Interesting Questions:
Hack Attacks or Corporate Incompetence?
Something weird is happening
Maybe it's just a coincidence.
While warnings about cyber attacks on major consumer and financial online platforms increase, so do the weird experiences I've been having with these same platforms. Are these issues related? Or am I just the victim of malignly incompetent corporate bureaucracies?
So I decided to ask AI. To get the best possible answer I crafted a very detailed question. The answer I got was equally detailed (lots of tokens spent). This is a long read. But there's lots of good stuff in it, and I encourage you to go on this journey with me. I promise you'll be glad you did.
Question
Read the following. Tell me what you know about these threats and the types of situations I've described.
We've been advised that the US digital assets are under constant and increasing hacking attacks. I don’t know if this is related: I’ve seen, firsthand, website malfunctions with Amazon, Schwab, Wells Fargo, and other major platforms. Serious stuff. They don’t admit it. But search and you find people everywhere reporting the same problems.
Btw, as I've addressed these issues with the various platforms, I've discovered that they have other issues as well, about which they also refuse to be forthcoming. These issues are, I believe, more a matter of incompetence. But they certainly make a risky situation worse. I'd be interested in your observations on this situation as well.
Here's what I've experienced in recent months:
Amazon
I noticed an unfamiliar purchase. I called customer service. They said the charge was from someone else, made through their Amazon Household program. This program allows two adults to link their separate Amazon accounts to share Prime benefits, digital content, and payment methods.
Thing is, I was never given an opportunity to approve adding someone else to my Amazon "household." Customer service refused to tell me who that person was – out of respect for their privacy! I had to close my Amazon account and call VISA to dispute the payment. VISA, of course, sent me a new card, which entailed hours of updating all my other online accounts.
While we're talking about Amazon, another weird thing happened when I opened the new account. I subscribed to Amazon Prime, which gives you access to Amazon Video. Since I hate ads, I wanted to subscribe to "Ad Free" for $2 a month.
During my transition to my new account I discovered Amazon dropped the Ad Free program and replaced it with one called "Ultra." It didn't add a lot and cost $4 a month. But it was required if I wanted 4K – which was previously included at no extra charge with my old Prime Video service.
Nowhere in the Amazon app or on its website could I find a way of subscribing to Ultra. I called customer support several times, and also spoke with dedicated Amazon Video reps. No one had any idea (supposedly) what the problem was. Yet when I asked you in an earlier session about this, you said it was a known issue.
The irony with all this Amazon mess is I worked at AWS back in the day. Saw Jeff Bezos in the cafeteria. I shared that with all the reps hoping it would give me an advantage, but it didn't.
Schwab
One day I logged into my Schwab brokerage account. I tried to navigate to an area to update a certain account preference. I couldn't access that area. After many long calls up and down customer service and tech support ladders, I was told that, for reasons unknown, that part of the website wasn't working properly for me. But that my money was safe and the rest of the website was okay. Nothing to worry about here.
The highest level customer service manager I reached, when I asked to further escalate, said she was as high up as she would let me go. When I threatened to close my account, she said that was my choice and asked if I'd like a link to the Help topic on Account Closure. (Frostbite alert!)
I asked everyone at Schwab if they thought it was okay that parts of their website wouldn't function for some unlucky customers. Each said that there was nothing they could do to reach beyond their silo to solve the problem. I got a little testy with the last rep, who warned me to back off or he'd report me. "You mean to the higher levels of management no one will let me talk to?" I snarked.
So I closed my Schwab account.
Btw, Schwab's website has crashed more than once since my departure. These disruptions caused intermittent loading issues, account display glitches (such as temporarily showing $0 or inaccurate balances), and delayed trade allocations. How fun is that? And yet all the Schwab reps repeatedly said they "weren't aware" of any problems. Self awareness must be an issue at Schwab.
Wells Fargo
As with my Amazon and Schwab experiences, it's not clear whether my Wells Fargo nightmare was induced by outside hacking or internal incompetence (or both?). And they certainly weren't going to tell me, or even admit there was a problem on their end.
Here's what happened:
I walked into a Wells Fargo branch (one of the few remaining) and opened up a CD account. That's where I wired the money from the Schwab account I eventually closed.
For context, I log into all my financial accounts everyday, and have done so for years. I opened the Wells Fargo CD account on a Friday morning. Nothing else changed. When I tried to log in Saturday morning, I couldn't. Not from the app. Not on the website. Completely locked out.
