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I asked Amazon to provide the data it had collected on me. The process was a labyrinthine endurance test.
YOU CAN VIEW the information that various websites — like Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn, to name a few — have about you by submitting a data request. A corporate data request is a curiously asymmetrical notion: These companies don’t request your information, they just take it (sometimes even if you don’t use their services), yet you have to request your own information from them. It’s a bit like if you have a stalker who’s been shadowing you around, meticulously documenting everywhere you go, everyone you talk to, and everything you do, who’s now handing you a form to fill out if you want to see the boxes of files they’ve been keeping on you. I decided to request my data from Amazon, which courteously affords me the opportunity to join the ranks of the numerous third parties that can also get my data from Amazon.
The Roach Motel
The first thing I learned is that Amazon is in no hurry to give you your data, nor does it really encourage you to ask for it in the first place. I couldn’t even figure out how to navigate to the request page without turning to a search engine. In fact, Amazon seems keen to discourage data requests, as making one is a labyrinthine endurance test of being bounced from one webpage to the next, waiting for weeks, and then downloading, extracting, and combing through dozens of files. Requesting your data from Amazon is an exhausting procession that feels a little bit like a text adventure game designed by Franz Kafka.
Once you’ve actually made it to the preliminary “Request Your Personal Information” page, Amazon suggests that you can also access “a lot of your personal information in Your Account.” This is the first iteration of a refrain that you will run into multiple times throughout the protracted data request process, repeated every step of the way.
Amazon’s “Request My Data” selection menu.
After you click on “Request My Data,” you’re taken to a page with a drop-down menu where you can “select the data that you want,” with the option “Request All Your Data” in the 16th position, at the very bottom of the menu. And in case you’ve forgotten that you can also see some of your data in your account settings, Amazon offers a helpful reminder: “Don’t forget you can access a lot of your data instantly, as well as update your personal information, from Your Account.”
Once you submit your request, you’re taken to the “Data Request Creation” page, which thanks you and informs you that “You’re almost done…” but now need to click a verification link in your email. Amazon at this point makes some intonations about how this email verification step is necessary because your privacy and security are the company’s top priority, though considering that when your data is available you’ll need to check your email anyway, it’s not clear how checking your email twice adds any security. And by the way, in case you’ve forgotten already, Amazon also reminds you on this page that “You can access a lot of your data instantly, as well as update your personal information, from Your Account.”
Amazon’s “Data Request Creation” message.
At this point, you’ll need to pop over to your email and click the “Confirm Data Request” link. Doing so will take you to the “Data Request Confirmation” page, which informs you that Amazon has “received and [is] processing your request to access your personal data.” This feels a little strange, as you don’t recall ever making Amazon jump through this many hoops when it wanted to access your data. (This page again reminds you that you can get “a lot of your data … from Your Account.”)
The “Data Request Confirmation” page also informs you that you may be in for a bit of a wait. Though Amazon says that it will “provide your information to you as soon as we can,” “soon” is apparently meant to be interpreted on a monthly time scale, as the page further states that “usually, this should not take more than a month.” Though of course, “in exceptional cases, for example if a request is more complex or if we are processing a high volume of requests, it might take longer.” This protracted time frame forms an intriguing juxtaposition to the otherwise universal emphasis on speed that facilitates shopping on Amazon. “If you have to click multiple buttons, if you have to wait for too long, if you have to answer a lot of information — all of those things create friction, and friction exponentially kills the joy of shopping,” Nadia Shouraboura, a former member Amazon’s management board, said in the 2014 CNBC documentary “Amazon Rising.”
Amazon’s “Data Request Confirmation” message.
Given Amazon’s…
