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A US senator is calling on the Justice Department to open a criminal probe of Amazon’s “predatory data practices.” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO.), who has long been critical of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies and their privacy practices, expressed concern Tuesday about a Monday report that Amazon collects data about third-party products it sells on its …
A US senator is calling on the Justice Department to open a criminal probe of Amazon’s “predatory data practices.”
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO.), who has long been critical of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies and their privacy practices, expressed concern Tuesday about a Monday report that Amazon collects data about third-party products it sells on its website in order to create its own Amazon branded copies.
“I write to ask you to open a criminal antitrust investigation of Amazon,” Hawley said in a Tuesday letter to Attorney General William Barr. “Recent reports suggest that Amazon has engaged in predatory and exclusionary data practices to build and maintain a monopoly.”
Hawley noted that the practice — first reported by the Wall Street Journal — was “especially concerning” due to the fact that small retailers forced to shutter their brick-and-mortar stores amid the coronavirus pandemic have become reliant on online sales to stay afloat.
“While we don’t believe these claims made by the Wall Street Journal are accurate, we take these allegations very seriously and have launched an internal investigation,” an Amazon spokesperson said in an email statement.
A Justice Department spokesman said that the agency had received the letter and was reviewing it.
The Monday report was based on interviews with former employees of Amazon’s private label business who said that the e-commerce giant collected data on their top-selling products in order to ape them. In one instance, Amazon allegedly reviewed how much a vendor paid Amazon to market and ship a car-trunk organizer, including how much of a cut Amazon made on each sale, before introducing its own version of the same product.
The online retailer has seen demand soar during the coronavirus pandemic as tens of millions of Americans locked indoors turn to it for their shopping needs.
Shares of Amazon were down 1.9 percent Tuesday afternoon, at $2,331.04.
With Post wires