So I called. Two hours of multiple phone calls later, I was told I had to go to an actual Wells Fargo branch (far away) to use my ATM card at the ATM machine to reauthenticate. Now you can't make this up – another person ahead of me was having exactly the same problem!
Eventually I could log into my Wells Fargo with my phone number but still not using my Gmail address. So I had to get another, non-Gmail email address.
As in the case of Amazon and Schwab, I spoke with many reps in various departments. No one knew why this happened. No one apologized. However, it was implied I was doing something wrong.
Later, they said the problem was my email address was not one their system recognized as coming from an "acceptable source" – the same Gmail address I'd used for years to access my Wells Fargo accounts.
Finally I went full Karen and asked for an executive level review. After a few days I got an email saying, essentially, to back off. The matter had been investigated, and there was no problem on their end. And to stop bothering them.
My "banker" very subtly warned me that if I continued pushing, my account might be closed out of concern something nefarious was going on. In that event, I would be given only a little of my money to live on, and the rest would be tied up for weeks before I'd get it back. Message received.
The next day my old email address started working again. No comment made, no explanation given. Nothing else on my end had changed. No one ever apologized for the incredible inconvenience or the stress this situation caused me. I guess we were supposed to make nice like it never happened.
But wait, there's more:
With Wells Fargo CDs it used to be when the expiration date was approaching you could call your banker and tell them not to roll it over and instead to dump the money in another Wells Fargo account.
That rule changed, although I wasn't told about the change when I opened the CD account. According to the new rule, I'd be notified a month before the expiration date. If I didn't want to roll it over, I had five business days to come into a Wells Fargo branch in person to close it.
If I didn't come in person – being unavoidably out of town, in the hospital, in prison, running a special op for CIA, or for whatever reason – the CD would automatically roll over. Locked into the same duration. Only not at the high promotional rate I previously had, but at the low normal rate of 0.01% (or something like that). To be clear, I could withdraw the money at any time, but I would pay a 10% penalty.
But wait, there's even more:
I showed up on business day #1, a Monday, to close my Wells Fargo CD account. I'd made an appointment online and indicated why. When I got to the branch, I was told that only certain managers were authorized to close CD accounts for more than $5 (actually a higher amount), but there wasn't one of those types of manager at that particular branch.
Fortunately the banker helping me actually wanted to help me. So he started calling other branches. The first three he called where he knew the manager, the branch manager was out all day. Finally he reached a distant branch where the right kind of manager was in. But not so fast.
Despite authenticating me and the banker helping me, that branch manager was reluctant to approve the account closure on the phone. After the banker helping me begged him for 20 minutes, the distant branch manager approved the closure, reluctantly. That is, he approved moving my money from one Wells Fargo account to another – not trying to take it out of the bank. But to make this a teachable moment, he put a hold on the money for an extra day.
Call me a silly goose, but it seems like Wells Fargo wanted to throw up a lot of barriers to make it extremely difficult to freely access my money. But I eventually smuggled most of the money out. Which calls to mind the Wells Fargo motto, "Together we'll go far." Not far enough, actually.
What's happening?
So ends this long story. What do you make of this, AI? Give me a detailed answer responding to every topic I've raised.
AI answer
"You’ve highlighted a perfect storm of modern consumer frustrations. When looking at your experiences across Amazon, Schwab, and Wells Fargo, the root causes are a collision of three things: actual malicious actors, hyper-sensitive automated security systems designed to fight those actors, and everyday corporate incompetence.
When institutions face constant threats, they build massive, automated security walls. The problem is that these systems are often poorly integrated, and the frontline customer service reps are rarely given the tools, clearance, or training to override them.
Here is a breakdown of what was likely happening behind the scenes in each of these situations.
The Overarching Threat Landscape
It is true that US digital infrastructure and financial assets are under relentless cyberattack, ranging from organized ransomware gangs to state-sponsored actors. Because of this, corporations have tightened their security protocols. However, what you experienced mostly points to a secondary issue: when companies try to automate their security and scale back their human customer support, the system breaks down for the actual consumer.
Amazon: Compromised Credentials and Botched Rollouts
Your Amazon experience is a classic mix of an actual targeted hack and corporate system failure.
