- Amazon has suggested that scammers will make the most of holiday purchases
- There has been a doubling and quadrupling of two different types of scams
Americans are excited about the upcoming holidays, but so are scammers.
As Amazon prepares for Black Friday sales and subsequent holiday spending, it has warned customers to be extra alert for prominent scams.
The increasing number of transactions provides fraudsters with more opportunities to make profits and ways they can impersonate Amazon to obtain valuable information.
The first scam is called an email attachment scheme. According to Amazon, they have doubled in the second half of 2023 and are expected to increase ahead of Amazon’s annual pre-Black Friday promotion, which starts Friday.
These are emails from a scammer pretending to be an Amazon representative. These emails contain attachments claiming that their accounts will be suspended if they do not take action.
Scammers are emailing Prime members suggesting they hand over data to fix an issue with their account, Amazon says
Amazon has suggested that scammers will make the most of holiday purchases by calling, texting and emailing customers and asking for their personal details
The email will then redirect customers to log into their Amazon accounts through a fake website that the scammers can use to capture login details.
“The bad thing is you don’t open the attachment,” says Scott Knapp, director of global buyer risk prevention at Amazon. CBS Money Watch.
“It’s clicking on the link in the attachment, which goes straight to their website, where they start collecting all kinds of information.”
Another scam Amazon has warned about involves more rudimentary phishing, and this year the number of cases has quadrupled.
Scammers also call, text, and email Prime members, suggesting they hand over information to resolve an issue with their account, such as an incorrect order or account charges.
An Amazon Prime delivery driver is seen sorting packages in an Amazon van in Queens, New York
“When they go into the holidays with big deals, they send notices saying there’s a problem and telling us to contact us to sort things out. Please provide us with your credit card information or bank account information to verify,” Knapp said.
He advised customers never to follow these instructions.
‘That’s something we would never do. We would never ask for that,” he said. ‘People should be careful or wary if someone wants them to pay for something only with a gift card. No legitimate transaction requires you to use gift cards. So keep that in mind.’
Earlier this year, an online marketplace selling millions of sets of stolen personal information for less than a dollar each was blown open as part of a sting led by the FBI and Dutch investigators.
