Amazon said it mistakenly shared customer data with undisclosed parties, a privacy misstep by the world's biggest online retailer heading into its busiest time of year.

The company on Wednesday emailed an undisclosed number of customers to report that their emails and names were inadvertently shared due to a technical error that has since been fixed. It also told customers that changing passwords wasn't necessary.

"We have fixed the issue and informed customers who may have been impacted," Amazon said in an email, declining to provide further details on who received the private information.

Online holiday sales will top $124 billion this year, up 14.8 percent from a year earlier, according to Adobe Inc. Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday will be among the biggest spending days in the U.S.

Target was the victim of a high-profile data leak during the 2013 holiday shopping season, when hackers stole credit- and debit-card data, as well as personal information, for tens of millions of customers. That dented sales and triggered a stock slump that contributed to the ouster of Chief Executive Officer Gregg Steinhafel.

-- Bloomberg News