Last week on April 25th at around 9:25am CST I started to received 100’s of spam emails to my inbox, they were coming in so fast that I couldn’t keep up. My email address is also my business email. After a few minutes I had over 3000 and they kept coming in. They were going directly to my inbox and not my junk folder. This was devastating to my job and business. After about 30 minutes, I was at around 7000 emails and I couldn’t stop them. I did some research and everything I found said to check all of my bank accounts because I had most likely been hacked and that someone ordered something that would have trigged a “Your Recent Purchase” email and since I was “spam bombed” I wouldn’t see the email to stop the charges. I looked and didn’t see anything.
The next morning while sorting all of my junk mail, I got lucky and saw an email from QVC with the subject line of “Protect Your New Lens with a SquareTrade Service Plan” I thought to myself that this was awfully specific compared to all the other emails I had received during the “bomb”. I checked my QVC account and Q-Card account and sure enough at 9:28am CST the previous day, someone had ordered a $1500.00 Canon camera lens using my Q-Card and had it shipped to an address in Grapevine, TX. I live in Magnolia, TX. I immediately called Synchrony Bank and QVC. They both suggested that we contact UPS and have the package rerouted because it had already shipped. QVC did a great job in making sure this happened. I see today via UPS that it has now been returned to the sender, a third party seller I was told. So at this time all appears to be good.
Now for my gripe. In today’s world were 10’s of thousands of people are the victim of identity theft and fraud there are several things that could have prevented this. I will start with myself as I may not have had the best password, or used the same password on too many accounts, whatever. But let me give you an example of how other online retailers do things.
Amazon is a great example. If I log into to Amazon and want to buy something for a friend who lives in Idaho lets say and I have never shipped anything to him before. Amazon will let me use a stored credit card and ship to a new address, however, Amazon will make me enter the full 16 digit card number of the card I am trying to use. This is what should have happened when this item was shipped to Grapevine, TX. QVC should say, Sure we can ship this to an address you have never shipped to before. Just enter the full card number. This would have stopped this.
Also, Amazon has the option of 2 step verification. When I log in, a text message is sent to me with a 5 digit code, I have to enter that code before it will log me in. Even better. My Yahoo fantasy baseball account. If I want to check my fantasy league, all I have to do is put in my user name and the Yahoo app on my phone will say, “Are you trying to log in” if I say YES, it logs me in. A password is ever needed! How great is that!!??
My point is, is that QVC needs to adopt some new technology and use some new log in steps moving forward. The full credit card number is a great and easy way to stop this from happening again to me or others.
***Edited to remove personal information***
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