Monday, April 24, 2017

Turn On Two Step Verification for Your Amazon Account

Lately, there have been a rash of hackings on Amazon accounts.  Once the hackers are in, they will change your bank account and siphon the money into their account.  In addition, many times they will start selling items that are bogus, make some quick money, siphon that, and then cause many problems to your account.   It becomes hard to get your money back and get your account reinstated.

Often, these are on dormant account.  An account will have it's last review in 2014 and then 5 bad reviews now saying never received item or item is fake.  That being said, it can happen to an active account too.

Last week I received this message from Amazon.


Hello,

At Amazon we take your security and privacy very seriously. As part of our routine monitoring, we discovered a list of email addresses and passwords posted online. While the list was not Amazon-related, we know that many customers reuse their passwords on multiple websites. Since we believe your email addresses and passwords were on the list, we have assigned a temporary password to your Amazon.com account out of an abundance of caution.

You will need to reset your password when you return to the Amazon.com site. To reset your password, click "Your Account" at the top of any page on Amazon.com. On the Sign In page, click the "Forgot your password?" link to reach the Amazon.com Password Assistance page. After you enter your email or mobile phone number, you will receive an email containing a personalized link. Click the link from the email and follow the directions provided.

Your new password will be effective immediately. We recommend that you choose a password that you have never used with any website.

You can also enable Amazon's Two-Step Verification, a feature that adds an extra layer of security to your account. In addition to entering your password, Two-Step Verification requires you to enter a unique security code during sign in. To learn more about Two-Step Verification, go to Amazon.com Help, go to Managing Your Account, and click More in Managing Your Account, and then click More under Account Settings.

Sincerely,

Amazon.com

This e-mail was sent from an address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. To contact us, please visit the Help section of our website.



The solution is simple.  Turn on Two-Step notification.  I had resisted doing it but this email was enough for me.  All you need to do is go to Settings>Log in Settings from with in your account and you will find the instructions there

Once two step notification is on, you will need to receive a text message with a code in order to log in to your account.

You can set it so that on computers you recognize you don't need to keep doing that but it should keep hackers much further away from your account.


As always, stay safe out there!