us posted trent!

By: kittycatastrophe

kittycatastrophe — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 01:24:57 +0000

If this was really a hack and they’re going with the “system glitch” story to cover it up than that tells me that some hacker got deep into their files and stayed there undetected for a significant period of time gathering data.

By: Jenna

Jenna — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:47:50 +0000

I received the short form “glitch” response to an email I wrote Amazon last night, to which I responded with a lengthier, angrier email about how I didn’t believe it was a glitch and how offended I was by the policy. I got a bit longer response to that one, but it doesn’t contain much of an apology.

“Hello,

This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.

It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles – in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon’s main product search.

Many books have now been fixed and we’re in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.

Thanks for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.”

By: sushis

sushis — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:40:51 +0000

Even if a hacker did this, it’s a problem that amazon ever put de-ranking to a “vote,” by deranking anything that was flagged as “innappropriate” enough times. Any organized political group (such as, for instance, anti-gay fundamentalists) could effectively do/have done the same thing that the hacker did.

I’m glad that amazon seems to have taken down the “flag as inappropriate” option. My reading choices shouldn’t be determined by a random gathering of censors, whether they’re hackers or a “sincere” political group.

By: Janelle

Janelle — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:29:19 +0000

P.S. Thank you very much for the update, Trent!!

By: Janelle

Janelle — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:29:03 +0000

this situation is really unfortunate. The hacker has serious issues! Amazon responsibility to notify its customers. I hope this forces them to get off their high horse and admit they were hacked. And I hope this blogger is punished.

By: pooneck

pooneck — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:04:21 +0000

thanks for the heads up. i will be watching my amazon account very closely now. i want an explanation as well. i don’t want to think that amazon is allowing their site to be hacked and not notifying its customers.