So that everyone doesn’t go through what I just did, also because most of you are NOT laboring under my standard operating procedure of “the question is not whether I’m paranoid, the question is whether I’m paranoid enough”, Amazon is having internal system issues effecting the ability to log in. This includes resetting one’s password.
I just spoke with a customer service rep to confirm this because I tried to log into my Amazon account, it wouldn’t take my password, it wouldn’t take the temp passwords that Amazon was sending me, and because I’m professionally paranoid, I immediately called AmEx and cancelled the card I had on file with Amazon when I couldn’t get in or reset my password. I hadn’t gotten any charge notification popups on my iPhone or iPad, but better safe than sorry. Especially as getting an AmEx rep on the phone is easier than getting an Amazon one!
So if you can’t access your Amazon account, you’re not locked out because someone managed to steal your log in and password, you’re locked out because Amazon is having issues with its systems. You know, the same systems the DOD is using…
But at least your Amazon account hasn’t been hacked and your personally identifying information hasn’t been stolen.
Open thread!
burnspbesq
Remember when Amazon’s witnesses convinced the U.S. Tax Court that the IP it offshored was so fucked up that it had next to no value?
No perjury was committed there.
Old School
My account seems to be working fine, so maybe you should be concerned.
literalreddy
This is an Amazon Web Services issue which is affecting multiple AWS services. Amazon.com along with other companies hosted on AWS are impacted.
CAM-WA
Yes, canceling a card over not being able to log in to your account is being overly paranoid.
Almost Retired
Interesting. I just tried to log in to my Amazon account, and the prompt asked “Are you Adam Silverman?” Maybe you should be worried…
ant
i keep getting scam phone calls saying I bought something from amazon (Iphone or whatever), and then they say to press 1 if i didn’t order it. When I click through it’s always some guy with an Indian accent, claiming to be amazon. If I follow through, his angle is to get remote access to my phone or laptop.
If I just hang up, they call back about every 5 minutes with that fucking autodial all day long.
I’ve found best results to be pleasant and polite, and state that I know this is a scam, and to please take me off their call list. YMMV.
PAM Dirac
@ant:
My wife just said “Oh yes, I ordered that. In fact I think I want to order some more”. There was a few seconds of stunned silence and the the guy said “Oh, my god” and hung up.
Ohio Mom
@ant: Oh yeah, I get those, along with Rachel from cardholder services and all the rest.
I just hang up, and file the experience under, “Evidence our state is failing.” Why are these scammers able to operate so freely? Isn’t one of the roles of government to protect us from being preyed upon?
mrmoshpotato
@PAM Dirac:
Hahaha! What did she allegedly order?
Also, the site forgot my name and email! WE’VE BEEN HACKED! /S
Elizabelle
Amazon is sending me all these bodybuilding manuals, and cookbooks with ganache! What gives!
trollhattan
@Almost Retired: ”Based on your recent purchases, we have these suggestions for you, Adam Silverman” [massive list of cosmetics, iphones, and lingerie].
mrmoshpotato
@Elizabelle: Protein powder by the truckload!
burnspbesq
@Elizabelle:
They must have borrowed an algorithm from Le Livre des Visages.
trollhattan
@ant: I’ve tried “I don’t own a car to extend the warranty on. Had my license pulled after the felony DUI and they repo’d it.”
TaMara (HFG)
@CAM-WA: As I took a pledge with the Canadian Air Force in the US to be kind for the 31 days of December, I won’t point out you’re obnoxious and Adam is a security expert who probably understands the dangers of having an account hacked better than some anonymous dude on a top 10K blog.
Otherwise, I surely would have. ?
PAM Dirac
@mrmoshpotato:
I think they only gave an amount, but it was hysterical to hear how flustered he was. I was going to try that out myself, but the calls seemed to have stopped. Must have traumatized the the poor fellow :-) Probably just a lull.
Phylllis
@Almost Retired: Yeah, I cackled out loud.
Humanities Prof
This is affecting educational institutions, as well. My university contracts our learning management software through Amazon (which I only learned today).
It’s finals week, and that service outage means that it’s really hard for students to log in to their class web sites (or for faculty to do the same). Which means if you’ve assigned (or been assigned) an online exam, you’re probably fucked if you try to take it right now.
Two of my three classes this semester are in-person, so those two, thankfully, remain unaffected. But it’s bollixing up my online class something fierce, I’ve already emailed my students to inform them not to panic, and that I’ll give them extra time to get the exam done. Our email, fortunately, does NOT go through Amazon, so that’s still working. Grrr…..
