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What is worse: to be accused of prejudice, or accused of incompetence? In the
e-commerce world, where how well one safeguards one's customer 
data is
paramount to any reputation, taking a hit on the latter is a bitter
pill to swallow. That is better, though, than to be viewed as a company
that would deliberately and stealthily delist gay-themed books and
movies, among other materials, from its sales ranks, as Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) was thought to have done this past weekend.
There were numerous cases of books such as Brokeback Mountain and The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk dropping from the sales rankings and even product search terms, according to media accounts, blog posts and countless Twitter tweets.
The items' disappearance was the result of an "embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error," according to a statement issued by Amazon. Altogether, 57,310 books in categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica were affected -- not just gay-themed materials.
The problem is being repaired, with many books' rankings already restored, the company added.
Fumbled or Hacked?
That might have been the end of it, until a hacker claimed he was behind the change in rankings. "There's some quick code to grab all the Gay and Lesbian metadata-tagged books on amazon," he explained in his post.
First, the hacker claims to have pulled up a list of internal product ID codes on the targeted material.
"Now from here it was a matter of getting a lot of people to vote for the books. The thing about the adult reporting function of Amazon was that it was vulnerable to something called 'Cross-site request forgery.' This means if I referred someone to the URL of the successful complaint, it would register as a complaint if they were logged in. So now it is a numbers game."
Amazon would not be commenting on the episode beyond its released statement, Patty Smith, Amazon's director of corporate communications, told the E-Commerce Times.
To be sure, one anonymous post is hardly the stuff out of which indictments are made -- not to mention the dubious reason the supposed hacker gave as to why he hates reputation systems based on user input: "When I was trying to score chicks to do heroin with [on Craigslist] ... My listings like 'looking to get tarred and pleasured' and 'Searching for a heroine to do the paronym of this sentence's lexical subject' kept getting flagged."
Worst Blow
However, even if the account is untrue, it could do damage to Amazon's security reputation, which could hurt Amazon as a whole almost as much as the unfounded belief that it deliberately culled gay-themed materials.
The emergence of a successful hacker could seriously undermine customers' confidence in the e-tailer, Peter Cohan of Peter S. Cohan & Associates told the E-Commerce Times. "The fact that somebody could hack in -- if it is correct -- is very worrisome to Amazon's customers. If the hacker could change sales rankings and search results, who's to say he couldn't break in and take credit card numbers or other customer data?
"It's not good for Amazon's reputation, and if I were in Amazon's shoes, I would get to the bottom of this -- even if it is just a false report. I would offer a complete disclosure so people can feel comfortable with the site and not worry that this would happen again."
Unfortunately, Cohan said, "it is not in Amazon's nature to be forthcoming with its financials. I hope they will be more forthcoming with its tech problems."
At Issue: Transparency
Amazon's communication skills get a little more credit from Scott Testa, a professor of marketing at St. Joseph's University. "The company is usually straightforward about what is going on there," he told the E-Commerce Times. "So it should really disclose everything it knows about this event. Credit card data theft is a big concern for consumers.
"It follows that if a hacker can adjust sales rankings, he can access
credit card information," he said.
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