Amazon shuts down customer’s smart home

Hello, everybody. How's it going? I hope you're loving a lovely day. Today, I would like to go over reason number 80 million that you should not be having stuff in your house.

Connect to Amazon servers for things like critical infrastructure, whether it is your camera systems, your doorbell, or any part of your home. This comes from Mr. Brandon Jackson.

It says, On Wednesday, May 31, 2023, I finally regained access to my Amazon account after an unexpected and unwarranted lockout that lasted about a week from Thursday, May 25. This wasn't just a simple inconvenience. I have a smart home.

Smart home, and my primary method of interfacing with all the devices and automations is through Amazon Echo devices via Alexa. The incident left me with a house full of unresponsive devices, a silent Alexa, and a lot of questions. The sequence of events that led to this digital exile began.

Innocuously enough, a package was delivered to my house on Wednesday, May 24, and everything seemed fine. The following day, however, I found that my Echo show had signed out, and I was unable to interact with my smart home devices. My initial assumption was that somebody might have attempted to access my account repeatedly, triggering a lockout.

I use a fairly old email address from my Amazon account, and it's plausible that an old password might have been exposed in a past data breach. However, I currently use strong autogenerated passwords via Apple and employ two factor authentication with an authenticator app, so unauthorized access seemed unlikely. I swiftly checked my other accounts social media, streaming, et cetera, to ensure that I hadn’t been compromised.

All seemed normal, with no flood of notifications from Microsoft Authenticator that would indicate an attempted breach. Puzzled, I found the advice of the Amazon app and dialed the customer service number it provided. That's when things began to take a surreal turn.

The representative told me that I should have received an email, which I indeed found in my inbox. It was from an executive at Amazon. As I dialed the number provided in the email, I half wondered if Amazon was experiencing some issues and I was unwittingly falling for a scam.

You don't expect trillion dollar companies to email you and then have them say, call me back, bro, so I completely understand where he's coming from. When I connected with the executive, they asked if I knew why my account had been locked. When I answered, I was unsure.

Their tone turned somewhat accusatory. I was told that the driver who had delivered my package reported receiving racist remarks from my ring doorbell. It's actually a UFI, but I'll let that slide.

Here's where things got even more baffling. First, I have multiple cameras recording everything that happens on my property. By the way, I hope those cameras are going to a local NVR.

If the driver's claims were accurate, I could easily verify them with video footage. Second, most delivery drivers in my area share the same race as me and my family. It seems highly unlikely that we would make such remarks.

Finally, when I asked what time the alleged incident occurred, I realized it was practically impossible for anyone in my house to have made those comments, as nobody was home around that time, approximately six five P-M-I reviewed the footage and confirmed that no such comments had been made. Instead, the UFI doorbell had issued an automated response. Excuse me, can I help you? The driver who was walking away and wearing headphones must have misinterpreted the message.

Nevertheless, by the following day, my Amazon account was locked and all my Echo devices were logged out. Let me be clear. I fully support Amazon taking measures to ensure the safety of their drivers.

However, I question why my entire smart home had to be rendered unusable during their internal investigation. It seems more sensible to impose a temporary delivery restriction or purchasing ban on my account. Submitting video evidence from multiple angles right after my initial call with the executive appeared to have little impact on their decision to disable my account.

This incident has led me to question my relationship with Amazon. After nearly a decade of loyalty, I’ve been given a harsh reminder that a misunderstanding can lead to such drastic measures. It seems more reasonable to handle such issues in a more compartmentalized way, rather than a blanket shutdown of all services.

Due to this experience, I'm seriously considering discontinuing my use of Amazon Echo devices and will caution others about this incident. BlackBerry, you are on the wrong side of the chair, and if you step on my keyboard and hit the spacebar, you are going to get it, girl. You're going to get it.

Left side of the chair, Barry. Good, Barry. Due to this experience, I am seriously considering discontinuing my use of Amazon Echo devices and will caution others about this incident.

This ordeal has made the case for a more personalized home assistance system, perhaps using Raspberry Pi devices scattered around the house. Despite promptly submitting video evidence immediately upon learning of my issue, my account remained locked. The timing couldn't have been worse.

The onset of Labor Day weekend was approaching, and I was keen to resolve the issue before the long weekend. However, despite numerous calls and emails, it wasn't until Friday afternoon that I had received confirmation that the investigation had started. I was told to expect the response within two business days, meaning not until Tuesday of the following week at the earliest.

