Is this the end of the road for Amazon?

Now the company has fallen foul of the UK's Data Protection Act. As a direct result of Amazon's first skirmish with consumer law, Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, asked the company to remove his records from its database. He claims the only reply he got was a generic response claiming customer data cannot be separated from processing operations. And that refusal to delete records on request contravenes the law.

Privacy International is now threatening court action to force Amazon into line. This, of course, has lead to calls for amazon.co.uk to be shut down, hitting the company where it hurts most in the run up to Christmas. But onlookers should be careful not to cast too many stones in the e-tailer's direction - they might just find they're in a glasshouse of their own.

Any company or organisation which gathers information and stores it electronically must be extremely careful on two counts. Firstly, deleting customer data on request really does mean deleting it. It does not mean merely adding a 'dormant' tag to the record. And secondly, anyone in charge of data capture and storage services for their firm must design them with the harshest data protection environment in mind - and that environment is currently Europe.

Amazon may be the company currently at the centre of the data protection argument, but make no mistake, it is only being made an example of. Ninety per cent of the world's companies are just as guilty of the same crimes.

No, we must look to ourselves, and put our own houses in order before we point that accusing finger.