Warning about Amazon Scam

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) has received reports recently of emails, appearing to come from Amazon.com customer service, with the subject line "Thank you for your order." The message contains the Amazon.com logo and looks legitimate in other ways, at least on the surface.

The email lists an order number, total price, and a link to view the order. Someone receiving the message who had not ordered anything might click the link to see what items he or she has mistakenly been charged. Someone who actually ordered something from Amazon might click the link because the price and item description most likely would be different from what they ordered.

Anyone who clicks on the link would be sent to a fake site where an attempt would be made to steal his or her personal information, including, but not limited to, debit card numbers, bank account information, and sensitive passwords.

Repa,

I have actually gotten quite a few of these fake Amazon e-mails. I contacted my ISP - but I think they told me that unless the e-mails came from thier domain they could not do anything.
One good thing is their junk filter caught them and they went to my acct at myspam.cableone.net instead of to my input box. I had several in one day - and have gotten several more.l If I look at the headers for the e-mail, they definelty are not from amazon - and the from addres is from a number of different addresses.

I have ordered from AMAZON several times. but had not orderd anythinhg at the time I got the e-mails. The e-mails that are actaully from amazon go to my actuall e-mail, so it served as somewhat an altert when these went to the spam site.

I guess I should have posted about it but didn't thnk of it.
Thanks for trying to keep us safe.

Fay

I forgot to mention that there is a place you can notify about this if this should happen to you:

Amazon.com requests that anyone receiving one of these bogus emails forward it to: stop-spoofing@amazon.com.

Repa,

I just went out to my account on ny ISP's spam site - I had 7 e-mails looking like from Amazon - asking me to verify my e-mail address.

I would froward them as you suggested above - but I don't know how to forward without having them delivered to my inbox first.

Fay

Thanks for the heads ups Repa... never used Amazon... but I will keep my eyes open

Fay, if your ISP email webpage is like hotmail, then you would have to move the email to your inbox on your ISP's email webpage to forward it. That's a decision you'll have to make.

Repa,

Yeah, that is what it looked like to me. I have not switched over to web e-mail yet. I use windows live mail (used oe before windows 7). It probably would not hurt anything to download as long as I don't go to the links, but I am not sure.

Fay

Fay, I just delete everything in my junk (spam) email box unless I suspect something that is looking for personal information - and then that's a guess because I don't open the email. At hotmail, they have a "Mark As" button that you can use to mark a selected email (checkmarked, not opened) as a "phishing scam." If I suspect a phishing scam, I mark that email as such and it disappears from the junk mail box. Don't know if hotmail ever does anything about it, though, but that is what I do.

Repa,

I usually just delete everything from the spam site also. But once in a while something goes there that I want - so I do a quick browse thru the titles and senders to see if there is anything I need to check out. So, the ones from Amazon caught my atttenion since I do order from there. But there were some warning signs that caused me to question them. I never clicked on the links.

Fay

Yea, that's pretty much how I handle it too, Fay. There is some mail there from time to time that I want also. I do screen the titles and where the email comes from before I open it, and then if I open it, I do it in the junk mail box to screen it before sending it to my inbox. Sometimes I'll get legitimate mail from some organization like my bank or USAA or AAA that comes from a slightly different email address than the normal mail I get from them (usually some promotional), or from someone I know that is not yet in my contacts list. Although you have to be careful about that too - recently I got email from what looked like my son with no subject and only a link in the body of the message. He has a hotmail account but never uses it, and that is where it came from. Someone had hacked his account and was sending out email with a malicious link from his hotmail account. So, beware!

Repa,

Yeah, I guess we can never let our guard down at all.

Thanks,
Fay