Amazon Prime Day is a favorite for scammers; how to protect your info and merch
With Amazon Prime Day being a four-day event this year, shoppers are eager to find the best deals. However, experts say shoppers need to be just as alert for scams.
Iskander Sanchez-Rola, Director of AI & Innovation at Norton, a cybersecurity company, says Prime Day is an ideal time for scammers to steal shoppers' information.
"While people are searching for savings, scammers are actually searching for victims," Sanchez-Rola says. Sanchez-Rola says a common tactic is fake order confirmation scams. Scammers send fake emails or texts claiming you placed an order, often mimicking official Amazon notifications. But when you try to cancel the order, you may unknowingly click a dangerous link that puts your personal data at risk. "By clicking the link it directs you to a phishing website or triggers some malware attack.
These tools are actually designed to steal your login credentials, and they want information, and what happens there is that once the scammers capture this data, they can be sold on the dark web, for example, or used to hijack your account," he adds.
Amazon sent an email to customers warning them about fake emails involving Amazon Prime membership subscriptions automatically renewing at an unexpected price. The warning stated that the email may include a "cancel subscription" button leading to a fake Amazon login page. Amazon advises against clicking on the link, as it could grant scammers access to all your account information.
After you place your order, you need to track your package to protect it from porch pirates. According to Security.org, more than 58 million packages were stolen last year, total $12B in losses. To protect your packages, use Amazon Hub lockers or counters or set up alerts to let you know when the package hits your doorstep, and get it right away.
When it comes to why scammers continue to be so successful, Sanchez-Rola says it's all thanks to advanced AI. He says, "Using generative AI, they just create a really professional-looking message, and even chatbot support conversations with these messages actually are customized with real data that maybe wasn't stolen from a previous breach. To add this legitimacy to the conversations so they are actually talking to you."
Protect Yourself
To protect yourself, if you get an unexpected email, text, or phone call about fraud charges, don't panic.
Check your account directly and see if the charges appear on your Amazon account. Also, have two-factor authentication on your Amazon account to have that extra layer of protection.
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