Live data from Hacker News

Tragic story – AWS hacked account

news.ycombinator.com

11–20 of 35 posts

Re: Tragic story – AWS hacked account

#11
Email jeff@amazon.com. Although he's stepped back as president and CEO, I've heard that someone still monitors that email, and that serious issues get routed to a team that can actually take care of them.

It's worth a try, in any case, and it doesn't seem like you have much to lose, especially given their acknowledgement that your account was hacked.

Re: Tragic story – AWS hacked account

#12
There is already some actionable advice in this thread – I would suggest that you also call a lawyer to talk it through and see what they have to say. They might be able to contact AWS on your behalf.

Re: Tragic story – AWS hacked account

#13
I ran into this situation earlier this year, minus the horrific personal tragedy, I hope he's in a better condition now, I'm deeply sorry about having to go through that.

I called AWS To deactivate my account in May of 2020 because I was going through some medical hardships and wouldn't be able to maintain anything on there for awhile and I wanted to double check that I wasn't going to keep getting charged if I forgot to manually turn something off. I thought all went well and it would be turned off, until I checked my bank around a few months ago and noticed I was still getting charged for AWS.

I spent 3 weeks trying to get support to why I was still getting charged and for much more than I had ever set uo, but they wouldn't tell me anything because none of my emails matched any accounts they had on record. I finally got a support person to slip when I told her the name of my company and she said it was similar to the email on file, but that it was a Gmail account. I've never made a Gmail account for my business and I was the only one that ever had access to the AWS account. I don't know how someone could have gotten into the account and changed the email, but I couldn't log in and the only thing I could do was have my credit card company cancel the charges (which could only go back 3 months) and prevent new charges. I'm still baffled about how this happened, but I've moved to GCP and will never go back, those 3 weeks were insanely frustrating.

I wanted to fight tooth and nail, just because I'm sick of ultra-large corps' ability to get away with stuff like this, but my wife was worried about Amazon's retaliation and not being able to use Amazon to buy things which is half the problem. I don't really have any advice, but maybe if enough people share their stories something will make it to a headline.

Re: Tragic story – AWS hacked account

#17
post #3
post #2

I would try to get a different support agent first and see if their tone changes

I had 6 agents in total. They were all tone deaf. It feels like I am corresponding with a bot.

None of them wants to lose their job or benefits. It's easier to get rid of you by handling you to the next rep enough times to frustrate you. They won't get into trouble for not solving your issue - they did their jobs perfectly.

Financial harm is the single language Amazon understands. Let lawyers talk to Amazon and they most likely won't be thrown around between 1st line reps.

Re: Tragic story – AWS hacked account

#18

It is called recurring payment scam. Amazon chose to extend credit by letting your account build up instead of suspending your account. You did not ask for a thousands of dollars credit line. I would write a letter to your state attorney generals office telling them that scamazon web services is running a recurring payment scam in your state. Probably the AWS managers running this are foreigners and dont give a shit…

> Probably the AWS managers running this are foreigners and dont give a shit about this country's laws.

Incredible.

Re: Tragic story – AWS hacked account

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be helpful if you explain why you would stay away from aws.

Not paying a debt and walking away isn't a criminal offence. Signing up again under a different name to continue using the service you have been banned from could be considered fraud by misrepresentation, which in most places is a fairly serious criminal offence (even though it is very unlikely to be prosecuted in this case).

What if you start a corp and that corp signs up?
Post reply on HN