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Verizon Gave Her Data to a Stalker. ‘This Has Completely Changed My Life’ (www.404media.co)

submitted 10 months ago by btp@kbin.social to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

“Verizon royally fucked up,” Poppy told me in a phone call. “There’s no way around it.” Verizon, she added, was “100% at fault.”

Verizon handed Poppy’s personal data, including the address on file and phone logs, to a stalker who later directly threatened her and drove to an address armed with a knife. Police then arrested the suspect, Robert Michael Glauner, who is charged with fraud and stalking offenses, but not before he harassed Poppy, her family, friends, workplace, and daughter’s therapist, Poppy added. 404 Media has changed Poppy’s name to protect her identity.

Glauner’s alleged scheme was not sophisticated in the slightest: he used a ProtonMail account, not a government email, to make the request, and used the name of a police officer that didn’t actually work for the police department he impersonated, according to court records. Despite those red flags, Verizon still provided the sensitive data to Glauner.

Remarkably, in a text message to Poppy sent during the fallout of the data transfer, a Verizon representative told Poppy that the corporation was a victim too. “Whoever this is also victimized us,” the Verizon representative wrote, according to a copy of the message Poppy shared with 404 Media. “We are taking every step possible to work with the police so they can identify them.”

In the interview with 404 Media, Poppy pointed out that Verizon is a multi-billion dollar company and yet still made this mistake. “They need to get their shit together,” she said.

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[–] Poggervania@kbin.social 108 points 10 months ago

Bullshit, Verizon isn’t a victim at all - they fucked up, they should own up to their mistake instead of trying to go “me too!” to a situation where a stalker harassed their customer and their family after giving said stalker the customer’s personal information.

[–] Cosmicomical@kbin.social 39 points 10 months ago

“We are taking every step possible to work with the police so they can identify them.”

Yeah just make sure it's the actual police.

[–] plain_and_simply@feddit.uk 35 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Seriously? What a stupid mistake to make. There should always be internal processes right?

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 25 points 10 months ago

Yup. I used to work for a much smaller tech company, and we had a perfectly reasonable process for dealing with cour orders and search warrants that involved crazy things like "get it in hard copy", and "verify the information contained in the order".
For some things, we would even just ask the officer to physically come in and that was weirdly never a problem.

[–] sqgl@beehaw.org 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

And now they will probably overcompensate with frustrating security theatre beyond sensible precautions.

[–] admiralteal@kbin.social 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I see no problem whatsoever with having frustrating levels of obtuse security required before complying with a request from law enforcement.

There is no downside.

[+] sqgl@beehaw.org -6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Maybe I am missing a joke, but why would a service provider need to jump through any security hoops to comply with a request from law enforcement?

[–] admiralteal@kbin.social 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

You mean like... verifying it is a legitimate request from law enforcement? That kind of security hoop? Ensuring there is a warrant or subpoena? Ensuring proper security in transmitting the sensitive personal information?

Civil rights matter more than making cops' jobs easy.

[–] sqgl@beehaw.org 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

OK but that would be entirely different security questions from the ones they ask clients.

I was talking about how frustrating it gets for clients, eg for social security I am a nominee for my Mother. I have to verify details of myself (since I am also on SS) then give them a password for my access to Mum, then (this is the stupid part) give them the details of Mum.

It is entirely redundant by the last stage and it may just be theatre or they may be doing it to piss people off so that they get angry and so the SS agent has an excuse to hang up. In Australia they are notorious for making things difficult and the subject of a Royal Commission which determined they are guilty of illegal shitfuckery (although I don't think the RC used that term).

[–] TheOakTree@beehaw.org 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Well the difference is, in this case it would be an increase in requirements in the situation that law enforcement requests information. I don't see how that, if implemented correctly, should affect the average person. Huge emphasis on that 'if.'

[–] sqgl@beehaw.org 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Oh dear, I forgot the point of the article, sorry. The guy was pretending to be a police officer. Thank you everyone for being tolerant of me. I don't know if I should delete my comment now or not.

[–] TheOakTree@beehaw.org 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

We're mostly reasonable here, no problem. If anything, I agree with your sentiment that the red tape in front of many government services is weaponized to reject people service. It's definitely a problem and realistically, I could see a world where such failures of the system occur in most scenarios.

[–] sqgl@beehaw.org 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Just today: they asked for [verification of] ID number, name, DOB, address.

But for the address they asked further...

AGENT: "...and the postcode please?"

ME: "Google it"

The agent must have seen the absurdity of the question and did not insist on a postcode.

[–] TheOakTree@beehaw.org 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You would think a government system would be able to pull postcodes from addresses automatically, but...

[–] sqgl@beehaw.org 1 points 10 months ago

She knew the postcode. It was a security question. My response was cheeky.

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 27 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

...a Verizon representative told Poppy that the corporation was a victim too.

Fuck off. You're all a bunch of idiots who didn't do an extremely quick search online to find an officer of that name in that area. Or at the very least call the police in that area to confirm said person isn't a fraudster! Large corporations need to stop gaslighting us into thinking that when they fuck up that they're victims!

[–] Catsrules@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

To be fair if Poppy got killed they would have lost a customer and the income from that customer. How would they recover from that?

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago

Maybe they could stop eating avocado toast everyday and cut back on their starbucks orders?

[–] ArugulaZ@kbin.social 27 points 10 months ago

She could tell it was Verizon's fault because the stalker kept calling her, asking, 'Can you hear me now?"

[–] JCreazy@midwest.social 25 points 10 months ago

I don't know how other people see it but the way I see it is if a company makes as much money as Verizon does then there is no excuse for this to happen. They have more than enough money to prevent this from happening tenfold but instead of investing money into the company CEOs get paid. With that being said, I believe that if there are any issues in a company, the CEO should be a 100% responsible. If they are going to get paid more money than anyone else than they should be doing more work than anyone else and if bad things are happening below them. That means they're not doing their due diligence.

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 23 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Verizon was also threatened with a knife.

[–] sqgl@beehaw.org 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The stalker probably assaulted them with a thumbs down on Twitter.

[–] Shelbyeileen@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

I knew instantly that she, like myself, was an adult content creator, because this keeps happening to women online; but especially to SWers.

I had a guy who wouldn't take no for an answer and he stalked down and threatened my grandma. I had to get the police involved.

Meg Turney, her stalker learned she was in a relationship, and he broke into their home with a gun ready to kill them.

There was a story of a singer in Japan whose stalker found her location through the reflection in her eye, went to her house, and sexually assaulted her!

Anytime anyone says it's so easy to make money with digital sex work, I tell them stories like this. We have to put our photos out there to advertise, we have to show interest in our supporters, we need to traverse so carefully... our lives might be on the line.