I got my first "Amazon" fraud scam email

[Gurdur]

I get tons of spam emails, and tons of fraud scam ones. This one was new; it targets Amazon customers, and I am actually one.

***Urgent Fraud Prevention Group Notice***

You have received this email because we have strong reason to believe that your Amazon account had been recently compromised. In order to prevent any fraudulent activity from occurring we are required to open an investigation into this matter. To speed up this process, you are required to verify your Amazon account by following the link below.

{ Fake link given, looking like it linked to Amazon, but linked elsewhere}
(To complete the verification process you must fill in all the required fields)


Please Note: If your account informations are not updated within the next 12 hours, then we will assume this account is fraudulent and will be suspended. We apologize for this inconvenience, but the purpose of this verification is to ensure that your Amazon account has not been fraudulently used and to combat fraud.

Bad English, and the header contained at least three other recipient email addresses other than mine, so bad technique too, but even so, Amazon is a new target, and many may fall for it.

[verte]

You've arrived!

*plans phishing debutante ball*

[Don Alhambra]

Nice. I generally get PayPal ones though.

[links zwo drei vier]

I only get PayPal ones.

[Miranda]

I've gotten eBay, Paypal, Amazon and several banks.
Lucky for me, I don't even have to consider if they're real, since I don't have accounts at any of them!
Sure would help their cases if they were grammatically correct with no typos, though.

[Terry]

I got my first ebay phishing mail recently..... it looked damned legally, but I was supposed to put my password in..... that was a hint it was a fraud -I'm not that idiotic.
Get dozens of several banks reffering to online-banking....

[Miranda]

My favorite of the bank ones said that their database had gone down, so they needed me to key in all my account information, or they would just delete that account (and keep the money, presumably). Yeah, the feds would be good with that. ~~rolling eyes~~

[Seeker630]

I got one from a bank once----one I've never heard of, and another from my cell phone service provider----Verizon. I just report them and never send anyone anything by way of my information.

[Lugubert]

I have reported a few, but I'm too lazy to do it regularily. It gets reallly stupid when you get 10 mails from "Sales" with nearly identical ref.no. For those that I don't delete on sight, I hover the mouse pointer over the links to confirm that they look like Nigerian scams.

[NonNun]

As a big eBay buyer, I've gotten dozens of phishing attempts. Recently I've been getting the bank ones as well. Amazon is a new target as far as I know. I always forward them straight to the security departments of the companies whose names they use. I assume this at least occasionally helps to stop the fraudsters, but who knows?

From what I can tell having talked to various people in my workplace and elsewhere, most of the people who are unsophisticated enough to follow links in unsolicited messages like that are also too insecure about the internet to shop online.

[Hedwig]

I get PayPal ones all the time. Thanks for the heads up about Amazon. I frequently shop on Amazon, so I'll keep an eye open for anything suspicious.

[Shake]

Originally Posted by Miranda

I've gotten eBay, Paypal, Amazon and several banks.
Lucky for me, I don't even have to consider if they're real, since I don't have accounts at any of them!
Sure would help their cases if they were grammatically correct with no typos, though.

I've gotten the same, but since I do have PayPal and Amazon accounts, I have to verify their authenticity. However, I always tread cautiously with this sort of thing. The PayPal ones have been out there quite a while and actually look good on the surface. Typically though, if you hover your mouse pointer over the link, you'll see the address where it wants to send you and it's usually pretty easy to see that it's not to the real site.

With the PayPal ones, I'd often open a new browser and log in to my account directly through the real site and see if there were really any alerts waiting for me. I think maybe once there actually was, and it wasn't about the account status.

[lpetrich]

I've also gotten oodles of phishing e-mails; I once opened a link in one of them, though I did not fill in the fake form. And I've reported a few of them; PayPal has a page on phishing that notes that phish e-mails usually have generic greetings instead of greetings that address a customer by name.

I've noticed that many phish e-mails are phrased in an intimidating, bureaucratic sort of fashion; they make it seem like there is an absurd amount of system cracking going on.

And I've gotten some that purport to be from banks that I've never had accounts at.