Joe Salkowski

Is it really anyone’s business what employees of any particular company are reading?

The folks at Amazon.com are making it their business. In the process, they’re practically begging customers to consider the scary side of e-commerce, which probably isn’t the best marketing plan on the planet.

The site’s new “purchase circles” allow customers to browse for books, CDs and videos by peeking at the Amazon.com purchases made by other groups of people.

With a few clicks of your mouse, you can learn what items are particularly popular with people in your hometown, your alma mater, your office or even your favorite government agency.

It’s an interesting way to shop for a book, but that wasn’t what crossed my mind the first time I saw the feature. When Amazon.com’s home page greeted me with a recommendation that I check out the purchase circle for Tucson Newspapers Inc., I was almost shocked: How did they know where I work?

They didn’t not really, anyway. And that’s part of the problem with purchase circles: They misrepresent the reading habits of individual companies and organizations.

The larger problem, though, is the signal Amazon.com is sending about the invasive potential of electronic commerce: They know what you’re reading, and they’re perfectly capable of sharing that information with the world.

The site isn’t revealing any individual’s purchases. Each of Amazon.com’s purchase circles includes at least 200 shoppers, according to a page on the site. Customers are placed in certain circles based on their shipping address and e-mail address, which can be traced to a specific Internet service provider.

Since many people have e-mail addresses from their school or workplace, Amazon.com uses their purchases to compile best-seller lists for those companies or institutions.

This appears to yield some interesting insights. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., for example, has been buying up books that discuss the need for a diverse workplace. Any particular reason for that?

Over at the Environmental Protection Agency, meanwhile, sales of a book on water quality monitoring lagged behind those of popular novels and self-help books. So while our rivers may be polluted, our federal agents will be well-read and well-adjusted.

But these impressions are more than a little misleading. Many of the purchases made with these institutional e-mail addresses probably trace back to employees’ friends or family members. Moreover, some companies are linked with the purchases of thousands of people who aren’t even drawing a paycheck.

My Amazon.com purchases are identified with Tucson Newspapers Inc. because that company is listed as the owner of “azstarnet.com,” the domain name in my e-mail address. But that’s also true for more than 12,000 subscribers to StarNet’s Internet service, meaning each of their purchases is considered corporate reading at TNI.

This must explain why I’ve never seen anyone in my office carrying around a copy of “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom,” which is supposed to be pretty popular around here.

Even if the listings were accurate, it’s inappropriate to create impressions of companies based on what their employees or their families are reading. Sure, it’s fun to point out that the best seller at Nabisco is a book advocating a low-carbohydrate diet. But it really isn’t fair that I have that chance.

Amazon.com should know that online shoppers are leery about the personal data Web sites collect. You can learn a lot about people by keeping track of what they buy, and that’s particularly true of books or videos.

Responsible e-commerce sites take pains to assure customers that information about their purchases won’t be abused. While online shoppers find this is usually true, those who’ve never typed their credit card number into a Web form are looking for a little more reassurance. So it doesn’t help to see that Amazon.com, an e-commerce role model, is using its customer data to build a voyeuristic tour through other people’s shopping carts.

After reporters started calling, Amazon.com decided to give customers a choice of removing their shopping records from the purchase circle database. Companies also can remove themselves from the site’s directory.

“We know that confidentiality is of the utmost importance to our customers,” site spokesman Paul Capelli said. “This is aggregate data based on hundreds of people’s purchases. We’re not calling into question any individual’s privacy.”

True enough. But by promoting purchase circles, Amazon.com is calling into question its judgment about what people really want from an online store.

When shoppers visit an e-commerce site, they’re looking for low prices, wide selection and, most importantly, a sense of security. Seeing a site that plays games with their personal data can only make them wonder what else might be happening to that information.

After all, the last thing online shoppers want to see on a store’s shelves is themselves.

If you would like to respond to one of Joe Salkowski’s columns, you can e-mail him at [email protected] or write to him c/o Tribune Media Services. Inc., 435 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 1400, Chicago, IL 60611.