The Amazon Household Hack: You were likely the victim of a credential stuffing attack or a phishing link. A bad actor gained access to your login credentials, logged in, and added their own account to your "Household" to piggyback off your payment methods.
The Privacy Shield: As maddening as it is, customer service reps are legally and procedurally bound by privacy policies that ironically end up protecting the fraudster. They cannot disclose the identity of the other account holder, even if that account holder is stealing from you. Closing the account and disputing through VISA was the correct, albeit painful, move.
Prime Video "Ultra" and 4K Paywalls: This leans heavily into corporate incompetence and aggressive monetization. Amazon recently moved ad-free viewing and certain high-end features (like 4K and Dolby Vision) behind an additional paywall. The fact that you couldn't find a way to subscribe, and that reps couldn't help you, is the result of a botched, fragmented software rollout.
The AWS Connection: Unfortunately, frontline support is heavily siloed and script-driven. Mentioning your past at AWS, or even Jeff Bezos, won't move the needle because tier-one reps simply do not have the system permissions to bypass the scripts they are forced to read.
Schwab: Siloed Systems and Scripted Denial
Your time with Schwab illustrates the reality of modern tech support limits and corporate communication policies.
The Glitching Preference Page: This was almost certainly a corrupted data flag on your specific user profile, or a frontend bug in their web portal. The reps you spoke with weren't lying when they said they couldn't help; their specific software dashboard physically did not have the buttons or access to reach into the database and fix your profile.
The Escalation Ceiling: Customer service managers are trained to de-escalate, but they are also trained never to be held hostage by threats of account closure. When you hit the ceiling, you hit the limit of their operational silo.
Crashes and Denials: The glitches you mentioned—showing $0 balances and delayed allocations—are well-documented across the brokerage industry, often happening on days with extreme market volume or during major backend updates. Reps repeatedly denying awareness is standard crisis management. Until corporate PR officially declares an outage, frontline reps are often instructed to treat issues as isolated user errors to avoid inciting panic.
Wells Fargo: Automated Paranoia and Dark Patterns
Your Wells Fargo nightmare is perhaps the most complex, blending federal banking regulations with deliberate, anti-consumer business practices.
The Instant Lockout and Gmail Issue: When you opened a new account and immediately moved a large sum of money into it, you tripped an automated anti-fraud and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) algorithm. The system panicked and locked everything down. The Gmail block was likely a false positive; sometimes, standard domains get temporarily flagged if the system suspects the IP address or login behavior is risky.
The "Executive" Threats: Under the Bank Secrecy Act, banks are required to monitor for suspicious activity. If their algorithm flags you, they are legally prohibited from telling you that you are under investigation (this is called a Suspicious Activity Report, or SAR). When you pushed hard, the subtle threat to close your account and hold your money was their way of saying, "If you keep triggering our fraud metrics, we will legally sever ties with you and freeze the assets until the federal clearing period ends."
The CD Rollover "Dark Pattern": The rule change requiring an in-person visit within a tight five-day window is known as a dark pattern. It is a deliberate, legal, but highly unethical friction point designed to make it as difficult as possible for you to take your money out, ensuring the bank gets to hold onto your cash at a 0.01% rate.
Branch Logistics and Dual Control: The requirement for a specific manager to approve the closure is a standard security protocol called "dual control," designed to prevent wire fraud or unauthorized internal transfers. However, because banks have drastically cut local branch staffing, finding someone with the actual clearance to press the button becomes a logistical nightmare for the customer. The extra-day hold was likely the manager applying a final, conservative fraud-prevention measure to cover their own liability.
It is a frustrating reality that the burden of navigating these fractured systems falls entirely on the consumer."
My response
Truth be told, the problems I experienced were not likely due to massive cyber attacks – although they are currently being launched against major consumer and financial institutions. That said, disturbing threads do run through the situations I encountered: Lack of transparency. Dehumanized customer service. Authoritarian control. Threat of financial penalty or loss. In a word, vulnerability.
Extrapolating a bit, what happened to me in some way is a result of large online platforms taking extreme measures to protect themselves. So in that sense I, and all of us, are the ultimate victims of these attacks.
The modern era increasingly seems like a game of musical chairs. Every day the music stops and something gets taken away. Or in a perverse variant of the game, some new danger is added. This trend appears to be inevitable. In that case, tall we can do is maintain situational awareness and adapt to changes as best we can.