I went to sleep while reading a Kindle book on my phone. I know because my hand dropped and the phone knocked me in the forehead. I set it on the nightstand and went to sleep again.
I woke up and was planning on reading for a few minutes before starting my Monday. When I opened the Kindle app, it asked me to log in. When I did, Amazon said my account was locked and I needed to check an email. I did, and found one from Amazon.co.uk questioning a purchase I made and asking for me to very an order number and the last 2 digits of a card to charge.
I wasn’t sure what to do, but since my wife was complaining about her Audible account, I knew I needed to do something.
I didn’t like the email for multiple security reasons, including not giving me a way to verify the email online. Checking Amazon’s help page said I should have a link in the email to a form. Even when I called the Amazon help line, they said I should have a link when I logged in to do so. I didn’t on either the .com or .co.uk sites, but Amazon Customer Service eventually unlocked my account.
I wrote about Dependencies in today’s editorial, inspired by this story and the Reddit story linked in there about losing access to Claude. That’s scrary, especially in this new automated world where AI agents might be examining activity and undertake this type of action to prevent other issues. It’s an overreaching type of judgment that starts to expose the dangers of a highly interconnected world.
I get Amazon might want to ensure my purchase was legitimate and perhaps prevent future orders, but also locking my content away (books, movies, audio, etc.) because of a shopping issue seems extreme.
It’s certainly my issue, and I’m not sure how I untangle things for the future, but it does make me think about limiting dependencies a bit more in the future. Or at least understanding the dangers of too much on one service.
Whether that’s the books I read or the services my company gets from any one vendor.