How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking | Gadget Lab | WIRED

It's a lengthy article but a quick read of the first few paragraphs will give you the gist of it (I'd recommend it all if you're a Amazon/Apple user). Probably doesn't mean much to the tech-minded of us here, but for the rest of us, do you guys have any tips to avoid this?

I feel like its harder to make new emails for signing up to stuff with, now that it asks for so much verification, eg. phone numbers.