Phylllis
@PAM Dirac: I had the call the other day about missing jury duty and needing to pay my fine with an iTunes card. Told the fellow I had one on me & started reading off the number to him: d i e i n a f i r e m o t h e r at which point he hung up.
Major Major Major Major
A lot more than that’s being affected. Large swaths of the internet are down. Thanks cloud computing!
Almost Retired
@trollhattan: Actually, it tried to sell me bomb shelters and custom panic rooms.
Betty
@Major Major Major Major: I know I am old and out of touch, but I am still afraid of online banking, and all financial institutions, including credit unions, are pushing everyone toward it.
Senator Ted
Stolen from a InfoSec person on Twitter “Amazon Web Services outages are like snow days for adults”
WereBear
@Betty: I figured anything the banks trust with their money is okay.
Leto
@Betty: anything is as secure as it’s least secure component. Doesn’t matter if it’s online or in meat space.
mrmoshpotato
@Phylllis:
Oh that state-level, iTunes card economy…
Make an effort, you scammy bastards! ?
ant
yes, good point.
another one is from the website pluscases.com. I ordered a battery case for my Iphone from them, and they didn’t send anything. After I got my CC bill, and seen they charged me, I tried to call: Nope, just a message saying we don’t answer. Then I tried to e-mail. No reply. Then I used the ‘contact us’ on the their website. No reply.
So then I called my CC and told them to charge them back. Still, they never contacted me, but my case arrived a few days later ( a full 7 weeks after I paid for it).
In the end the case was junk. The charge port fell apart after just a few weeks.
My god! I’ve had it with these fucking Psycos running everything.
zhena gogolia
@Elizabelle: And hydration?
RevRick
Whenever I open my Amazon account, it always comes with kissy face emojis.
I guess that means Amazon is so over you, Silverman.
Warren Lorente
According to this article, it looks like Amazon Web Services is having a major outage on a server in Virginia:
https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/7/22822332/amazon-server-aws-down-disney-plus-ring-outage
It’s not just that Amazon.com will be down; so many things on the web depend on AWS these days.
pacem appellant
AWS (Amazon Web Services) is experiencing an outage in the data center that hosts their global services (VA, region name of us-east-1). Everyone who uses AWS (which is pretty much everyone these days) is having quite a headache today.
Mike in NC
The supermarkets around here are basically devoid of canned cat food, so I went online the other day and ordered a few cases. Real Christmas trees are also pretty hard to find. We went to Home Depot and Lowe’s and they both had just a few of them left, but nobody knew how long they hadn’t been watered. We bought one and stood it in a bucket of water overnight.
Leto
@Mike in NC: Christmas trees are the new Thanksgiving turkeys.
mrmoshpotato
@Leto:
Extra gravy on mine, please.
Spanky
As it happens, I just got an email for a “Let’s Go Brandon” Christmas ornament, with all the usual hinky English one would expect from an offshore scammer. The email ends “Click the link below to see how we prove we’re an all-American company.”
tom
@Senator Ted: They’re not snow days when you work for a SaaS company and furious users are blaming you for the apps not working.
Lymie
Sallie Mae web services are down, too
Spanky
Hmmmm. Biden and Putin have a tense phone call and then a major web service right outside DC goes down.
Just Chuck
@Phylllis: I used to like just blowing a really loud whistle into my phone. They’re usually wearing an earphone, so much the better. Just scammers mind you, not telemarketers who are just trying to get by working in a soul-sucking call center.
Tho these days it’s always robocall warranty scams, and I don’t answer unknown numbers.
Just Chuck
@Major Major Major Major:
If there’s network problems, it’s not going to help a bespoke server farm either. I remember when entire ASNs would go offline.
germy
mrmoshpotato
@Spanky:
Stop. Don’t start this conspiracy theory bullshit.
Ruckus
@ant:
If you have an apple phone you can block their number and it’s rather easy. I use to have an Android phone and you could only block a limited amount of numbers, that may have changed since I was a customer of theirs.
Open apple support and ask the question how to block phone numbers and they show you easy peasy. It has made my phone experience a million times better.
germy
@mrmoshpotato:
Zelma
Thank for the heads up, Adam. I figured something was wrong. Wouldn’t you know, I decided to do my Christmas shopping today, probably bought ten different things, and today things fall apart. The question is, do I have to reorder everything or are my orders somewhere in the ether.
Oh well.
Ruckus
@germy:
So nice to hear good things happening….
The US has the option today of getting slightly healthier.
