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Still locked out of my AWS account

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Re: Still locked out of my AWS account

#131

Any references to how one should go about separating an Amazon retail account and an AWS account, if they are presently the same?

I believe it's as simple as changing the email address for your AWS account, which can be done within the account settings. You can confirm that this does the trick by updating the password and ensuring it doesn't change your retail password.

Re: Still locked out of my AWS account

#132
>This should serve as a warning to anybody else who has an Amazon account that is shared between retail and AWS.

Wouldn't Amazon have locked your AWS account for unauthorized login as well? I don't see how the retail activity matters here.

Re: Still locked out of my AWS account

#133

[Deleted]

Please delete your comment. I am incredibly happy that Digital Ocean made you go to those lengths to get your account back. The last thing we need is web services companies requiring less security. Social engineering attacks are typically the method of entry to hosting providers such as Digital Ocean. Frankly I would be totally fine if they required another form of ID (such as a passport) or another form of address/n…

[deleted]

Re: Still locked out of my AWS account

#134

Also having problem with AWS - can't access it and they keep billing me for something there I want to shut it down (EC2?) but I can't. I recently moved from Brazil to UK (new address) and changed phone + sim card (Authenticator after restore from backup lost all 2 factor auth entries). This is the moment when you realise that you're outside of predefined use cases of The Machine and you're fucked. Nobody is here to h…

This anecdote makes me very happy with AWS. I want loss of 2FA to completely revoke access to my account. Otherwise any smart hacker can social engineer Amazon support with some fake drivers license photo and steal all my BTC (for example).

Re: Still locked out of my AWS account

#135

8 days ago I tried to log in to my Amazon retail account, and received a password invalid error. As it turned out my account had been closed, as it appeared to Amazon that it had received a suspicious log in. This is the same account that I use for AWS - hosting websites critical to my business. Today it appears I am no closer to gaining access back to my AWS account than I was on day 1, even though I have been bille…

This happened to me with instagram. I reset a password, then they detected "suspicious activity." I clicked "send pin via email" and the email never shows up. I've done it 3 or 4 times over the course of a week + it never works. It's a documented error + FB/Instagram refuse to addres it. https://medium.com/@joelrunyon/instagrams-security-features-...

Makes me feel better about all the time I spent on the password reset functionality for my latest project.

Re: Still locked out of my AWS account

#136
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the purpose of 2FA when social engineering the support team circumvents it? This should not be possible! Lost your phone? That’s what 2FA backup codes are for.

Whats your proposed resolution for the two cases on this thread?

Unless you have written backup codes, there should not be a resolution possible. You either remember to changes phone #s before you change them, or you are locked out. Deal with the phone company.

Re: Still locked out of my AWS account

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "self-host", don't you mean "rely on a landlord / ISP / colocation facility"?

Back in days we rented servers and created our env, it was not really that hard. And it was super easy to move from one provider to another.

AWS created a Cambrian explosion of people hosting stuff that have no business doing so. Those people can't just go back to colocating hardware at datacenters... I wonder if they could even effectively get their equipment racked and wired up.

Having to get approval for a capital expense was a filter that prevented teams with zero ops experience from trying to just brute-force google their way through.

The teams I see the most often, in pre-cloud days got nothing done because touching a server meant going through experienced ops teams that could conduct architecture reviews, security reviews and maintenance planning but which didn't have any motivation or incentives to actually launch new products. Cloud means these teams can get things done, at the expense of not having any thought put to architecture, security, or maintenance.

Sure, it's not hard, but it's not possible for them.

Re: Still locked out of my AWS account

#138

Also having problem with AWS - can't access it and they keep billing me for something there I want to shut it down (EC2?) but I can't. I recently moved from Brazil to UK (new address) and changed phone + sim card (Authenticator after restore from backup lost all 2 factor auth entries). This is the moment when you realise that you're outside of predefined use cases of The Machine and you're fucked. Nobody is here to h…

This is why, when creating a new 2FA login, you MUST write down the one time use backup codes, and store them in a safe and secure place.

Most services don't have one-time backup codes, unfortunately.

Re: Still locked out of my AWS account

#139
post #9

Might sound obvious in hindsight, but _always_ create separate AWS accounts for your different projects.

Doesn't this require separate gmail addresses? If so, then that's an extremely bad idea. I already had one gmail account completely banned with no notice. I wasn't doing anything abusive -- I used it for some npm projects and a github account. Actually, is there a reasonable free gmail alternative for situations like this? I'd like to migrate. FastMail is worth paying for, but it's too expensive for one-off side proj…

I use fastmail to host my own domain. I alias all users to myself. Any email I get to aliases that don't end in e.g. ".s" automatically goes to a filtered folder. So blah.s@example.com goes to my inbox, blah@example.com gets filtered. $5/month is cheap. I only use one domain, but presumably you could even host multiple domains using a similar setup.

Re: Still locked out of my AWS account

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in days we rented servers and created our env, it was not really that hard. And it was super easy to move from one provider to another.

> Back in days we rented servers As you do with AWS... > and created our env As you do with AWS... > And it was super easy to move from one provider to another. Which is easier on cloud hosting than it ever was when dealing with colocation providers.

Well it's not quite the same with AWS if you start making use of any of their facilities past straight EC2 instances.

AWS provides a number of SAAS offerings which, if you make use of them, tie you to Amazon specifically, as opposed to an IAAS offering which is likely to be more easily portable to another provider.

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