In the end, my account was unlocked on Wednesday with no follow up email to inform me of the resolution. This is one of those things where instead of this drives me nuts. So instead of apologizing for the fact that they ****ed with somebody who purchased items in their home that apparently they don’t have permission to use, if a delivery driver mishears a ****ing automated doorbell, that they can't even just say, hey, man, we're sorry we ****ed up.

We realized there was nobody actually there. Have you ever dealt with one of those situations where there’s somebody in your life that does something massively screwed up and they realize that they did something massively screwed up, and then the moment they realize it and they undo whatever it is that they did, they just walk away? Or they just say well, they just don't say anything. Don't even make eye contact.

Rather than be mad enough to go, hey, man, I'm sorry I screwed up. It's just a piece of **** way to behave. Speaking of piece of **** ways to behave, somebody is supposed to stay on the left side of the chair like Barry.

This incident stands as a stark reminder of the need for better customer service and a more nuanced approach to incident management. Through sharing my experience, I hope to encourage Amazon to reform and rethink their approach to handling such situations. In the future, it's essential for customers tofeel confident in the security and reliability of their services, especially when those services are integral tothe functionality of their homes.

It's time for Amazon to take a more customer focused approach to problem solving and conflict resolution. So let's get this straight. If a delivery driver for the company disapproves of you for any reason, you can have your actual account shut down.

The devices that you use in your home may not work. Have you ever had an issue with a postal worker, an Ups delivery person, a FedEx delivery person before in your life? Can you imagine if that issue that you had with that delivery person resulted in items inside of your home that you bought and paid for, no longer functioning and working? This is why I think it is paramount that the infrastructure in your home be as sovereign as possible. Do not have your light switches or your radios or anything else in your home connecting to other people's servers to get permission to turn on.

That is a mess waiting to happen, because again, all it takes is an Amazon delivery driver who's having a bad day to literally ruin your home. An unfounded accusation of racism means that infrastructure inside your home can stop working. This is the problem.

When you give too much control to one company, and particularly when that control that you're giving is your devices inside of your home connecting to their servers. You could literally be in a situation where somebody making an unfounded, untrue, demonstrably proven untrue accusation of racism against you causes your internal home infrastructure to stop working. That's ****ing insane.

I completely understand and respect that. The target demographic of this channel. The people that tend to show up in my comment section and show up to meetups are not the people who need to hear this public service announcement.
You guys are ripping the computers out of as many things as possible that do not read a computer because you don't want to live in a world where the infrastructure in your house stops working because some douchebag at Amazon decided to listen to the unverified claims of someone who misheard a ring doorbell. However, there are many other people out there that actually believe it's a good idea to have the infrastructure in their house connect to somebody else's servers. Sending those other people information, making their house completely dependent on some douchebag that works at Amazon for the ability of their devices at home to work that doesn't even have the courtesy to apologize when proven that they were wrong for turning off what you bought and paid for.

Don't have this stuff inside your house. You don't need a smart home. Am I allowed to say that you don’t need a home that connects to other people's servers? You are fine without it.

You don't need it. Now, if you want a light to turn on, turn the ****ing switch. What I have over here, if I want to listen to music, got a computer.

That computer has a program that runs locally, plays my music when I wand that I ripped off of my albums. That plugs into a nice little rotel RB 1090 amplifier over there. That thing doesn't connect to the internet at all.

Jeff Bezos can't turn that thing off if he wants to. Hell, that thing doesn't even have a remote. I had to get a separate thing that you can plug an item into that doesn't have a remote that is literally just a relay so that I can turn it on and off when I want to without having to get up and walk over to it.

That plugs into a set of nice Vanderstein model threes. I got all my acoustic panels over here. This thing sounds way better than some ****** ass little cloud bluetooth speaker.

Listen to this. Ten times better than the Amazon ********. Really, honestly, truly, in your heart of hearts, how much **** in your house do you need to connect to the ****ing internet? And goddamn, it sounds great.

And it don't connect to **** that I don't want it to connect to. And that's how it is. I have a folder of music.

I play it. It's beautiful. It's great.

I can have a nice romantic evening. I could play shastakovich. I could play opera whatever I want.

I got acoustic panels everywhere. There are so many ways to have fun in your home without connecting Amazon. Why do you got to connect Amazon? The turn all your **** on.

Turn the **** on yourself. That's it for today. And as always, I hope you learned something.

I'll see you in the next video. Bye now.

from Hacker News https://ift.tt/oL2BcYM