We order regularly from Amazon.com, some business, some personal; overall, it’s a LOT. At any given time, we might be waiting on 2 or 3 orders. But we’ve never ordered a phone from Amazon, so imagine the surprise when we got an email with the subject “Your Amazon.com order has shipped (#147-27053320-7163568080)”. Well, that’s not the surprising part. The surprise was that “Your order "Apple iPhone 7 AT&T 128 GB (Jet Black) Locked to AT&T" has shipped”. Really?!
Of course, it was a fraudulent email…
…a fraudulent email with the Amazon logo, format of an Amazon shipping notice, and complete with the usual Amazon contact info and disclaimers at the bottom. Everything looked legit, except we didn’t order a phone – AND on further inspection, the link to track the order didn’t go to Amazon.com at all, but to a Website in Chile (that’s now offline).
The scammers are getting more and more clever each day, it seems. Last week, we received a notice from the US Post Office where the tracking link actually went to a site in Japan. So, it has become even more important to be wary about emails with links -- and those that ask you to share personal and/or financial info. They’re not all fraudulent, but a good number are – and it’s getting more difficult to tell the difference.
The best TECHNICAL defense against this junk is a firewall with perimeter protections from viruses, spam, and traffic to/from “disreputable” sites and locations. And while it’s no substitute for the technical solution, the best overall defense may be a personal awareness of the potential threat and a skeptical eye toward anything that seems just a bit ‘off’.
