Watch out for phone callers pretending to be from ‘Amazon Security’
HANOVER Co., Va. (WWBT) - A Hanover County family has a warning about a sophisticated new take on an Amazon scam.
The Mechanicsville family, who did not wish to be identified, got a call from a person claiming to be from “Amazon Security.”
The caller asked the family if they had just bought two pairs of shoes in New Mexico. They had ordered something the day before from Amazon, so it got their attention - but they didn’t order shoes.
The man on the phone told them he was with “Amazon Security,” and he would file a claim so they could get their money back.
The scammer immediately started bombarding the couple with emails and text messages. Those messages appeared to also be from Amazon Security.
Before it got too far, this local family ended up calling Amazon directly. Amazon told them this was a scam and they don’t have a department like this.
The family hung up on the scammer, but they had to change all their bank account numbers and passwords. It was a pain, but so far it doesn’t look like they lost any money.
We checked the BBB Scamtracker and others have recently started posting about a similar scam with the caller saying they were from Amazon Security.
One person in New Jersey wrote on the scam tracker that “the caller told them someone bought a laptop in San Diego using their Amazon Prime Account.”
Amazon has a whole section on its website devoted to fake phishing emails.
The company says if an email does not end in amazon.com,” it is not from Amazon.
And here are some examples of the fraudulent email addresses floating around.
- seller-performance@payments-amazon.com
- amazon-security@hotmail.com
- amazon-payments@msn.com
This Mechanicsville family shared this information, so this doesn’t happen to you. If you get a random call from “Amazon Security” be wary. Hang up and call Amazon. The same goes for if you get a call from one of your credit card companies. Hang up and call the number on the back of your credit card.
Copyright 2020 WWBT. All rights reserved.
