[masfuerte]

My mother tried to buy something on Amazon yesterday. It wouldn't let her check-out until she'd entered a code sent via WhatsApp. Which she doesn't have and doesn't want. She'll be buying her tat on eBay in future.

I dream that Amazon will lose lots of sales and backtrack, but I don't suppose they will.

[hnlmorg]

Which country was this? I’ve never known Amazon requiring WhatsApp. It uses SMS a lot.

The only service I’ve used which does offer WhatsApp as a form of identification is PayPal. But even that is just one of many different authorisation options.

I don’t have WhatsApp either and never once found that to be a limiting. So I wonder if the experience your relative was having is more nuanced than suggested.

[mrec]

I've never had it require SMS either. Probably because I've never given it a portable telephone number. (Until a couple of years ago I didn't have one, and I still use it as little as possible.)

[walrus01]

Are you sure it was actually via whatsapp, and not just a six digit code sent via regular SMS to the phone number on record for her account? It's possible whatsapp on her phone has simply hijacked the SMS client functionality and set itself as the default.

[subscribed]

I know it was 3 days ago, but I just got an additional data point.

In the Amazon app, the same I normally use, on my normal account, I used Switch Accounts option, and proceeded to create a separate, additional Amazon account.

I entered a different, new email address and my real name.

Amazon happily sent me a verification email, I entered the code. I was then prompted to enter a phone number, I did so (it's a number I never used with Amazon (to my second phone)).

Amazon then requested me to enter the code it sent over on *WhatsApp*. I tried to take a screenshot but it came out all black.

I don't have WhatsApp account with this number.

There was an option to resend it through a normal text message but first it sent out a code on WhatsApp. That should never be a default.

[alasdairking]

No, my Microsoft Azure 2FA sends codes to WhatsApp, not SMS.

UK, where WhatsApp is absolutely mandatory.

[Sophira]

WhatsApp is not in any way mandatory in the UK. I say this as someone who lived in the UK and does not use and has never installed WhatsApp.

[subscribed]

> "WhatsApp on her phone"

GP clearly said she doesn't have WhatsApp.

[walrus01]

If I had a dollar for every time I've seen an older person that doesn't even know what application they're running, or can't tell the difference between the content of a website inside a browser window and an application that runs natively on their computer. I read what the GP wrote, I'm saying there's a non zero possibility she's misunderstanding something.

It seems like something you have to specifically choose, on the amazon account side.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeI...

[subscribed]

I choose to not call a GP a liar or too thick for being unable to differentiate between apps :)

I also chose their presumed first hand statement than your unrelated experience with unrelated third parties.

Your point re: having to subscribe to WhatsApp notifications, if we're staying in the realm of "what ifs" and looking for the awkward but possible ways to discredit the claims, I can believe that she was enrolled without being asked. I've seen at least one person complaining about that exact scenario.

Cheers!

[benj111]

> I choose to not call a GP a liar or too thick

GP of the post or actual GP.....

It's not about being thick. I had a old person ranting at me once because all these Ukrainian girls were emailing him wanting dates, and didn't they realise he was too old for them.

[subscribed]

> GP

The one recalling an event with their mother.

Your experience with a old person is not their experience with their mother.

Can you not project your own experiences on someone's else's?

You claim someone's else's reasoning is wrong based on *your* opinion and past, without anything that would support the relevance in *their* case.

Your experience is valid but irrelevant in that case. Don't project.

[jonners00]

If I forget to pause my VPN before going to Amazon's website, I can't log in with just username and password, I get a page telling me they've sent a code to WhatsApp (which I don't have) with a button to click if I want an SMS instead. Clicking that button never works (error message that I've 'requested too many OTPs') but opening the Amazon app on my phone shows a modal saying 'someone who knows your password is trying to log in... etc' and asking me to approve. They're definitely trying to use WhatsApp by default for sending verification codes.

[em-bee]

but then amazon would not tell her that she should find the code in whatsapp, because amazon would still be sending send an sms. it should not have any awareness of whatsapp hijacking the sms function, and therefore the amazon message should reference the SMS. if it references whatsapp then it means amazon wants to send to whatsapp directly.

[NetMageSCW]

“which she doesn’t have and doesn’t want”

[dude187]

Sure it was Amazon? Sounds like a scam

[deltoidmaximus]

The frustrating part is that since so many companies collect PII under the guise of security (and then use it for advertising) it's harder to tell if this is a legal scam or illegal scam.

[dylan604]

>if this is a legal scam or illegal scam.

the fact this is something to be distinguished says a lot about where we are now and none of what it says is good

[inigyou]

He calls "legal scam" what you probably call "legit business"

[jayGlow]

I has Facebook send a verification through Whatsapp, I legitimately thought it was a scam until I googled it and realized they do actually send verification that way.

[delecti]

Still annoying, but at least then it's the same company.

[masfuerte]

Yes. I'd gone round to see her and I checked her history to ensure it wasn't dodgy.

[whoopdedo]

> She'll be buying her tat on eBay in future. A third of the things I buy* from eBay come shipped by Amazon. I can't always tell if they were using the warehouse for logistics or the seller is doing arbitrage. Either way, it would seem Amazon isn't bothered by people "voting with their wallet".

(*That are new of course, used and open-box still come from the seller as I expect.)

[NuclearPM]

What is a tat?

[seanhunter]

“Tat” means miscellaneous junk.

That said, the anecdote is made up or important details have been elided to make it sound more interesting than it is. Amazon doesn’t depend on whatsapp for 2fa. You can configure amazon 2fa to send an SMS and it’s possible that the poster’s mother has misconfigured her phone to claim that it needs whatsapp to read the sms 2fa message but I highly doubt even that. When I look on amazon it allows passkeys, regular TOTP like with DUO authenticator or google authenticator or whatever or SMS with a backup of sending the TOTP code to the registered email on the account. Whatsapp isn’t even an option.

[giardini]

How does "tat" differ from "grot"?

[card_zero]

Grot is from grotesque and implies dirty or primal, as in grotto, a cave. Sans-serif fonts were called grotesque because they looked primitive. The word grot appears in various 19th century poems as a noun meaning a grotto, where it was supposed to be a lovely place full of fairies. But that meaning wore off and now something grotty is something you'd find in a gutter. The US equivalent is grody.

Tat meanwhile, like gunny, refers to a kind of sackcloth. These words are both from Hindi. The concept is of some cheap filler material. If you want to rush something out, you can wrap it in sackcloth, bag it up in sackcloth, sell it to them in sackcloth, make it quickly out of sackcloth. Or maybe it was left over and has been sitting in a corner for years, at the bottom of a sack. That is "some old tat".

[ChrisRR]

Tat is general rubbish, but generally implies something a bit old fashioned as well. Those decorative plates and figures that old people love? Tat

Grot I've never heard of in terms of buying stuff. Grot to me just implies something dirty

[giardini]

Thank you all for the explications!

My first encounter with "grot" was a BBC comedy, apparently " The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin", wherein a gentleman suffering a mid-life crisis tries to fail at business. However no matter what he does, everything he touches turns to money! At the end he sets up a series of shops named "GROT" which, of course, sell grot and also become enormously successful.

[6031769]

Grot is usually intentionally and always utterly unfit for purpose.

[phs318u]

Perhaps the options vary by region?

[felooboolooomba]

tat n.

  anything that looks cheap, is of low quality, or in bad condition:
  * Like most souvenir shops, it sells a lot of old tat.
  * I'm not spending fifty quid on a piece of tat.

People buy it all the time when they practice retail therapy.

[dude187]

Sure it was Amazon? Sounds like a scam