User:Louis/IMDb automatic account creation for Amazon customers

IMDb (Internet Movie Database), a film and series database owned by Amazon, said on a help page marked "Updated 10-April-2026" that eligible Amazon customers "will be automatically signed into IMDb.com with a newly created IMDb account", unless they already signed into IMDb with Amazon. IMDb says "All IMDb accounts will automatically have a profile page", and that there is no way to remove it "except to delete your entire IMDb account", a request the user must confirm by email "within 5 days".

The version marked "Updated 5-August-2026" no longer contains the phrase "newly created", and says that eligible Amazon customers, "if available in your location", "will be automatically signed into IMDb.com with your Amazon account". The version marked "Updated 6-October-2026" offers a "No Thanks" opt-out and says Amazon account holders, aside from Amazon Teen accounts (a login for teens aged 13 to 17), "using IMDb.com or the IMDb mobile apps will gradually see this new experience".

IMDb under Amazon ownership

Amazon announced on April 27, 1998 that it had acquired Internet Movie Database Ltd, along with Bookpages, Ltd and Telebook, Inc. An IMDb help page calls IMDb "a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon". A 2013 federal court order records that IMDb "also offers a subscription service, IMDbPro", which customers pay to subscribe to.

An IMDb employee identified as Michelle announced on the IMDb Community Forums on September 23, 2022 that, effective October 6, 2022, users would no longer be able to use "Sign in with Facebook" to access their IMDb accounts. The post said that users who had signed in with Facebook and did not reset their password would not be able to access their IMDb account and its associated data, such as contributions, lists and ratings.

IMDb's account help page, updated September 24, 2025, said "IMDb now uses Amazon's account system for sign-in and new account creation" and "Existing IMDb accounts remain active." The version marked "Updated 22-July-2026" read "Your Amazon account is now your login to IMDb." The version marked "Updated 5-August-2026" says users who sign in with alternative methods "will be prompted to migrate" to Amazon sign-in, and that IMDb will remind them to migrate every 60 days. IMDb gives its reasons on that page as "Consistency", "Simplicity" and "Personalization", the last described as "Better recommendations tailored to your taste."

The August 5 version of IMDb's account help page says people who use IMDb without signing in "will miss out on features such as; ratings, your Watchlist, reviews, and more!" The website Basic Tutorials reported on April 19, 2026 that IMDb "now requires a login if you want to see the detailed user reviews."

Automatic sign-in with Amazon

IMDb explains the feature in a help article titled "IMDb Single Sign-On with Amazon". The National Institute of Standards and Technology defines single sign-on as an authentication process by which one account and its authenticators are used to access multiple applications.

The article says users will see "one of the two experiences": one reading "You are signed in as [name] from Amazon. Not you? Learn more | No Thanks", or one ending "Not you? Sign in another way". The article also lists customers with Amazon accounts registered in Japan or China as not eligible.

Amazon's help page "What Is a Teen Login?" says a teen login allows teens (aged 13 to 17) to shop and share payment methods and Prime benefits with adults in an Amazon Household. The same page says Amazon stopped accepting new signups for the Teen program as of April 7, 2025, and that existing Teen accounts "can continue to be used until the teen turns 18".

Help page wording from April to October 2026

The opening of the version of IMDb's single sign-on help article marked "Updated 10-April-2026" said IMDb and IMDbPro customers "are signed in with their existing Amazon account". The page said that selecting "Sign out" or "Sign in another way" would sign the user out of "this newly linked IMDb account, and the account will be requested for deletion". For a user who selected that option and wanted to keep the account, the page said to "just create a new IMDb account with your Amazon credentials!"

Neither "newly created" nor "requested for deletion" appears in the version marked "Updated 5-August-2026". Its opening says IMDb and IMDbPro customers "may be signed in with their existing Amazon account on IMDb.com", and its answer for "Sign out" reads "You will be signed out of your Amazon account on IMDb.com."

