LTGT <>.com

My adventure into the minutiae of market research:

Two days ago, I realized that my Verizon Wireless bill was nearly due, so I logged into my account to make the payment. I should mention that I’ve had some significant problems with the VZW login process in the past.

Previous problem: I used to try to log in only to be told that ’several unsuccessful attempts’ at logging in required me to reset my PIN. At first I thought I was just being forgetful since I don’t tend to write down PINs or passwords and I usually only log into the site once month, so I dutifully filled in my SSN, zip code, and mobile number, and a new PIN was generated and sent as a text message to my mobile handset. However, when I would go to log in the next time, and I was SURE that I had the right PIN, I would get the same message. Many phone calls to 611, and eventually VZW security informed me that someone (or something?) indeed was trying to access my account, and they advised me to create an account password. I still had trouble with the log in sometimes, but at least I felt assured that a stranger couldn’t access my information.

Fast forward to two days ago (5/1). Tried to log in, no go. Found my password in Gmail, logged in, no problems. Whoo! Made sure that the bill was only as much as I was expecting. Paid said bill.

SAW THAT MY EMAIL ADDRESS WAS DIFFERENT.

!!!!!

No, not a previous address, or a permutation of the address I was using, but something entirely different. I won’t post the actual address, but it was in the form of XLastname789@charter.net. This freaked me out. Called VZW, found out that someone had either tried to access my account or change my email address on many consecutive days in March. I wasn’t clear if she meant 10 days, if it was ongoing, etc. I was rather disturbed to hear this. Long story short, I was passed over to their e-Services department (takes care of website issues), and the rep told me that the problem had happened internally - that a data migration had accidentally changed my email address. I pressed her further and she agreed to have it looked into and said she’d call me back. Still waiting on that call.

The only other thing I thought I could do while I was waiting was to find out if the charter.net address was valid, and if possible, alert charter to the possibility that their customer was infiltrating my account. This was quite late in the evening, so I was grateful to speak to a very helpful person at the Charter National Operations Center (Charter e-security was closed for the day). I very briefly told her what my concern was, and merely wanted to know if the email address was tied to a valid account. On hold, etc, said she had to call somewhere else and called me back. It was a valid address but I could go no further until Charter e-security was open the next day. I haven’t called them for reasons that should become clear below.
In the meantime, I changed everything on my online VZW account - my username and password, deleted the saved payment accounts, and called up to have my account password changed (different than regular password, which eventually replaced the 4-digit PIN they used to use). I signed into my account the next day, mostly to make sure that my email address was still what I had it set to. For some reason the account info was not available, but it was after midnight and I think they just had it temporarily offline. No worries, because today I was able to see all my info and everything was fine.

Then I get the mail, and there’s an envelope from VZW. I know it’s not my bill, and I didn’t miss a payment, so I was puzzled as to what it was. Two pages are enclosed, with a letter dated 4/30 (the day before my call) telling me that a data research firm, Telephia, had accessed my account by an automated process. “Telephia may have mistakenly changed the primary e-mail address associated with your account sometime between March 2, 2007 and March 20, 2007. This change may have prevented you from receiving emails sent by VZW…We have attempted to correct your e-mail address, but have been unable to do so. As a result…we have changed your e-mail address to pleaseupdate@verizonwireless.com.” Uh, no, they didn’t. There was a “note” on my account telling the first rep I spoke to that there was an issue with my email address, but nothing so specific.

I spoke to a nice but nervous-sounding rep at Telephia who didn’t really have much information for me but told me that the data scrape process that they used to use would get information from 6-7 customers at a time and they changed the software so now it only does one at a time, and that something to do with caching was what had corrupted my data. She also said several times “you’re my first caller” about this problem, noting that she had just gotten a message (probably an in-house email) about this issue when she got to work today (3 timezones over, made sense). However, she also said that it only happened to a few customers, and laughed when I joked by saying “well, I guess I won the ‘bad’ lottery, then.” She couldn’t give me the assurances I was looking for but promised to have a supervisor call back today - waiting on that call.

Next I called the VZW number listed in the letter, explained the situation as briefly as possible since I knew I would be passed on to another rep. This rep confirmed the information in the letter. She also mentioned that ~3,000 VZW customers were affected by this. An article about Telephia noted they collect data from 35,000 wireless customers, so it’s on the right order of magnitude, but 3,000 is a whole lot more than the “handful” that the Telephia rep said.

Ok, the Telephia supervisor, Mark Douglas, just called me back. He was very helpful and open. He didn’t seem to want to give a specific number of affected people but seemed to agree with the 3,000 area versus the handful. I suspect it’s 3,000 panelists/VZW customers but only a handful actually experienced the problem that I did. He said they have suspended scraping VZW data (normally will be done daily) until they have worked some things out with VZW. The arrangement is supposed to be win-win-win; Telephia gets their data, which VZW wants, and the panelist (me) gets an incentive. Apparently I signed up for this on March 8. I don’t seem to have the survey email anymore so I don’t recall what the incentive was, but it must have been convincing enough to feel that the data harvesting was worth the incentive to me. The survey probably came from zoomerang or ztelligence since Mark said that I signed up through MarketTools. I told Mark that I needed to consider whether I would want to remain a panelist, but he felt fairly confident (not rudely so) that the error was fixed and that they are considering other methods of data gathering including having the panelist upload the PDF copy of the bill that is available to VZW customers online each month. He hoped that I would remain a panelist but said that I was free to unenroll whenever I chose. I will stay on for now but be more vigilant in the future.

I want to contact someone at VZW to suggest that they make the process of email address change more robust. Right now, all it takes is a one-field form where you type in the new address. It seems that it should require at least a second box to confirm the address, or requiring the account password, or (best?) using a captcha. That’s the little picture with hard-to-read letters and/or numbers that you see on many forms today - it prevents bots from pretending to be humans since programs cannot easily crack this type of security (yet?).