Verizon Gave Her Data to a Stalker. ‘This Has Completely Changed My Life’
Verizon Gave Her Data to a Stalker. ‘This Has Completely Changed My Life’
A stalker haphazardly posing as a cop demanded sensitive data from Verizon. Verizon complied, and the stalker drove to an address armed with a knife. 404 Media spoke to the victim.
“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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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.'
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.
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.
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.
You would think a government system would be able to pull postcodes from addresses automatically, but...
She knew the postcode. It was a security question. My response was cheeky.