Amazon Prime Day: Experts warn of fraudulent scams

Updated Jun 21, 2021 at 10:31am

• Prime Day will take place on Amazon on June 21, when there will be specials.
• But not only bargain hunters, scammers also use the opportunity to go fishing.

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Security researchers warn of Amazon’s “Prime Day” Increased fraud attempts. Customers should now be especially vigilant if emails containing purported offers or support messages from Amazon flutter in their mailboxes. According to Check Point Research, this could again be an attempt to gain access to credit card details or other personal information.

The method often leads to this via fake emails, which in turn leads to real fake websites that are deceptive in the guise of Amazon. Here customers have to, for example, reactivate their account – but in fact, the scammers only access the login data.

How to identify real mail from Amazon

According to Amazon, there are several ways to learn about real Amazon email:

• It always comes from an address ending in “@amazon.de”, for example “[email protected]”, “[email protected]” or “[email protected]”. This only applies to purchases from “amazon.de”. For example, if you buy something from Amazon UK, “@amazon.co.uk” is the sender’s domain.
• If links to websites are provided, they should lead to “https://www.amazon.de” or its equivalent in another country. For example “https://www.amazon.fr” when you go to the French website. Legitimate Amazon sites have a dot before “amazon.de”, for example “pay.amazon.de” for the Amazon Pay website. The numbers are never before the point of legitimate Amazon sites.
• In general, the company advises against clicking on links or attachments in suspicious emails. If you are asked to enter your details again, you should check if it is really an Amazon site.
• Amazon also says it never asks users via email for personal data or asks customers to change their payment information without referring to an existing order. Anyone who is asked to do something like this by email must go to the My Orders area of ​​their Amazon account. If there is no problem with the payment method, the email in question is fake.
• Spelling errors or strange phrasing is another warning sign. Phishing scammers are getting better too, but small mistakes often reveal fake messages.

The recipients of these emails can report them to Amazon. This can be done either as an attachment to an email to “[email protected]” or in the help section of the website. (dpa/p)