Version	Account wording	Wording for "Sign out" or "No Thanks"	Who sees it
"Updated 10-April-2026"	Eligible Amazon customers "will be automatically signed into IMDb.com with a newly created IMDb account", "unless you already sign into IMDb with Amazon"	"the account will be requested for deletion"	"Currently only US customers using IMDb.com on a web or mobile Chrome browser"
"Updated 28-May-2026"	Eligible Amazon customers "will be automatically signed into IMDb.com with a newly created IMDb account", "unless you already sign into IMDb with Amazon"	"the account will be requested for deletion"	"Currently only US customers using IMDb.com on a web or mobile Chrome browser"
"Updated 5-August-2026"	"Eligible if available in your location", Amazon customers "will be automatically signed into IMDb.com with your Amazon account"	"You will be signed out of your Amazon account on IMDb.com."	"Currently only US Amazon account holders (aside from Amazon Teen accounts)" on a web or mobile Chrome, Firefox or Safari browser
"Updated 25-August-2026"	"If available in your location", Amazon customers "will be automatically signed into IMDb.com with your Amazon account"	"You will be signed out of your Amazon account on IMDb.com."	"Currently only US Amazon account holders (aside from Amazon Teen accounts)" on a web or mobile Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Microsoft Edge or Opera browser
"Updated 6-October-2026"	"If available in your location", Amazon customers "will be automatically signed into IMDb.com with your Amazon account"	"You will be opted out of Automatic Sign-in with Amazon on IMDb.com."	Amazon account holders other than Amazon Teen accounts, using IMDb.com or the IMDb mobile apps, "will gradually see this new experience"

Profile page, username and real name

IMDb's help center says every account automatically gets a profile page that can be removed only by deleting the whole account, and recommends instead "marking your profile activity such as; ratings, lists, check-ins, etc., as private". IMDb describes the profile as "a collection of your activity on IMDb", covering ratings, reviews, lists, the Watchlist, check-ins, polls and badges. Badges earned by rating or contributing to IMDb show on the profile page, and IMDb says there is no way to hide them from public view "at this time". Everyone has a tenure badge based on how long they have had an IMDb account, and recent polls "are currently always public and cannot be made private".

Every IMDb account has a username, which IMDb describes as a label associated with the holder's user activity "if you’ve made that content public"; the username also appears on the profile. IMDb calls the username "the ID associated with" the profile, public lists, ratings, reviews and data contributions. Each account also has a private contact name (real name), which IMDb says "appears only in your view", in the navigation bar at the upper right of every IMDb page, and is used for customer service and emails from IMDb.

Opting out, unlinking and deleting

The version of IMDb's help article marked "Updated 6-October-2026" says a user who selects "No Thanks" will be opted out of "Automatic Sign-in with Amazon on IMDb.com", and can still browse IMDb when signed out "but will not have access to certain features". To unlink an IMDb account already linked with an Amazon account, the same version says the user will need to go to the Delete account page in Account Settings and identify the IMDb account to be unlinked by email, and "will need to be logged in to an IMDb account to do this". The version marked "Updated 10-April-2026" told users that if the profile data shown matched their IMDb account previously linked with their Amazon account, they "may need to check which email address is associated with the account" before opting to unlink and delete "your newly created IMDb account".

IMDb's account-deletion help page says a confirmation notification will be sent to the email address associated with the account, and the user will need to follow its instructions "within 5 days to verify your deletion request". Once an IMDb account is deleted, the page says, "it cannot be recovered", and all of its associated ratings, lists and user reviews will be removed from IMDb, while other factual data submissions such as filmography credits will be retained. IMDb's guide to using an Amazon account says deleting the Amazon account "also deletes your IMDb and IMDbPro account, and all associated data", including "any active IMDbPro membership".

An IMDb employee identified as Ozzy replied on IMDb's support forum to a user's post dated May 7, 2026. The reply told the user that if they were "seeing a new sign-in experience on IMDb" and did not recognize their IMDb account details, they should see IMDb's help article, where they would also find "FAQs on how to unlink and delete this new account if that's your intention".

Data sharing within Amazon

IMDb's Privacy Notice, last updated August 3, 2026, states:

We share user information with our parent corporation (Amazon.com, Inc.), the subsidiaries it controls that follow practices at least as protective as those described in this Privacy Notice, and as described below.

The notice says that by using the IMDb Services, users "are consenting to the practices described in this Privacy Notice." Among the ways users give IMDb information, it lists when they "use Login with Amazon or otherwise link your IMDb account to a third-party business". Login with Amazon, according to Amazon's developer documentation, allows users to log in to third-party websites and apps "by using their Amazon account credentials" and to grant those websites and apps access to "their Amazon customer profile data".

