Foiling a hacker in nine phone calls
If your online accounts have ever been hacked, this tale’s for you. My first indication of trouble was the email notification that I’d changed my Amazon password. Nope, I hadn’t, Amazon. I called customer service. The representative helped me create a new password, which was good, because when I logged in, two big-screen TVs sat in my cart, for a total of $3,000. I deleted them. Problem solved.
I logged into my account later, to make sure there was no more funny business. The log-in page said my password was incorrect. I retyped the new one carefully: Still incorrect. This time the email announcing my password change was in German. I made call number two.
This representative said that since I’d changed my password to require two-factor verification, she couldn’t help me on the phone. I protested that I absolutely hadn’t done so, that someone else had, apparently from a desktop computer in Delaware. The rep promised to send an email with instructions to reset my password.
I checked all day, but the email never came. I then realized that no email was getting through to that address, an old Roadrunner address. This seemed bad.
So, I made call number three. By now my credit card company had requested approval for another expensive purchase on Amazon. This hacker, whom I pictured as a pasty-faced delinquent in a Delaware basement, was tenacious.
I told the Amazon rep my story, and was transferred to an account specialist. I told my story again. Since I was not receiving the emails they’d sent, I asked to change the email address on my account. Sure, the specialist said, just log in and change your password first. No, you see ...
By now I was frustrated. The specialist revealed that no one at Amazon could break the two-factor verification: That’s what made it so secure. She said she’d send me a text message within two hours, allowing me to change my account’s email.
Reader, you know I never received that text.
Call four: This next account specialist, upon learning that the reset emails didn’t arrive, told me to call my internet company and change my email password so I’d get the all-important email.
Ready for more? The aforementioned Roadrunner account was created 20 years ago through Spectrum. The Spectrum rep told me that Roadrunner addresses were obsolete and no longer supported by Spectrum. Didn’t I get the email? Hahahahaha.
Call number five to Amazon — now as normal a part of my morning as a cup of coffee — also proposed a text message.
No dice.
By call six, I’d learned to bypass the wasted time with the initial robot by yelling, “Speak to a representative!” as soon as the call connected. I could recognize the specific hold music of each Amazon department. This representative told me that my account was still active, and all I had to do was go in and delete it if I was so worried about some hacker buying big-screen TVs.
Hahahahahahaha. Thanks, Gwen.
Call seven informed me that the customer service number was not working at this time.
Call eight got me to a person who said that my account could be disabled only by someone in Account Recovery. I asked, with admirable self-control, to be transferred. A pause. Then, in a hushed tone that hinted I’d asked to see the Great and Powerful Oz, the specialist said, “Ma’am, no one speaks to them. Not even us. They do everything by email.” He sent them a report asking to lock my account, mentioning my cart currently held gift cards for immense amounts.
I placed call nine in what you might call a murderous mood. Some heartless punk hacker had two-factored my account, frozen my email, and was trying to buy stuff on my dime, and I was over it! My husband helpfully offered that a guy at a desktop in Delaware was probably not the culprit, that my tormenter was likely a bot, but I preferred my enemy to have a punchable face.
Call nine succeeded! This hero-specialist unlocked my account after asking me personal questions about past purchases, and helped me change my account’s email. I received the email at the new address, changed my password, and enacted my own dang two-factor verification. Then I deleted all payment methods.
I may never buy another thing on Amazon. But neither will that hacker in Delaware ever get the computer games and Bluetooth speaker he impudently “saved for later.”
Postscript: My small amount of research on the problem of hacking revealed an astonishing number of how-to tutorials for potential hackers, as well as hackersfor-hire. Seriously? A generic search offered many firms that specialize in preventing hacking.
I found studies on the lasting psychological harm caused by hacking, and learned that in 2023, global cybercrime will cost the world $8 trillion. I am lucky my hacker only cost me time and aggravation. Most victims are not so fortunate.
This near-victim’s advice: Complicate your passwords and establish those bothersome two-factor verifications. Gird your virtual loins. It’s war out there in cyberspace.