Amazon customer? You might’ve received an email yesterday from the online retail giant about a change to your account settings — specifically, your password. The Seattle-based company recently discovered a list of email addresses and passwords that had been published online, and naturally concluded that some users’ accounts may have been compromised as a result. So the digital seller made the proactive decision to take care of security on behalf of its customers, and then alerted them to the change.
“At Amazon we take your security and privacy very seriously,” the email, whose authenticity was verified by an Amazon spokesperson, began. “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.” This, of course, is cause for concern in and of itself, but Amazon can’t single-handedly address the security problems of the entire online world.
“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,” the email continued.
Users, of course, were not stuck with the password Amazon chose for them — rather, they were then instructed to reset their password upon their next visit to the site. Resetting your password on Amazon simply involves navigating to the “Forgot your password?” tab on the Amazon.com Password Assistance page, whereupon you’ll receive another email with a personalized link to help you pick a new string.
“We recommend that you choose a password that you have never used with any website,” Amazon added (though as the firm itself pointed out earlier, that’s probably not going to happen).
If you want to be extra careful about your Amazon security, the company encourages enabling its own Two-Step Verification, which “requires you to enter a unique security code during sign in” in addition to your password.
So if you’re looking to protect your online shopping addiction, this may just be a good place to start.