In a February 2022 article in The Observer, published on the website of The Guardian, Will Richmond-Coggan, an information and privacy law specialist at Freeths LLP, said the section of Amazon's privacy policy on data sharing within the Amazon group of companies was "pretty limited". He said people should "assume that any information shared with one Amazon entity will be known to any other".

Simon Lüthje of the technology website Basic Tutorials wrote on April 19, 2026 that existing Amazon customers can log in to IMDb with their existing access data, and that "anyone who uses the login links their usage behavior on IMDb to the Amazon ecosystem".

Hoang lawsuit over IMDbPro subscriber data

In Hoang v. Amazon.com, Inc., a case in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington (No. C11-1709MJP), actress Huong Hoang, who goes by the stage name "Junie Hoang", sued IMDb.com and its parent company, Amazon.com. She alleged that she had paid a fee to sign up for the IMDbPro service in 2008, and that IMDb.com took the personal information she provided during the subscription process and added it to her online profile without her authorization. The defendants, Amazon.com and IMDb.com, moved to dismiss the case for failure to state a claim; in a March 2012 order, the court held that Hoang adequately pleaded her claims for breach of contract and violation of the Washington Consumer Protection Act, and denied the motion as to those claims.

In March 2013 the court ruled on summary judgment, which a court grants when the moving party shows that there is "no genuine dispute as to any material fact" and that it is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. That order recorded that Hoang had used a friend's IMDb account to submit a 1978 date of birth for her profile, although her true date of birth was in 1971, and later asked IMDb to remove it. An IMDb customer service manager then accessed IMDb's "IPS database", which the court described as containing the subscriber information that customers submit when paying to subscribe to IMDbPro. He found there Hoang's legal name, which she had submitted in 2004 when she signed up for a free trial of IMDbPro, searched a public records database with it, and directed IMDb's data content team to publish her correct birth date on her profile page.

The order granted Amazon.com summary judgment because there was no evidence Amazon was involved in any of the alleged wrongdoing, and granted IMDb summary judgment on the Consumer Protection Act claim because Hoang could not show that the public interest was impacted by IMDb's actions. The order also stated that IMDb and Amazon did not have common access to each other's customer information databases, and that "they do not share or exchange any such customer information". It denied IMDb summary judgment on the breach of contract claim. After a jury trial, the court entered judgment in favor of IMDb and against Hoang on April 12, 2013.

Forced registration and consent standards

The Federal Trade Commission staff report Bringing Dark Patterns to Light, dated September 2022, describes dark patterns as design practices that trick or manipulate users into choices they would not otherwise have made and "that may cause harm". Its appendix lists "Forced Registration or Enrollment", defined as "Making users create an account or share their information to complete a task". The appendix's example of that pattern is "Create an account to continue with your purchase". The report also says "companies should avoid default settings" that lead to the collection, use, or disclosure of consumers' information in a way "that they did not expect".

Article 4 of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) defines consent, in its point (11), as a "freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication" of a person's wishes, given "by a statement or by a clear affirmative action". Among the numbered paragraphs under "Whereas:" that come before the regulation's articles, paragraph (32) adds: "Silence, pre-ticked boxes or inactivity should not therefore constitute consent."

Under Article 3, the regulation applies to processing "in the context of the activities of an establishment" of a controller (which "determines the purposes and means of the processing of personal data") or a processor (which "processes personal data on behalf of the controller") in the Union, and to processing of the personal data of "data subjects who are in the Union" by controllers or processors not established there, where the processing relates to offering those people goods or services or to monitoring their behavior within the Union. IMDb's versions marked "Updated 10-April-2026" and "Updated 28-May-2026", which described "a newly created IMDb account", limited the experience to US customers. Where the GDPR applies and an account's processing rests on consent, an automatic sign-in to a newly created account of that kind would involve no statement or clear affirmative action by the customer.

Amazon's developer overview of Login with Amazon describes pages where the user logs in, then "consents to allow your website access to their profile data". Goodreads tells users to select Connect Amazon Account from Account Settings and "Follow the prompts to link your existing Goodreads and Amazon accounts." Audible's help page has the user select "Merge now" and enter their Audible password and Amazon information. Ring's app steps include "Tap Link under Link Amazon Account", entering the Ring account password, and tapping Agree and Continue. An Amazon Pay blog post dated April 20, 2022 described checking out on Zappos by choosing Sign In with Amazon, signing in, and "then click to allow access to your profile"; the post added, "You can remove access at any time."

See also

• Forced account