More or less from the end of 2021, without particular fanfare, Amazon has also begun to use the single-use password system in Italy to protect the delivery of the most precious or in any case most important items.
The function is called Safe Delivery and we happened to use it last December 30th, for the first time in ten years, when we have bought (not without difficulty) an Xbox X console for video games, which is in fact an expensive product and above all in great demand and sought after.
How to use the one-time password
It works like this: after the email confirming the success of the order, another one arrives in the following days that communicates the shipment and precisely that “a temporary password is required for Amazon delivery”; then again, on the morning of the day the delivery should take place, it arrives a third email containing the actual numeric password and reiterates that “for security reasons, you will need to read this temporary password to the driver to receive this delivery”.
There is also a link to the page dedicated to the service (it’s this one), which reads that “your one-time password is valid until the end of the delivery day” and also explains that “if you are not available to receive the package, you can share the one-time password with a person of your choice who can receive the package on your behalf “. They are also given a couple of recommendations that are probably superfluous, such as “It is not recommended to share the one-time password with an unknown person” and “If you are not the recipient of the package, forward this one-time password to the recipient”.
The guide
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Why Amazon thought about one-time passwords
It is important to note that Safe Delivery cannot be requested or activated by those who buy: it is in Amazon’s discretion to use it or not, in fact depending on the value (or importance) of the object purchased. In short, it is not a new delivery method, as Prime can be, but only an extra function for certain deliveries.
It is likely that Amazon has decided to make it available also in Italy to avoid the phenomenon of parcels left in the yard, in the garden, in front of the front door or some neighbor, with the risk that they will end up lost or stolen. In short, it serves to keep certain products safe from malicious people. Or from curious neighbors.
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