I worked for Amazon for four years. For nearly the entire time I worked there, I, as an engineer, had access to every customer&#x27;s purchase history, contact information, email addresses, etc. The reason? On occasion, I&#x27;d need to get a user&#x27;s email address to reach out to them if they reported bugs. The one service that offers employees this access is all or nothing. Either you get to see a customer&#x27;s email, credit card number, and purchase history - or you get to see nothing at all.<p>Everyone knew that I had this access, and everyone knew that it was against Amazon&#x27;s own policy to give me access. But to them, that was easier than fixing the service so that it was more useful.<p>Perhaps I&#x27;m just clueless, but something tells me that any relevant competitor to Amazon - say, I don&#x27;t know, Google - would choose to fix the service instead.