Shipping is essential to e-commerce companies and to most other industries. As a result, what would happen if your FedEx account were hacked? A FedEx security breach could be disastrous for any company. Let’s examine best practices to prevent unauthorized access to FedEx systems by hackers attempting a brute-force attack.

Current FedEx Password Requirements

FedEx account password must use the following rules to create a password:

• Between 12 and 25 characters
• Contain one uppercase letter
• Contain one lowercase letter
• One numeric character
• FedEx password cannot contain your user ID
• No spaces, ~, single quotes, double quotes, <, or >
• FedEx passwords are case sensitive
• Lastly, the password cannot have more than three occurrences of the same consecutive character

How to change your FedEx Password

Best Practices for FedEx Passwords

Here are some tips to help protect your FedEx account from potential threats and security breaches. However, feel free to do further research on your own to increase online security.

1. Create a new ID for each team member.  

Let’s face it, employees frequently change jobs. According to various online reports, it is rare for employees to stay at a job for over 4 to 5 years. If multiple employees are accessing the same credentials, many employers decide not to update security when an employee leaves. Therefore, make it company policy to add individual user accounts rather than a single set of credentials for everyone.  

Log in to the FedEx Billing Online. Next, go to the “My Options” tab. The menu will drop down, and click the “Manage User” tab. Once that page opens, you will see the purple “Invite New User” button in the bottom right corner. Click the “Invite New User” button, and the page expands.  

Here you can enter the new users’ first name, last name, email address, and user permissions. Choose the “Standard: User can view, pay, and dispute.” Standard will allow Refund Retriever to download invoices and dispute late deliveries and other billing mistakes.

Therefore, to add a user for us, use the email address (Your Company Name at refundretriever.com). Remember to choose the standard permissions. Once this is submitted, FedEx will send us an email notification. One of our refund geeks in the back office will set up a secure login ID and password. So then we can start downloading FedEx invoices.

2. Make the password difficult to remember

• Avoid single words or a word followed by a number
• The longer the password, the better
• Use a combination of words, numbers, symbols, and upper/lower case letters
• Avoid passwords based on confidential information (i.e,. SS# or DOB)
• Avoid using adjacent letters/numbers on your keyboard
• Use two-factor authentication for any site with the option

“If you can remember your FedEx password, it is a bad password.“

Refund Retriever Director of Technology

3. Use a password manager

As a user of many websites and sensitive databases, I could never remember all the user names and passwords for each one. Consequently, I use a password manager with two-factor authentication. Password managers allow for a central repository of my usernames and passwords. All my data is behind a secondary password that changes every 30 seconds. Check out Dashlane, Keeper, or 1Password.

How to Update a FedEx Password for Refund Retriever

For Refund Retriever to audit your FedEx invoices, we need access to the FedEx Billing Online. Many customers allow us to use their current credentials, but there is another option. Refund Retriever customers can add a secondary user in FedEx Billing Online.

If the FedEx password we have is no longer valid, customers can log in to the Refund Retriever Client Interface to update it. Log in to the interface, then click “Shipping Accounts” in the left menu bar. This will open a list of all your accounts. Next, click on the purple “EDIT ACCOUNT” button. Here, you can securely enter the new credentials.

How can Refund Retriever help in the event of a security breach?

Refund Retriever monitors every shipment that is charged to your FedEx account. Therefore, any fraudulent activity will be evident from the billing data. Refund Retriever provides a full suite of reports and analytics free for each audit customer.

One report that will help is our third-party report. The third-party report filters all packages not shipped from or delivered to your address. These are packages that you are not in the chain of custody. These could be valid shipments or a result of a security breach of your FedEx billing.

To learn more about how Refund Retriever can help lower your shipping costs and increase your FedEx security and visibility, contact us today. We can lower your FedEx shipping costs through our parcel auditing or contract analysis services.