Results of an Amazon.de „Datenauskunft“ / „Data Subject Access Request“

Published 2018-09-18, 17:14

On 2018-07-20 I requested a „Datenauskunft“/“Data Subject Access Request“ from Amazon.de where I had an account since 2001. I wanted to document both the process and the results, as I couldn’t find anything online back when I requested this myself

To request a Datenauskunft from Amazon yourself you have to go to amazon.de/kontakt, then select „Digitale Inhalte und Services“, choose „Datenauskunft beantragen“ („Request your data“) in the first dropdown, „Datenauskunft für eine spätere Zusendung beantragen“ („Request data file be sent at a later date“) in the second and „Daten aus allen Kategorien anfordern“ („Request All Your Data“) in the third and last one.

Clicking „E-Mail“ will populate the contact form with some default text that you can just submit after adding your full name to the body text.

Shortly after I submitted the form, I got an email that I had reply to to confirm that I, the owner of my account email address, had indeed requested this data.

(I had to jump through a few hoops here as I use catch all email adresses @janpiotrowski.de for login, but replied from my usual email address which of course their system didn’t like. But as this is for verification of my request, I was happy to comply.)

I got a first response with data ~20 days later on 2018-08-09, which included a download link to a file name `Piotrowski.zip` (which was 138 KB of size).

The email also included the following admission:

Da wir für Ihre Anfrage Daten aus mehreren Bereichen zusammenstellen, gibt es einige zusätzliche Daten, die wir derzeit noch sammeln. Sobald Sie auch diese Daten herunterladen können, werden wir Sie entsprechend informieren.

The data file’s content:

1. DSAR_-_Jan_Piotrowski_-_Kontakthistorie.docx
2. DSAR_Anfrage_-_Jan_Piotrowski_-_Kontoinformationen.docx
3. Mein_Profil.xlsx

The `.docx` Word files contained 1) a history of (some recent) written communication with Amazon (including my data request of course), 2) all my current and past shipping addresses, payment methods, failed payments (just one…), watch list(s) content, vouchers used (lots), warranty claims (none), wish list(s) content, subscriptions (prime trial) and some information about Amazon Drive (never used) – really everything I could probably have gotten from the Amazon website myself after logging into my account there.

The `Mein_Profil.xlsx` just contained a link to www.amazon.de/profile.

Roughly one month later on 2018-09-17 I received another email from Amazon, telling me that now all data had been collected and could be provided to me.

Again it contained a download link to a file, this time called Jan Piotrowski.zip, now grown to 1043 KB (10.9 MB unzipped!).

This is its folder and file structure:

|   
+---- Ihr Kundenkonto -
|       DSAR - Piotrowski, Jan - Kontakthistorie.docx
|       DSAR_Anfrage - Piotrowski, Jan  - Kontoinformationen.docx
|       
+---Alexa
|   \---Alexa_0032...ea17a
|       +---Communication - Messages
|       |   \---Conversations
|       |           Conversations.html
|       |           
|       +---Communication - Preferences
|       |       alexa_comms_preferences.html
|       |       
|       +---Lists
|       |       Lists.csv
|       |       
|       +---Preferences
|       |       Preferences.json
|       |       
|       \---Routines
|               Routines.json
|               
+---Appstore
|       PurchaseDownloadInstall_Appstore.csv
|       
+---CloudDrive
|       Piotrowski_Jan_Account_Info.csv
|       Piotrowski_Jan_Client_Events.csv
|       Piotrowski_Jan_Device_Info.csv
|       Piotrowski_Jan_Node_Metadata.csv
|       
+---Community Profile
|       Mein Profil.xlsx
|       
+---Fire TV
|   |   3poptout_000.csv
|   |   appusage_000.csv
|   |   deviceusage_000.csv
|   |   marketingoptout_000.csv
|   |   registration.csv
|   |   
|   \---FireTV_Piotrowski_Jan
|       \---FireTV_Piotrowski_Jan
|               2018-01-23.json
|               2018-01-26.json
|               ...
|               FireTv-Glossary.csv
|               
+---Kindle
|   +---Geräte
|   |       appusage_000.csv
|   |       deviceusage_000.csv
|   |       marketingoptout_000.csv
|   |       registration.csv
|   |       
|   \---Inhalte
|       |   householdsharing.csv
|       |   KindleReadingActions.csv
|       |   ReadingSessions.csv
|       |   whispersync.csv
|       |   
|       \---digitalcontentownership
|               DigitalMusicTrack_B00...AG.json
|               DigitalMusicTrack_B00...DS.json
|               ...
|               KindleEBookSample_B00...W0.json
|               KindleEBookSample_B00...WA.json
|               ...
|               KindleEBook_B00...L0.json
|               KindleEBook_B00...W0.json
|               ...
|               KindlePDoc_2UEXX...TSOH.json
|               KindlePDoc_3753F...0766F1E.json
|               ...
|               MobileApp_B00...BO.json
|               MobileApp_B00...1W.json
|               ...
|               
+---Prime Music
|       DSAR_Jan_Piotrowski_Meine_Musikbibliothek.csv
|       
\---Prime Video
        Genderlanguage.csv
        Locationdata.csv
        Viewcounts.csv
        Viewinghistory.csv

As you can see this new package includes the same files as the first package in `/- Ihr Kundenkonto -` and `/Community Profile`, but also adds several other folders with my real usage data from Amazon:

/Alexa
Never used it, so just empty lists or default information.
Exception is a list of Audible audio books I own.
/Appstore
Apps purchased, downloaded and installed from Amazon App Store, probably on my Fire TV device (see below).
/CloudDrive
Seems 2014 I created a CloudDrive account and even „used“ it once or twice. Might be connected to Kindle app, hosting my ebooks or digital documents.
/Fire TV
I got a Fire TV Stick 2015/16 that I used to run streaming apps. Seems Amazon tracked all device and app usages, including what stuff I looked at in the Amazon apps. Not surprising, but a lot of data. Might be worth to visualize.
/Kindle
I had multiple Kindle’s, starting 2011 with a Kindle 3G, up to my current Kindle Paperwhite. This was the data I was most excited about, as it contains a log of both my device and app usage – and lots of information of what I did on my Kindle and what was transmitted by Whispersync. Read state, books I read etc. – all in a format that can be consumed by a script. I will definitely do something with that data.
/Prime Music
Never used it, but was surprised to find digital representations of CDs I bought on Amazon.de
/Prime Video
Thought the same here, but seems I indeed used it on the Fire Stick to watch a few free episodes.

The easiest way to look at the data was to just upload the whole folder to Google Drive. The previews of the `.csv` files is decent enough to get a quick overview.

Opening some of the files with Google Spreadsheet then enabled me to better format the available data and add columns to e.g. parse strange date format columns, sort by date columns and so on.

After a first look through the data files, they seem to be a pretty solid representation of what I expected to get from Amazon.

Some „logs“ are a bit short, only showing data from the last few months which is surprising, after I looked into those more I will possibly check with Amazon if there isn’t more that they just didn’t include by default.

I’m pretty happy with the time it took Amazon to compile this as well. Instant response and download or even self-serve would have been great, but I understand how much work it might be to compile all this data if there are not automated processes in place (yet). I expect this to get faster and better in the future.

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