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Did anyone else just get signed up for “Amazon photos” out of the blue for $60?
Today I got an email welcoming me to Amazon Photos, and another email saying my $60 annual subscription will renew next month. When I went to cancel, it said I would receive a pro-rated refund based on my last payment… in 2015: https://imgur.com/a/VOmJCnP
I don’t remember ever using Amazon photos.
Has this happened to anyone else?
- rolph 4y agosounds like phishing
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y agoIt’s all on amazon.com urls.
- rolph 4y agoim not there to experience what you have in front of you, but there are some very good ones out there that play games, manipulating URLs or straight up proxy botting other computers. they usually give a talk similar to what you posted, often there is an urgent deadline when "account charges are final and non-refundable" they just want a click on a link or a mouse farm [harvesting natural mouse movement to spoof bot detection]
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y agoI went on desktop and looked at the email’s html, it links to real Amazon URLs. If the hackers own my iPhone and my Windows desktop I am truly fucked!
- pessimizer 4y agoBetter to just copy-paste the url to the url bar, delete the domain, and type it in yourself. Then you at least know that the scammers have figured out how to get Amazon to forward their scam, so it was both you and Amazon that got suckered. Personally, though, I'd never follow a link in an email that I hadn't requested. If I can't get to the information through my Amazon account, I'm going to consider it bullshit, and even if it turns out not to be, the fact that I couldn't get to the information through Amazon itself will make a good ground for contesting any claims or charges.
- gruez 4y ago>a mouse farm [harvesting natural mouse movement to spoof bot detection] surely there are better ways of getting visitors to your site than sending phishing emails?
- rolph 4y agoyes im sure there are, for example offer a product that primarily serves the user. some people are so pathological, they will take big negatives to preserve "my way or the highway" consider the legendary chair brandishing executive for example.
- Jaxkr 4y agoAmazon Drive was discontinued and rolled into Photos
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y agoOk, interesting. I logged into Amazon drive, and I found a few files from 2012-2016. They consist of a small amount of music and some send-to-Kindle documents. I recall trying Amazon’s music service at some point. Also, sometimes Amazon would offer me a free $1 digit credit when I ordered a physical item, perhaps they also offered some free Amazon Drive storage? My working theory: I had some kind of free Amazon Drive account (maybe created as an accessory to some other service?). During this Drive shutdown, some kind of botched data migration resulted in that being turned into a paid Photos account.
- ceejayoz 4y agoThey regularly have "try service x for $y" offers. Example: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/ymmv-get-a-15-amazon-when-you-backup-your-photos-with-amazon-photos/ https://www.doctorofcredit.com/ymmv-get-a-15-amazon-when-you...
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y agoInteresting lead. I just logged into the Photos app. It gave me a welcome/onboarding flow like I had never used it before and there were no photos in there. On the other hand, I can totally imagine 2015 version of me signing up for a free Amazon photos account to get $15.
- Victerius 4y agoNo. The only Amazon sub I have is Prime.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- legrande 4y agoIf you're in the EU, try getting the Revolut app. They have a feature called 'virtual cards' which are great for e-commerce purchases. The idea being, you use a card once and then terminate it after making a purchase. This means you don't get unexpected charges a year (or two) later as most services keep your card 'on file' now, which is a dark pattern.
- rthomas6 4y agoPrivacy.com for USA.
- thomas-st 4y agoCareful. My friend used Revolut virtual cards and forgot to deactivate the card after the purchase. Months (or a year) later he got a fraudulent charge and Revolut refused to waive it because they claim he should have deactivated the virtual card. If it were on a regular credit card he may have just been able to dispute it.
- jack_pp 4y agoYou should use their one time payment cards to be safe
- KennyBlanken 4y agoPayment processing gateways can see what type of card you're using and many one-time/prepaid cards will be rejected for recurring service or deposit related billing.
- lrem 4y agoMany if not most merchants I deal with refuse those. Which is terribly annoying when it's a shop with clunky checkout flow.
- Teever 4y agoI'm baffled by the fact that the system is designed in any way to enable merchants to know that the card you're paying with is a single use card.
- oneplane 4y agoReported earlier as an upcoming change: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32276698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32276698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32773770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32773770 Like Jaxkr wrote: drive is getting rm'ed, and Photos is their replacement.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y agoThat must be related, although I wasn’t a Drive subscriber either (maybe I was back in 2015 and forgot, but definitely not in 2022). The automatic signup for a paid subscription is what’s really off about this.
- oneplane 4y agoYeah, that's a pretty wild one. You essentially have some free product, and happened to have a card on file and now suddenly you're subscribed to something. I don't know about US law, but in most of the northern western countries, companies aren't allowed to arbitrarily sign you up for stuff. Even if Amazon were to 'hide' this behind a "it is the same product but we changed the name and started charging" it wouldn't fly because they would then also have the service agreement changed which should be grounds for termination of the subscription rather than suddenly getting signed up for automatic payments.
- ilamont 4y agoI have to ask: are a lot of secondary Amazon technologies in a rickety state compared to other large technology platforms? Just yesterday there was a long thread for "Amazon walking back raises after internal bug miscalculated compensation" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32982398 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32982398) and anyone who deals with its selling platforms like Vendor Central, Seller Central, and KDP lives in constant fear of unwarranted account lockouts with no explanation or obvious triggers.
- fairity 4y agoI’m wondering if Amazon photos is a precursor to Amazon taking a second shot at building a new smartphone. The switchover cost from Apple to Amazon would be lower if files and photos were already synced, and Amazon invested a suspiciously large amount of money last Prime day to drive signups to Amazon photos ($10 credit to download the free app and sync photos).
- xyzzy123 4y agoCould also be a desire to harvest training data for rekognition?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Terretta 4y agoThere's a gotcha with this change from Amazon Drive to "unlimited" Amazon Photos. Looks like any camera roll items that are videos, not photos, cost storage. I logged in and found I have a recurring 1TB storage plan for a couple hundred family and travel video clips across my 15 years worth of camera roll photos.