Protect Your Amazon Seller Account from Being Hacked
Protect Your Amazon Seller Information: How to Keep Account Secure?
Online Amazon sellers who had their seller accounts hacked this week was the ultimate headache. They were the targets by cyber hackers on Amazon to scam consumers by selling fake goods, drained sales and funds causing significant losses to their Amazon business. There are more and more Amazon seller accounts being reported hacked each day using stolen credentials. If you have not been hacked, there are simple ways to protect your account and how to keep it protected it going forward.
How did Amazon Seller Accounts get Compromised?
The first form of how seller accounts have been hacked is through phishing which hackers can get user’s Amazon ID and passwords. Once the hackers have control, it’s difficult to get account back. If they have your Amazon credentials, they may get into other accounts such as PayPal, email, store accounts and everything they can get their hands on.
Read more on Amazon account security or amazon.com/phish to read more about ways to protect yourself from phishing.
Amazon Seller accounts had changes to banking information such as changing bank deposit information so the funds would not get to their designated bank account but instead the funds were sent to hackers, there is posting of fake merchandise that doesn’t exist on Amazon to sell to consumers which in turn, the hackers get the cash. The Amazon fraud is largely from email, password credentials stolen from hacked accounts of the dormant sellers who are not as active.
Sellers are the Victims
Unfortunately, sellers are the core victims taking the hit as the wait time to get the money back is long, thousands of dollars in debt, filing appeal, no access to account and reporting to Amazon. For consumers, if they buy products from the seller, even though it may not get shipped or is a fake product, there is protection from Amazon for full refunds.
Amazon has confirmed it withholds payment to sellers until they have verified sales from the seller accounts so in turn the sellers have to wait up to 14 days to get paid. They also guarantee full refunds to consumers if there are issues with products. The protection for sellers, is minimal.
Protect Amazon Seller Account with Simple Tips
Protecting your account whether it’s your email, bank accounts, credit card accounts, Paypal, Venmo and more to online fraud and cyber security breaches is critical to protect your personal information so you are not out of money and time. Having an Amazon Seller account is like your personal bank account but you are managing your business and this is your revenue generator ranging from; ordering inventory, managing and tracking sales and most importantly, transferring money from your business to the buyer and also from Amazon to you.
Enable 2 step verification
Save yourself the hack nightmares by Enabling Amazon’s two step verification should be the priority for seller accounts. This is an extra protection Amazon has implemented beyond just entering your password. Read more about “Turning on Two Step Verification”. Once you’ve activated the two step verification, here is how to login to your seller account.
*If you are a Payability client, enabling the 2 step verification will not affect your account.
Change Passwords
Many sellers have admitted in the social communities and forums posted they use the same password for their Amazon account as they do for accounts at other websites such as credit cards, banks, emails and more.
To prevent your accounts from being compromised and keeping online account safe, follow these simple rules. This sounds easy and should be a best practice when you create a new account but you will be surprised as we would not be hearing these security breaches and hacks if it was this simple.
- Always use unique passwords from being hacked. Use password at least 16 characters
with 1 number, 1 uppercase and 1 lowercase along with a symbol.Example: fullname, families, pets, friends, house numbers, birthdates, social security number, password and more! - Don’t use the same password across all your accounts. Example: fullname or password.
- Do not let web browsers (firefox, chrome, safari ) store your passwords which can be revealed easily.
- Using Public WifI: DO NOT log into your personal important accounts like your checking account or payment digital wallets when connected to a public wi-fi, free VPN or web proxy.
- Use a password manager. Do not store your passwords in the cloud, spreadsheet on computer or on your phone. Use password apps such as lastpass or Zoho Vault.
How is Payability Securing Customer Information?
As a daily payment solution service for Amazon sellers, Payability partners with sellers to help with security.
“It is important we are partners and are here to help our clients with their security and not as something that could potentially weaken their security”, says Keith Smith, CEO of Payability.
We are constantly monitoring the bank data of the seller accounts daily as we are pulling earnings data from Amazon to verify sales so we can pay sellers for their sales so they don’t have to wait to be paid from Amazon. Any change in bank information or suspicious activity, our client team notifies sellers immediately. We are also currently in the process of upgrading our extensions for additional security measures and will notify clients once upgrades are implemented.
It is unclear at this point who is responsible for the hacking incident but very clear extra security processes will need to be put in place from Amazon and increased alert for sellers to protect accounts.