I consider myself pretty smart and safe when it comes to bogus emails. I am a huge fan of Amazon and order things frequently on their site. Never have I received a fake Amazon email….until yesterday that is.
Yesterday I received a total of 3 emails, supposedly notifying me of order cancellations on Amazon.com. They claimed my order was cancelled successfully. Funny thing about that is, I hadn’t ordered anything on Amazon yesterday and everything I’ve ordered last month had already arrived. I most certainly had no orders to cancel. This flipped a light switch in my head.
Since something smelled fishy, I decided to go check my Amazon account. Did I go through the links in the email?? NO! Never go through links in an email if they are suspicious. Why? Because they could take you to a phishing website that would steal your personal information or give you a horrible virus on your computer. You can hover over the link to see where it actually leads. For instance, the links to the order number and to amazon.com in these particular emails led to different places. Even though it appeared it would go to Amazon.com…it actually would have went to another site (see in screen shot below).
When I got to my Amazon account, it showed no new orders, and most importantly no cancellations. I also decided to search for the product in one of the emails (that I had supposedly ordered & cancelled) on Amazon’s site. Suprise suprise! No such item existed on their site!
Then I decided to look at “Help” so I could send them a notice about these emails I received. What was the first thing I saw? “Suspicious Cancellation Emails” at the very top of the Help page. I have been to the Help section a LOT, haha. Never before have I seen that, which makes me think they are having an increased problem with fake emails. They list all the steps to take and tell you how to protect your account. They also have a form to submit these Spoof Amazon Emails. I submitted 3 forms for all 3 fake emails. After that, they’ll email you and ask you to forward the email to stop-spoofing@amazon.com, which I did for all 3 emails.
Why is it important to report these emails? Because it’s not Amazon.com sending them and no sort of action can be taken against the senders (most likely scammers) if Amazon doesn’t know about it and have all the information they need to take action.
Was my personal or account information compromised?? No. I did not click any links. They didn’t ask me for any personal information, even if they I had – I wouldn’t have sent it to them. I didn’t save or download any attachments. I went to Amazon.com on my own by opening a new tab and typing in the address. Therefore, my account and personal info was safe.
We feel everyone should be aware of fake/scams like these. Some people may be aware, but others are not and might like the heads up. Below you can see examples of the emails and then a real amazon email, you’ll see the difference.
Here's the **FAKE** Email I received
Here's the FULL HEADER for the **FAKE** Email. Notice the return address has nothing to do with Amazon.
I’ve been getting fake emails too.I’m glad you posted this.I’ve been deleting them and I wish I saw this first because then I would have reported the emails to Amazon. Thanks for the info.
I try to report them when I can because I hate seeing the fake emails and I hate knowing they are possibly getting the best of some unaware user. I wish there was a better way to take action against people like that, but for now all we can do is report them to the appropriate places. Glad we could be of some help and hope the fake emails stop coming soon.
~Caity~
I’m an idiot…i clicked on the link even though i knew i did not use this particular email for ordering from amazon. It took me to this canadian pharmacy website…i’m scare now..i don’t know if they got my information.
Cynthia, it would be a good idea to run a scan on your computer using your anti-virus program and a anti-malware program (such as Malwarebytes). Once you know your computers safe, change your passwords on all your accounts that you may have logged into since clicking that link. Wishing you the best of luck and I hope they didn’t get any information. <3 ~Caity~
I have gotten quite a few of these over the past few weeks. First thing I did was go to amazon (on my own in a new window, NOT by clicking in the email) and changed my password. Now that I have read this, if I get anymore, I will be letting amazon know of this. Thank you for this information.