Amazon is telling people who use its wishlists feature to switch to post office boxes or non-residential delivery addresses if they want to ensure their home addresses remain private, as part of a change in how it processes gifts bought from third-party sellers. The change is especially concerning to many sex workers, influencers and public figures who use Amazon wishlists to receive gifts from fans and clients.

First spotted by adult content creators raising the alarm on social media, the changes open anyone who uses wishlists publicly to increased privacy risk unless they change how they receive packages.

In an email sent to list holders, Amazon said beginning March 25, it will reveal users’ shipping addresses to third-party sellers. The platform added that gift purchasers might end up seeing your address as part of this process, too.

https://web.archive.org/web/20260225203949/https://www.404media.co/amazon-wishlist-address-private-third-party/

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[–] 91 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Oh so its my problem because YOU fucked up?

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    [–] 24 points 8 months ago (11 children)

    Well, yeah. If it's a third party seller that means Amazon isn't shipping you the product so they have to know your address.

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  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Amazon handles fulfillment for tens or thousands of third party sellers.

    Unless the item you're buying says "sold by Amazon" under the Buy buttons, it's coming from a third party. Prime shipping only means it is coming from the Amazon warehouse, not that Amazon is selling it.

    It's been a major issue for years for commonly counterfeited brands, because apparently Amazon's warehouses don't differentiate and all those items are dumped in the same bins, so real products get mixed with fakes and third party sellers get hit with returns, reviews, and even bans for fake products. Apparently Amazon puts the same generic item barcode on all of the items, and once they're mixed into in the bins they no longer can track individual products back to the original seller.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago* (3 children)

    Apparently Amazon puts the same generic item barcode on all of the items

    This really doesn't make sense.
    All extra processes in logistics need to increase accountability and not reduce it.
    And simply adding a UUID to a QR is hardly an expensive task.
    This outcome is pretty much their intention.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    It makes sense if they don't care. It works well enough for their marketplace and that's as far as they decided to go with it. Amazon isn't exactly known for accountability.

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  • [–] -2 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    Shouldn't a wishlist mean that it isn't shipped at all though? Why would wishlisting expose your home address?

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  • [–] 21 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Because people can buy stuff off your wishlist and have it shipped to you. In its current form, it doesn't expose your address to the buyer, but apparently the change may do that.

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago* (3 children)

    I understood it to mean that wishlists currently only offer things shipped by Amazon, so they don't share your address with other sellers, but they're going to change wishlists so they offer things from third party sellers, who will need your address to ship things to you. So they're going to start sharing your address with these sellers.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    It also seems like the person buying the gift might get to see the address, which is the problematic part.

    That statement might just be a CYA in case a 3rd party seller accidentally gives out the address.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    that's how I understand it as well. but I'm not familiar with using wishlists or Amazon anymore so I can't be sure that's what it means

    but, uh, yeah this seems fine?

    they're adding functionality by allowing wishlists to use third party sold items. you don't have to use third party sellers, just don't put those on your list

    as long as this is clearly explained and identifiable on product pages, and it can't change without you knowing about it and having time to respond, this seems fine?

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I'll have to add my wish that strangers would buy me things I want to my Amazon wishlist.

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago

    Thousands of Onlyfans girls crying out in terror. Hopefully there's an opt out, but I don't see how that would make sense for Amazon.

    Someone is going to make some money with a packaging forwarding business catering to that market.

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  • [–] 17 points 8 months ago*

    Ok

    deletes amazon account

    I'm protesting tarrifs anyway, haven't bought a thing in a year.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago* (1 child)

    How tf did Amazon operate without giving shipping addresses to third party sellers and delivery partners?

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  • 4 comments in c/privacy@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    Lots of content creators use these wishlists with fans

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago*

    I got that email today and changed my wishlist to private.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 child)

    So a friend of a friend of a friend recently started actively stealing from amazon. Only amazon supplied products. Never 3rd party sellers. Some examples being, buying expenxive ram sticks of the same.make model and trim as a cheaper size and speed ram sticks they own, delicately removing the OEM sticker from the expensive ram and putting it on the cheap ram, packaging it all back up and issuing a return to amazon for full balance of the expensive ram.

    Or requesting reacents be sent for not recieving deliveries for orders with pictures of the delivery on their amazon account as proof. That one only started once the friend of a friend of a friend realized they tasked their dumbass AI bot to handle returns so they started feeding everynorder ino it.

    Or repurchasing duplicates of anything that breaks no matter how long in between initial and duplicate purchases, re-boxing the broken shit and keeping the good shit, and returning the broken shit with the reason for return being anythjng but product damaged so as to not trigger detailed inspection.

    They have not gone far out of their way to hide any lf this. At most they regurgitate some response that fits the return's terms amd conditions paramters for acceptable return as a small white lie.

    The after effects of all this have been wonderful for the friend of a friend of a friend. They sleep well at night knowing Amazon themselves are eating the costs for all this. That plus the fact that all their scams have been for price inflated hardware driven by the AI datacenter whores, of whome Amazon is one of the ones leading the charge. They also are at minimum to no risk for being caught on most scams because most shit they can just respond, "oh shit my bad i sent you guys the wrong one. They were side by side and i mustve grabbed the wrong one." In which case they then return the actual most recent purchase and are back to where they were before the scam they got busted on.

    But the GREATEST outcome is the amount of fucking attention Amazon now pays to every single one of their orders now. No matter how big or small. Drivers must collect delivery code for every order so no more damaged boxes. No more stolen packages, albiet not amazon's fault. They havent had a single case of lost or delayed delivery, everything is on time with the estimated delivery date at purchase. Which is saying skmething when you live in the wintery boondocks. And ontop of all that, anytime they have to reqch out to Amazon they get a fuckin call from a real fuckin person at Amazon cuz they assume everything is an attempt to scam.

    Fuckin friend of a friend of a friend is sitting on brand new 128gb 8000 ram, ryzen 9 995x3d, the best mobo on the market, half a full on grow op worth of 800w full spectrum grow lights. All for less than $30 in postage for some of the returns. I filed this information into my file for unethical life protips right next to "Untill something changes and it affects your credit, only an idiot pays back medical debt in the US."

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    If something is broken, it's probably clearly broken. That just wastes someone's time later down the line, I guess. But the relabeled RAM is fucked. That is just going to end up in some other end user's hands and give them a diagnostic nightmare along with, most likely misattributed hate towards ebay or whatever resale method moves that stick from Amazon scraps to the end user's build.

    So no, I cannot agree this is some harmless fuck-you to corporate overlords. This will eventually fuck over someone innocent.

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