An AT&T insider says that the iPhone pre-order fiasco could be related to "a major fraud update that went wrong" exposing users' private information.
Gizmodo received the following letter explaining the situation:
I work at a 3rd party order processing facility—what AT&T refers to as a 3CC. We process business-to-business, business-to-customer Wireline Indirect, and ACME/PAC (what AT&T calls their iPhone program internally). Agents use AT&T programs called Phoenix, Telegence, Compass, Ordertrack and myCSP to process orders.
Over the weekend there was a major fraud update that went down on all of AT&T's systems, from Saturday overnight to Sunday early morning. All systems were down and agents were unable to use any systems.
The issues people are seeing at AT&T stores and online are most likely related to this update that went wrong.
I do know that there was absolutely NO TESTING of this system done before the launch of the new iPhone. I know it's just heresay at this point, but I can confirm that there was a major outage over the weekend that impacted all ordering systems and programs, and I can confirm that there were multiple systems being upgraded/updated, with some updates being related to fraud.
At this point, I can say that the system that AT&T uses to send automated orders to be processed is as of this very moment down completely. Our facility is unable to process any orders by phone or by automation.
[Regarding the identity problem] Whenever we see people who are logging in and seeing other customer's account info, it is an issue with the databases that contain customer information. Orders that contain any information like this can cross customer information, and cause a customer be able to see other accounts by logging out and logging back in. This means that when they log in a few times, it gives them different customer account info every time. It's a rare occurrence, but it has happened in the past.
You might want to advise people to not get the upgrade at this point as it may be a doorway to a major privacy breach.
Gizmodo has also received numerous reports of users logging in to their account only to be shown other peoples information.
Take a look at the screenshot below...
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Gizmodo received the following letter explaining the situation:
I work at a 3rd party order processing facility—what AT&T refers to as a 3CC. We process business-to-business, business-to-customer Wireline Indirect, and ACME/PAC (what AT&T calls their iPhone program internally). Agents use AT&T programs called Phoenix, Telegence, Compass, Ordertrack and myCSP to process orders.
Over the weekend there was a major fraud update that went down on all of AT&T's systems, from Saturday overnight to Sunday early morning. All systems were down and agents were unable to use any systems.
The issues people are seeing at AT&T stores and online are most likely related to this update that went wrong.
I do know that there was absolutely NO TESTING of this system done before the launch of the new iPhone. I know it's just heresay at this point, but I can confirm that there was a major outage over the weekend that impacted all ordering systems and programs, and I can confirm that there were multiple systems being upgraded/updated, with some updates being related to fraud.
At this point, I can say that the system that AT&T uses to send automated orders to be processed is as of this very moment down completely. Our facility is unable to process any orders by phone or by automation.
[Regarding the identity problem] Whenever we see people who are logging in and seeing other customer's account info, it is an issue with the databases that contain customer information. Orders that contain any information like this can cross customer information, and cause a customer be able to see other accounts by logging out and logging back in. This means that when they log in a few times, it gives them different customer account info every time. It's a rare occurrence, but it has happened in the past.
You might want to advise people to not get the upgrade at this point as it may be a doorway to a major privacy breach.
Gizmodo has also received numerous reports of users logging in to their account only to be shown other peoples information.
Take a look at the screenshot below...
Read More