A man has been left baffled after a woman called him claiming she had accidentally accessed his Amazon account and card details.

Peter Hill, of Reedham Crescent, Cliffe Woods, was shocked to receive a call from his nephew’s wife who said a woman in Scotland was trying to get in contact with him.

When he got through to the woman in Glasgow, she explained that while trying to set up her Amazon Echo, she had accidentally stumbled across his card details.

She honestly explained the email she was trying to set up the account with was one letter difference to his wife's.

Once she gained access to the account and was confronted with his card details during the incident on Thursday, July 11, she tried to track him down.

She initially called Cliffe Woods Social Club, where he used to be the registered licensee.

The club rang him to say someone was in contact, but he disregarded it as a scam.

She then tracked down his wife’s nephew on Facebook.

He rang Amazon to inform them of the issue and his bank to cancel the cards.

He said: “It caused a problem and a bit of anxiety. It’s one of those things that you wouldn’t know would happen.”

Amazon conducted an investigation - initially on the wrong email - concluding that the data in his account had not been compromised.

In an email sent to Mr Hill, Amazon's customer service team attempted to explain that they believed that when his account was created in 2015, the person who set up the account misspelt their email address and was not able to access their account again after the last order was place on it in January 2016.

When second party tried using their own email address to set up their new account, it could have been identical to the misspelt email address.

When some tries to create an Amazon account with an email address which is already associated with a pre-existing account, the website suggests that the user to either create a new account with the same address - which automatically closes the existing account - or reset the password for the existing account.

Both of these options lead to a confirmation email being sent to the associated email address with a link in the message to be clicked by the recipient.

The customer service team assessed that the secondary person was able to access the automated email and click the link, resetting the password and gaining access to the account.

None of the data in Mr Hill's account was compromised and the account was closed when the complaint came to Amazon's attention.

Amazon declined to comment any further

Unhappy with the conclusion, the 68-year-old retiree has now referred his complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

He said: “They haven’t grasped the issue at all.

“They have been awkward. I have got emails from them and none of them really say anything.”

Debora Biasutti, spokesman at the Information Commissioner’s Office, said: “All organisations processing personal data should do so safely and securely.

“If anyone has concerns about how an organisation has handled their data, they should raise these concerns to the organisation first.

“If the organisation has been unable, or unwilling, to resolve these concerns, people can make a complaint to the ICO.”

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