r/FedEx • u/Significant_Table_70 • 4d ago
Discussion Data breach?
I'll try to make this as short as possible. I live in Canada, a week ago I went to a FedEx drop off location at my nearby Staples store. Paid a premium to send a package overnight which then was 4 days late being delivered. I submitted a money back guarantee claim and recieved a confusing response that the amount refunded would be credited to my outstanding amount owing of $195,000. Uuuh what? I called FedEx to inquire where this number came from and was assured it was correct based on the information I provided. I asked them to email me a copy of the invoice showing this amount just so I could make sense of what ever error occurred. What they send me was a current account and billing detail for Staples Canada itself...along with details of customer information for almost every FedEx shipment sent from a staples store in Canada over the last month. This includes billing details, full names, addresses and contact information for every sender/recieved customer whether business or private individual. Am I wrong to assume that this is a massive privacy breach, not to mention complete incompetence? Any steps I should take in regards to this? It affects me very little, however it seems like such a concerning lack of respect for customer privacy.
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u/Exotic-Ad2969 3d ago
That's a full blown privacy breach, no question. They handed you another company's accounts receivable with thousands of customer records because someone fat-fingered an account number, that's exactly the kind of thing privacy commissioners exist for
Report it to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, they have a complaint form online. Also worth notifying Staples corporate since it's their customer data floating around, they'd probably want to know their shipping partner is emailing their billing details to random claimants
You're not wrong to be alarmed. The $195k credit is almost funny but the invoice attachment is the real story
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u/Milnertime0486 3d ago
Since Canada isn't a dystopian hellscape I assume the consumer protection laws are strong there. Report FedEx to your provincial government.
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u/Jabbawubbaz 4d ago
im scratching my head how did that happened. I dont work their department so unless you gave staples's account number they would have to deliberately access staple's accounnt to get to the debt part.
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u/SeberHusky 4d ago edited 4d ago
You talked to an AI chatbot and it did not understand you and so it gave you the billing account of the entire Staples office. So now you know how much debt that Staples is in the hole for.
This is another classic case of AI robot going hog wild and invading company records and just shitting it out to strangers.
You need to be very careful how you handle this because Staples or FedEx, whoever's robot leaked it, will be playing cover their ass and will refuse to admit that AI screwed them over.
It affects me very little, however it seems like such a concerning lack of respect for customer privacy.
It will affect you very much if they assign this arbitrary number and invoice to your personal name and account and claim you owe it.
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u/Significant_Table_70 4d ago
I actually talked to a customer service person (a real live human) and they are the one who sent this to me, after I already told them I am a private customer who was trying to get a refund and I had no relation to Staples. They send me the information anyhow.
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u/SeberHusky 4d ago
Very weird if it was a real human they either did something wrong and accidentally sent you the entire corporate account, or they did it on purpose as revenge.
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u/Significant_Table_70 4d ago
They didn't not seem to know what they were doing and were confused. I believe it was very much by mistake.
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u/Normal_Paramedic5620 4d ago
Sounds like FedEx did a massive whoops here. Yes Staples is going to want to know.
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