Greg's Corner

Don’t fall for the Prime Day phishing scam

A phishing attack is when a scammer sends out a mass of emails that look like legitimate emails from such places as a bank telling you to log into your account and offering you a link to do so. Usually they do this under the guise that something is wrong with your account. Instead of sending you to your bank site, the website it sends you to is almost a mirror image of your bank’s site, but it’s a fake. It’s designed to copy your log in credentials in order to steal your financial information.

More recently, a phishing attack has appeared that purports to be from Amazon. The email looks like it came from Amazon itself and it thanks you for buying an item during Amazon’s Prime Day, its once a year site-wide sale Amazon holds in July for its Prime Members. The email then asks you to write a review for the product your purchased and promises the chance for you to win a $50 Amazon gift card if you do. Then a link is offered to take you directly to Amazon. Much like the bank phishing scam, instead of taking you to Amazon, it takes you to a site which looks almost identical to the Amazon sign on page, but as usual it isn’t. If you enter your log in credentials here, they could be stolen and the perpetrators could use the financial information stored in your Amazon account to buy items for themselves. By the time you notice, the merchandise could have already been delivered to a temporary address and you’re stuck with the bill.

When dealing with phishing emails like this, never click on any of the links. If you feel it may be a legitimate email, go to directly to the website by typing out the address in your browser. Always make sure the URL is spelled correctly as scammers will often use addresses that are slight misspellings of the actual URL. Also make sure when dealing with any website that needs your financial information, the URL should start with https, not just http. In most modern browsers it should also display a lock icon to let you know the site is secure.