Amazon workers with access to an Alexa user's geographic coordinates can use that data to find a specific address via third-party mapping services like Google Maps, according to a new report.
Employees that have access to the customer's geographic coordinates can type those coordinate into a third-party mapping software to discover the user's home address, says the report, which cites five people familiar with the program.
"Access to internal tools is highly controlled, and is only granted to a limited number of employees who require these tools to train and improve the service by processing an extremely small sample of interactions," an Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement regarding Bloomberg's story."Our policies strictly prohibit employee access to or use of customer data for any other reason, and we have a zero tolerance policy for abuse of our systems.
While much of the information Amazon employees have access to is difficult to link back to a specific user, the company also collects location data to improve Alexa's ability to serve up information about the weather and local businesses and other nearby locations, the report notes. The publication says it saw a demonstration in which an Amazon worker copy and pasted a set of latitude and longitude coordinates into Google Maps and was able to reach the corresponding address.
Bloomberg also reports that a different software tool, which is available to a smaller group of Amazon employees, makes it possible to find home and work addresses and phone numbers customers have entered into the Alexa app during the setup process just by punching in a customer ID. They also have access to contacts that have been shared with Alexa through the smartphone app, the report says.
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