Amazon scam currently circulating
Customers are being warned of a new scam that could see you unwittingly hand over your payment details to fraudsters.
Ahead of Black Friday and Prime Day shoppers are being told to stay vigilant as there have been warnings about a number of scams that could leave customers significantly out of pocket.
One message involves a fake email pretending to be Amazon that states "Your Amazon Account are on hold due to a billing issue."
It gives the customer 24 hours to update the payment information, or if not the account will be "on hold permanently."
This urgent style message means some customers are likely to skip over the warning signs to ensure they don't lose their account, especially if they have paid for a service such as Prime, or are waiting for a product to arrive.
Clicking on the link would then send you to a phishing site that asks for your details, which would hand them straight over to fraudsters.
While it looks professional there are plenty of signs that something is wrong in this example, and customers should always be alert.
What to keep an eye on:
Where has the e-mail come from? - While it may say the sender's name is Amazon or Amazon Support, if the email address is from somewhere completely different that should be the first red flag. It should say that it's from @amazon.co.uk.
Where does the link go to? - If you hover over the link it should tell you where you will be sent to, if that's not an Amazon link you recognise then don't click it.
How well is the e-mail written? - In this example "Your Amazon Account are on hold" should be the biggest sign that something is wrong. Nobody's perfect but it seems unlikely an official Amazon e-mail would have a big error in the very first sentence.
Is there a time limit? - It's very unlikely that Amazon are going to give a short time limit before locking your account, but it makes perfect sense for scammers to rush you.
Be wary of anything telling you you must act now - and even if you think it's legitimate it might be worth checking with Amazon's support before clicking anything.
There's also the additional things to consider such as whether you have actually bought anything from Amazon, whether the subject line is relevant to the email, and if the e-mail looks like others you have recieved from the site.
Amazon say they "take phishing and spoofing attempts seriously" and customers can report it directly to the company through their website.
Ahead of Black Friday and Prime Day shoppers are being told to stay vigilant as there have been warnings about a number of scams that could leave customers significantly out of pocket.
One message involves a fake email pretending to be Amazon that states "Your Amazon Account are on hold due to a billing issue."
It gives the customer 24 hours to update the payment information, or if not the account will be "on hold permanently."
This urgent style message means some customers are likely to skip over the warning signs to ensure they don't lose their account, especially if they have paid for a service such as Prime, or are waiting for a product to arrive.
Clicking on the link would then send you to a phishing site that asks for your details, which would hand them straight over to fraudsters.
While it looks professional there are plenty of signs that something is wrong in this example, and customers should always be alert.
What to keep an eye on:
Where has the e-mail come from? - While it may say the sender's name is Amazon or Amazon Support, if the email address is from somewhere completely different that should be the first red flag. It should say that it's from @amazon.co.uk.
Where does the link go to? - If you hover over the link it should tell you where you will be sent to, if that's not an Amazon link you recognise then don't click it.
How well is the e-mail written? - In this example "Your Amazon Account are on hold" should be the biggest sign that something is wrong. Nobody's perfect but it seems unlikely an official Amazon e-mail would have a big error in the very first sentence.
Is there a time limit? - It's very unlikely that Amazon are going to give a short time limit before locking your account, but it makes perfect sense for scammers to rush you.
Be wary of anything telling you you must act now - and even if you think it's legitimate it might be worth checking with Amazon's support before clicking anything.
There's also the additional things to consider such as whether you have actually bought anything from Amazon, whether the subject line is relevant to the email, and if the e-mail looks like others you have recieved from the site.
Amazon say they "take phishing and spoofing attempts seriously" and customers can report it directly to the company through their website.
