22 November 2000

Simon Davies
Department of Information Systems
London School of Economics
London WC2A 2AE

Dear Mr Davies,

Amazon.co.uk - privacy policy

Thank you for your letter of 14 September 2000. Following on from our letter to you of 27 October 2000 I wanted to respond to you personally on the concerns raised by you in your letter.

Amazon.co.uk takes the issue of compliance with the Data Protection Act 1998 very seriously. Our present privacy policy has been in place for over a year, prior to the Act coming into force, to ensure that our practices complied with the new legislation. We have had, and continue to have, regular conversations with the Data Protection Commissioner to ensure that our practices continue to comply with the legislation.

I note your concern over the transfer of certain information into certain jurisdictions outside the European Economic Area, and your belief that we are carrying out the transfer surreptitiously and without your consent. On the contrary, we endeavour to keep our customers thoroughly informed as to all of the uses to which their personal information may be put. As stated in the Amazon.co.uk Privacy Policy (which is accessible from every page on the Amazon.co.uk web site and is brought to the attention of new visitors to our web site on the welcome text at the top of our web site's home page) certain limited customer information is transferred outside the European Economic Area (specifically the USA) for processing on behalf of Amazon.co.uk and in order to maintain a customer account for you at those web sites. The latter functionality is required to ensure the inegrity of account information across all Amazon web sites but has the added benefit of enhancing our customers' shopping experience by enabling them to shop at Amazon's various web sites without having to re-enter information previously entered by you at the Amazon.co.uk web site. Having discussed this issue at length with the Data Protection Commissioner, we are comfortable that our prominent disclosure of these activities ensures that we have obtained specific and informed consent on the part of our customers to this transfer and that our practices are compliant with our obligations under the Data Protection Act.

In any event, we would like to assure you that the limited customer information is transferred in circumstances ensuring that there is an adequate level of protection for that information. Further, it is held by the other Amazon entities in accordance with the Amazon.co.uk privacy policy and the principles of the UK Data Protection legislation.

I note that you consider the contract with Amazon.co.uk to be unfair. Given the explanation above, I cannot agree with you. In the circumstances it does not cause a significant imbalance in your rights and obligations under the contract, we consider that there is no prejudice to an individual customer at all. If you would like to elaborate on precisely how you consider this term to be unfair, I would be happy to give this point further consideration.

I note your request for a copy of all of the information that Amazon.co.uk holds relating to you. In order to carry out your request we require the following information to satisfy us of your identity and to locate the particular information. Would you please write to Attn: Legal Department, Amazon.co.uk, Slough Berkshire SL1 1QP or via email at legal@Amazon.co.uk with your request and giving the following details to enable us to verify your identity (I) your account's email address (ii) details of an item purchased from that account (iii)the last 5 digits of the credit card used to purchase on that account (or payment method, if you have only used a cheque or gift certificates) and a billing or delivery address from the account. Once we have received this information, we will provide details of the information requested to you. We do not currently charge for this service.

Our customers' privacy is of paramount importance to us, and Amazon.co.uk will continue to ensure that it complies with the relevant data protection legislation. I hope this letter has gone some way to allay your concerns and that Amazon.co.uk can continue to be of service to you in the future.

Yours sincerely

Steve Frazier
Managing Director
Amazon.co.uk