Amazon India fixes glitch that caused data leak exposing some sellers’ tax information

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Jan 10, 2019

Amazon India has now fixed a technical glitch which exposed tax reports of some of its sellers to other users on the platform.

“On Sunday, some sellers who attempted to download merchant tax reports for the month of December 2018 experienced a technical issue,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement as reported by ET Bureau. “Our teams identified the issue and resolved it on priority and sellers were soon able to download the correct MTR reports.”

An anonymous company executive reported that the glitch affected around 0.2 percent of its 400,000 strong seller base. Some users stated that they were able to download other sellers’ tax reports until late on Monday. Then, Amazon removed the section that allowed sellers to download tax reports and subsequently reactivated it some hours later when the glitch was fixed. The business assured that it responded soon after the issue was brought up.

The business addressed the issue on January 9 and claimed that the glitch had only affected a “minuscule” number of sellers. ET Bureau reported that a seller had reported that when they logged into Amazon on January 6 to download their tax report, they noticed that the GST number was different and then that the report was in fact for a different seller. Consumer trust is often a hot topic in e-commerce but this time, seller trust is at stake.