You receive an email; Your phone number has been changed, then another one your password has been changed and then final last one reading your email address has been changed — all 3 in less than a minute. Now what? Acceptance! Your account has been compromised, and you obviously can’t log in into it since the email address and password used for the logging in purpose has already been changed. Is it the end? No, Netflix gives you hope. The email they sent does mention “If you did not ask to change your email address, we are here to help secure your account – just contact us.” Now that was a ray hope, well, to be honest, it’s normal and not that Netflix only has such an option to provide assistance recovering your account when it’s compromised, but almost every company do. But does this work with Netflix? I followed their contact us link and was able to call customer care using the Netflix app on my phone. I was told that I would be helped and they asked me my email address and my phone number, which was connected to my account. I provided the same, and then there is this Acceptance! Wait, it’s not the same acceptance that I used earlier. This one comes from Netflix. They told me that your account cannot be recovered and asked me to create a new account. Why will I create a new account? This was my account which is currently being used by someone else. I should get it back. But what went wrong? I did provide the customer service with the information they asked me about my account. Yes, I did, But unfortunately, Netflix can’t verify that it’s your account with that much of information. They will need service code which will be sent to you if you still are logged in or have access to the account (That’s stupid of them to say, if I had access to any of these I would have recovered the account myself.) and then there is another way that needs you to provide information about your payment method. Most probably card info like last four digits on your card (not sure about this). My case was different. I am an iPhone user, and I pay for Netflix subscription using iTunes.
And this Netflix can’t use to verify, cause they might don’t have information about the customer. iTunes is Apple’s service, and they shouldn’t be sharing much of payment information of a customer to Netflix or any other Business which can be used to identify someone in case of an account being compromised. Netflix Customer service doesn’t have the authorization to help a customer whose account gets hacked with all essential account information changed (That’s the first thing any hacker will do, change all those details.) if he is using the payment method as iTunes. I tried talking to a senior executive, but I was provided with the same suggestion that you can create a new account or else I can file a legal case against this hacker with the help of a form he provided me with. What’s sarcastic is that this form provided by the senior executive from Netflix customer service starts with, “Netflix takes fraud and identity theft very seriously. At the consumer’s request, we can block further charges.” Anyways, the only option I have is to either file a cybercrime case here in India which I am not sure how much time they will take to find the hacker including the harassment that it might take in taking the legal action Or, to create a new account and forget everything. Dear Netflix, My subscription will expire at the end of this month since the next billing date is 1st July. You owe me a service of 13 days which I paid for, and you have denied too, cause of a flaw at your end that you are not able to verify a hacked customer who uses iTunes for payment and maybe they might not even be able to verify you if you pay using the google play store. Let us know your opinion on this article in the comments section below.
