Slashdot: Emails Detail Amazon's Plan To Crush a Startup Rival With Price Cuts

Emails Detail Amazon's Plan To Crush a Startup Rival With Price Cuts
Published on July 31, 2020 at 11:32PM
An anonymous reader shares a report: Quidsi's (parent company of Diapers.com) founders didn't want to sell their company, but Amazon's diaper price war was starting to hurt Quidsi. Growth was slowing, and Quidsi was having trouble raising additional capital to continue expanding. On September 14, the founders of Quidsi flew to Seattle to meet with Amazon and discuss a possible acquisition. As Quidsi's founders were sitting in a meeting with Amazon brass, Amazon hit Quidsi in the gut. It announced a new program called "Amazon Mom" that offered free Prime service and an additional 30-percent discount on diapers if users signed up to get them through Amazon's monthly "subscribe and save" program. This was a larger discount than Amazon offered on most other Subscribe and Save items. This put Quidsi in an untenable situation, as Stone writes: "That month, Diapers.com listed a case of Pampers at $45; Amazon priced it at $39, and Amazon Mom customers with Subscribe and Save could get a case for less than $30. At one point, Quidsi executives took what they knew about shipping rates, factored in Proctor and Gamble's wholesale prices, and calculated that Amazon was on track to lose $100 million over three months in the diapers category alone." Amazon's losses may have actually been even larger. During Wednesday's hearing, Scanlon said that internal documents obtained by the committee showed Amazon losing $200 million in a single month from diaper products."

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Slashdot: US Army Soldier Arrested In AT&T, Verizon Extortions

US Army Soldier Arrested In AT&T, Verizon Extortions Published on January 01, 2025 at 02:35AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: Federal authorities have arrested and indicted a 20-year-old U.S. Army soldier on suspicion of being Kiberphant0m, a cybercriminal who has been selling and leaking sensitive customer call records stolen earlier this year from AT&T and Verizon. As first reported by KrebsOnSecurity last month, the accused is a communications specialist who was recently stationed in South Korea. Cameron John Wagenius was arrested near the Army base in Fort Hood, Texas on Dec. 20, after being indicted on two criminal counts of unlawful transfer of confidential phone records. The sparse, two-page indictment (PDF) doesn't reference specific victims or hacking activity, nor does it include any personal details about the accused. But a conversation with Wagenius' mother -- Minnesota native Alicia Roen -- filled in the gaps. Roen said that prio...

Slashdot: US Army Soldier Pleads Guilty To AT&T and Verizon Hacks

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Slashdot: AT&T Now Lets Customers Lock Down Account To Prevent SIM Swapping Attacks

AT&T Now Lets Customers Lock Down Account To Prevent SIM Swapping Attacks Published on July 02, 2025 at 01:30AM AT&T has launched a new Account Lock feature designed to protect customers from SIM swapping attacks. The security tool, available through the myAT&T app, prevents unauthorized changes to customer accounts including phone number transfers, SIM card changes, billing information updates, device upgrades, and modifications to authorized users. SIM swapping attacks occur when criminals obtain a victim's phone number through social engineering techniques, then intercept messages and calls to access two-factor authentication codes for sensitive accounts. The attacks have become increasingly common in recent years. AT&T began gradually rolling out Account Lock earlier this year, joining T-Mobile, Verizon, and Google Fi, which already offer similar fraud prevention features. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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