I Got Hacked By The Russians Yesterday! Yes, Really
This morning I checked my email and saw one from Amazon. When I opened it up it said I had successfully changed the language on Amazon.de to English.
Amazon.de? I tried to log in but couldn't. It wouldn't recognize my email address so I called Amazon. They are there 24/7/365 and I was not on hold for more than a few minutes. The nice lady asked me what was up and I told her. Well, she tried to access the account and found the email was not on file and the password was changed. She asked me a couple of questions to make sure it was my account and after going through a couple of old telephone numbers, people keep you telephone number up to date, I managed to dig up the order for a Kindle book I made a few days ago and gave her that as my last purchase. That worked to verify me and she immediately locked down the account rendering it useless to anyone anywhere on Earth trying to use their platform whether here, England, Germany, Russia or Turkey to buy anything. She said there were no purchases up to this point but if one got through somehow Amazon would reimburse the entire amount.
The lady told me that it would take a couple of days to do the investigation and until I was emailed from Amazon telling me to call them the account would not work. I asked about my credit card information on file and if I should cancel my card and she said no. Only the last four digits showed and the encryption used by them was strong enough after the last few fiasco's that my card was in no danger. Amazon couldn't even access the entire card number.
Finally after thanking her I asked the country id of the hack just to be curious and she said ".ru". Yup, those darn Russians got me!!
Just to be on the safeside I went on every sight I had used that same password and changed them all this morning using numbers, upper and lower case letters and a few symbols.
Don't ignore these safety emails from Amazon if they look odd as Amazon and several other sights immediately email you a confirmation email letting you know your information has changed. Update your phone number and password on a regular basis and pay attention. This stuff sucks.
