Of course booksellers gossip about their customers. I was in Starbucks the other day next to a couple of clerks from Barnes & Noble, who told me, "People always ask to have pornography gift-wrapped -- as a present for somebody else, naturally." If a famous person comes through the checkout line, they said, the next three customers always want to know, "What'd he buy?"
I know that, and I know it is human nature, and I am comfortable with it because I would act the same way. We observe one another and share the news. But I would not be particularly thrilled if a bookstore clerk called up a gossip columnist with the news that I was buying porn and having it gift-wrapped. Or if a store made a record of every book I purchased, and put that information on sale.
That's why I'm angry with Amazon.com. I got an e-mail from Amazon notifying me that information about my purchases and buying patterns might be shared -- that, according to a recent press release, information about me is a company asset that can be sold.
I know about cookies, and I know that almost every Web site grabs all the secrets it can every time I visit. I even know there are people using my full name (and maybe yours) on free e-mail accounts, and posting messages as if they were me, and no doubt visiting sites I have never heard of, and leaving their little trails of cookie dough. I know that Amazon keeps records of all my purchases, because it uses them to suggest other books that might interest me.
I know all that. But when I learn that the title of every book and video and CD I've ever purchased from Amazon could be for sale, I feel used. From the first time I visited Amazon, I assumed for some reason (call me a dreamer) that my purchases were between me and Amazon. I assumed that if Amazon decided to change its policies regarding that information, it would notify me when it planned to start, and give me the option of saying no.
I guess I didn't read the fine print. "By visiting Amazon.com," reads wording that is displayed none too prominently on the site, "you are accepting the practices described in this Privacy Notice." In other words, I can't buy books from Amazon without becoming a commodity for it to trade or sell.
I hadn't read or even noticed the privacy notice, of course. Then came the e-mail from Amazon changing the rules of what I fondly (and, obviously, unilaterally) considered to be our unwritten bond. And although Amazon is likely to sell the information at first to another site that will treat it as "confidential," I know as a newspaperman: (1) When I tell you something, it's a "secret." (2) When you tell somebody else, it's "confidential -- I'm not supposed to tell anyone this." (3) When that person tells everybody else, it's "Guess what I heard?" And then it's general knowledge.
Once the Amazon database is set loose, it's only a matter of time until The National Enquirer prints the reading lists of its favorite celebrities. And until lawyers subpoena information to prove that a cheating husband sent a book, perhaps even Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, to somebody he shouldn't have. And until the names and mailing addresses of your closest friends -- the kind you send books to -- are linked to you, and shared.
This won't even require a violation of secrecy -- it will require only money. Amazon can break down its data in countless ways, and sell it in demographic categories. People in Maine who buy Caribbean guidebooks? Dog lovers who live in Manhattan? Customers with enough money to buy two digital cameras in the same year?
Books are sacred to me. I can't walk past a used-book store without going in. I still have just about every book I've ever owned. Forgive me for my naïveté, but I think of Amazon as a bookstore, not a database.
When I received its brisk and cheery e-mail, I wrote back: "You do not have my permission to share any information about my dealings with you." But of course, Amazon claims it already has it.
What a kick in the face.
