Amazon says technical error exposed customer names and emails

Amazon told its website exposed the names and email addresses of few customers due to a technical error. The retail giant told it has emailed the customers who were affected and fixed the issue. Amazon cleared that its website and systems were not hacked.

A spokesman from Amazon did not answer additional questions, like how many people customers had an impact or whether any of the information was stolen.

Avivah Litan, a Senior Analyst at Gartner, told email addresses can be misused by bad actors for what's known as phishing: contacting people by email and trying to trick them into providing additional sensitive information, like their passwords or Social Security numbers.

Amazon disclosed about this as it gears up for the busy holiday shopping season. According to Bain & Co., the Seattle-based company is expected to grab as much as half of all online sales by the end of this year.