Amazon confirms employee shared user details with third-party sellersOct 8 (AZINS) After reports emerged about Amazon employee allegedly sharing customer data with third-party sellers, the e-commerce giant has started notifying affected users. Amazon has already fired the employee in question and removed the seller who purchased customers? email addresses, Engadget reported. It was previously reported that sellers have paid as much as USD 2,000 to get access to the data.

Amazon is also asking customers to flag off instances where they receive unsolicited emails from sellers, who could offer them free or discounted goods if they changed their negative reviews and low ratings of the seller on the site.

Recently, a Chinese military unit has been secretly inserting microchips into computer servers used by firms such as Apple and Amazon, giving the Asian giant backdoor access to data, Bloomberg reported.

According to a report in Bloomberg Businessweek, the tiny chips 'as small as the tip of a sharpened pencil and designed to be undetctable without specialist equipment' was implanted onto the motherboard and servers while the units were manufactured in China.

The chips give hackers unfettered access to anything the server does, allowing them to potentially manipulate the server to steal data, contact other servers and alter operations.

According to the report, "Amazon reported the discovery in 2015 to US authorities, sending a shudder through the intelligence community. Elemental’s servers could be found in Department of Defense data centers, the CIA’s drone operations, and the onboard networks of Navy warships. And Elemental was just one of hundreds of Supermicro customers."

Notably, Amazon, Apple and Super Micro have all denied Bloomberg’s report. Amazon said: “It’s untrue that AWSknew about a supply chain compromise, an issue with malicious chips, or hardware modifications when acquiring Elemental.”