Grumpy Old Railroader
None of my Alexa devices have been responsive (but Alexa is connected to internet) and I suppose this is account AWS is down. But it took me an hour of troubleshooting devices, routers, modem and Android device access apps to throw my hands in the air and to rely on Mr. Google to quickly discover the culprit was Amazon. Thanks Jeff Bezos for wasting millions of people’s time
Cameron
Any preliminary reports on how the Biden-Putin meeting went? I figured no news was good news.
trollhattan
@Ruckus:
I can block call numbers on my Verizon Android phone but not text numbers.
Because they spoof the caller number it’s not very useful–but someday I shall have each of the ten-thousand permutations of my prefix blocked, and will declare victory! (But will not be able to call myself.)
VeniceRiley
Was placing an order just now. Kept getting “Oops something went wrong” with a cute dog pic ` when trying from my iPhone10. Got the laptop out and placed the prder just fine.
Additionally, my order arrived on time at my sister’s, and have got their stackings stuffed. Fam loves my new wife!
Omnes Omnibus
@Ohio Mom:
Go read The Canterbury Tales. Scammers and snake oil salespeople have always been with us. It’s just a part of human nature.
delk
Trying to figure out what prostates have to do with Amazon. ?
realbtl
My weirdest phone marketing experience was when I was robo-called by my own number. I’m guessing the random generator for numbers just happened to pick mine.
Brachiator
No Amazon problems, but am getting a lot of spam calls. It is accelerating as we get closer to Christmas.
My Android phone shows the caller as “Scam Likely” and I don’t bother answering.
mrmoshpotato
@delk: Ask Alexa.
mac8
@trollhattan:
My android phone also does a good job of blocking spam calls. What it can’t block are people who have never heard of phone number spoofing. The last month I’ve gotten two calls from random numbers asking me why I called them.
SpaceUnit
Hate to be the raincloud but Beaker is correct.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
On Apple it’s any phone number and most of the text crap comes from auto dialers but they seem to attempt to not use active numbers. I don’t know if they actually do but then I don’t really care, if you call me and I don’t want listen/read to your BS, I block. On Apple there seems to be no limit as I have approx 200 numbers/emails blocked. And now that they are I get almost no junk phone calls or text messages. I imagine a lot of the junk comes from a few sources and once they start not getting through they take your number off their call sheets because it’s just wasted time attempting. I also silence incoming calls not in my contacts. The number comes up and is saved in the calls log so I can answer or return the call if desired.
And life is better.
NotMax
“Alexa just said this outfit makes me look fat.”
//
mrmoshpotato
@SpaceUnit: ? In the end…
Ohio Mom
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, of course scammers have always been with us, and will always be. But you could say that about any crime. Yet we at least pretend to care about preventing other crimes, and even occasionally punish a wrongdoer.
Whatever happened with that Do Not Call registry?
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: No. It’s the fat that makes you look fat. ?
mrmoshpotato
@Ohio Mom:
The orange shitstain probably used it to raise money.
Gin & Tonic
@Cameron:
Not directly responsive to your question, but important to remember
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
Reassuring to know something still works the way it’s supposed to.
;)
Omnes Omnibus
@Ohio Mom: The do not call registry exists, but, if someone is planning to empty your bank accounts through a scam call, do you think a violation of the do not call list is going to stop them?
ETA: Going after violators requires people reporting the violations and that the violators be located in the US.
Litlebritdifrnt
I love getting calls like that because I know it is a scam so I can screw with them with wild abandon. My favourite is the “hello I am calling from (internet service provider) there appears to be a malware problem with your account” Me: “But I don’t have (that internet service provider) Them: “What (internet service provider) do you have?” Me: “No you see if you knew there was a problem with my service you would know what my service is” Them: “So what service do you have?” Me: “Guess, go on guess”. It can go on for ages because they won’t give up and neither will I because hey, I am retired and I have nothing else to do but mess with these idiots. Besides which I figure the longer I keep them on the phone it means they are not calling someone who might fall for their bullshit. I am very familiar with these telephone scam calls which are usually aimed at elderly women. They make me so mad and lets face it toying with them is my idea of fun these days.
Victor Matheson
@Humanities Prof: Yup, the already wildly inappropriately named “Speed Grader” function in Canvas is now even more inappropriately named.
Victor Matheson
@Litlebritdifrnt: I was once so abusive to a phone scammer that after he hung up, he actually called back, said, “Fuck you!” and hung up again.
Really made my day. In fact, I am still laughing about it today just with the fond memory.
Jackie
@Betty: You are not alone. My kids keep pestering me to do online banking. Nope, not gonna do it. Their accounts have been electronically compromised more than once. Not gonna do it.
Gravenstone
@Betty: A few years ago I got a call from someone in my bank asking me to take a short survey. One of the questions dealt with how could they encourage an increase in customer foot traffic? They got rather sullen when I reminded them that these were the same people who were pushing their digital banking services in the previous years. A classic case of “be careful what you wish for”.
