Amazon Prime Day Scams

With the approach of Amazon Prime Day, you may be expecting some deliveries. While you see Amazon Prime Day as a way to score awesome deals, cybercriminals use Prime Day for awful scams.

Cybercriminals may take advantage of Prime Day in a myriad of different ways, but there are some common scam tactics that you should be aware of. One example is the use of the Amazon logo in their phishing emails to make what they are sending seem legitimate. Their emails are likely to include links that direct you to fake but real-looking, Amazon login pages.

The goal here is to get you to enter your Amazon login credentials on one of the fake pages. Cybercriminals can then use your credentials to change your Amazon account password and effectively lock you out of your own account. Then, they make purchases using your saved payment information.

Tips to keep your Amazon account secure:

• If you happen to receive an email from Amazon about a pending transaction, upcoming delivery, an account update, or account ‘locked’ status, don’t click on ANY links in the email. Instead, open a web browser and go directly to Amazon and login via the actual website. If the issue is real, it will be accessible from there.
• Enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA) on your Amazon account. MFA adds another layer of security by requiring you to present two (or more) verification factors to access your account.
• Cybercriminals will often use scare tactics as a method to get you to click a link or take some immediate action. If you receive an email like this, stop, think, and evaluate the message before you click.