Seattle — Amazon.com said on Wednesday it mistakenly shared customer data with undisclosed parties, a privacy misstep by the world’s biggest online retailer heading into its busiest time of year. The company e-mailed an undisclosed number of customers to report that their e-mails and names were inadvertently shared due to a technical error that has since been fixed. It also told customers that changing passwords was not necessary. “We have fixed the issue and informed customers who may have been impacted,’ Amazon said, declining to provide further details on who received the private information. Whether Amazon faces government investigations and fines for the error depends on where the customers live, said Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an independent research group. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission has been reluctant to probe potential privacy violations, but the European Union would likely investigate and levy fines if any of the dat...
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