Gravenstone
Today’s test case for proof they know their target audience. So many MAGAts are about to get a first hand lesson on the importance of cyber security.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
I have an Amazon Alexa speaker in my living room that I use to do stuff like turn on my lights when I get home, and turn them off when I leave. It wasn’t turning off my lights earlier this evening when I said “Alexa, I’m leaving”, and it didn’t turn on my lights when I came back and said “Alexa, I’m home”. I didn’t put two and two together until I saw this post, but if Amazon services are flaky today, that would explain it.
Gravenstone
@realbtl: I’ve been called by my own number as well. The best one I’ve encountered was 000-000-0000. Oh yes, please. Let me answer the great unknown!
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Litlebritdifrnt: I’ve decided to take up a similar pastime, only with the car warranty scammers. I know it’s a scam because the last car I owned was a 1994 Dodge Intrepid that I sold fifteen years ago. So I tell them that my car is some hyper-exotic make that they only made half a dozen of and that I only know about from Forza Horizon or Top Gear.
It was entertaining trying to convince one caller that my car was a 2010 Hammerhead Eagle i-Thrust. They looked up Hummers.
mali muso
@Victor Matheson: We couldn’t take class attendance in Canvas today. Guess everyone gets a free pass! :-)
Ben Cisco
One such call resulted in me trying to keep the “agent” on the line under the pretense that I was “acquiring his coordinates.” I swear you could hear him puckering up over the phone…
WaterGirl
@Zelma: I placed 4 christmas orders on Amazon earlier. It took awhile for each one to show up in the “returns and orders” section, but they did all show up.
So I think you’re fine – it’s just that some the automated stuff is slow.
mrmoshpotato
@Victor Matheson:
LOL! What did you say that he couldn’t let go?
mrmoshpotato
@WaterGirl:
Oh no. No. The Popeyes app is broken. Broken at the start of 12 Days of Popeyes. All is not well. :)
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
No spinachburger for you.
;)
Percysowner
@ant: If you have an Iphone, Hiya is a pretty good spam blocker. I pay a $14 and they announce whose calling and give me bit SPAM SUSPECTED notice when they have had numbers reported.
dm
Stopped at a Blue Bikes depot to get a bike for a ride across town. Neither the phone app nor my little key fob would work to unlock a bike. I suppose that was probably fallout from AWS.
tybee
@Betty: Having done network security for a decade or two, you’d be right about being exceedingly cautious about on-line transactions. You’d be astonished at how much banks and credit card companies write off every year due to fraud.
J R in WV
On the other hand, last night I bought 3 expensive items from Macy’s online. When I got to the end of the purchase process, they told me the credit card was rejected. Then the phone rang, just 90 seconds later, and a computer asked me if I had made a purchase on the credit card at MAcy’s. I said yes, and they said to resubmit the purchase. I had the page still up, it was that fast, and when I resubmitted the data, it flew thru just fine. So all good.
When I get a fraudster human, depending upon the type of fraud, I will try to use up as much of the human’s time as possible. If they’re “calling from Microsoft” with a security issue, I’m there for them. I’m not running MS tools. Can be pretty funny, getting escalated to a supervisor!
Whatever they offer, I ask them if they’re aware of the federal felony they’re committing, and what the penalties are. Then I inform them how long they could go to jail for the crime they committed just now, which I witnessed. Sometimes they hang up, other times they tell me how innocent they really are, haha.
Miss Bianca
Well, shoot. I had some things sitting in an Amazon cart waiting. I wonder if I’ll actually be able to pay for them?
dopey-o
Being stuck at home, I looked forward to the friendly helpful calls I received. I had a long talk from “Bob with The Windows Company” and “Dan calling about a $399 Iphone purchase from Amazon.”
But the best was “US Customs Agency,” who had intercepted a package in El Paso, addressed to me, which contained “Such drugs as heroin, marijuana, cocaine and meth.”
Scammers from The Windows Company are usually good for 20 minutes, but I kept the Customs scammer going for 45 minutes until he was insisting that The Police* were coming to arrest me. He was very upset, so I told him that his mother was whore in the streets of Bangalore.
He hung up, and i have been so bored because I haven’t received a similar scam call in months. So yes, they probably have a list.
Been getting a few south asian accents calling to sell me Medicare plans or wanting to buy my house, I’m polite to them because they (probably) aren’t criminals. “Sorry, I’m 50 years old and I rent. Good luck!”
————-
ETA: *Always wanted to meet String, maybe discuss Carol Young and cycle ology.