Why it matters: According to an internal Amazon document obtained by Vice, the company plans to use increasingly close surveillance measures on its customer service workers to better detect outside actors who try to access customer data. Amazon thinks this surveillance is sorely needed in a time when more Amazon employees are working from home.
According to the document, Amazon initially considered using software that records all of an employee's keystrokes. However, it is now looking at a product that analyzes user behavior in a more general way to create profiles which it then uses to identify whether another person is using that device. That behavior might include typing rhythm, mouse movements, and touch gestures. "We have a security gap as we don't have a reliable mechanism for verifying that users are who they claim they are," it reads.
The document points out different situations in which customer data could be stolen through employees' systems: A remote worker who doesn't live alone may leave their station without securing it; someone could use software on an employee workstation to input keystrokes at "superhuman" speeds; a hacker may have bought an employee's security credentials.
