It was Summer of 2022 when I got a frantic call from my family member. Let’s call him John in this story. “Oh my god I think I’ve been scammed!” John stated. When I asked John how he got involved in this scam, he got into more detail and explained the whole story to me.
Amazon Scam Story
One day, John got an email from someone claiming to be Amazon. This email stated that John just purchased an iPhone 12 with 128GB that totaled to $1,064. John panicked as he did not want to pay over $1,000 for an iPhone he did not purchase. John is not very familiar with the Amazon platform, so he would not know what an Amazon email looks like and as a result, he believed it was a legitimate email. John read the email and immediately called the phone number that was included in the email to cancel the order. Once John called, he was greeted by a person claiming they were apart of “Amazon Fraud Prevention Team,” but little did John know that it was a scammer. John explained to the other person on the phone that he received a confirmation email for an iPhone 12 from Amazon that he did not order. The “Amazon Fraud Prevention” employee stated how they understood and asked John to verify information such as John’s credit card information. John provided his credit card information to the scammer. Right when the scammer obtained this information, they started to charge thousands of dollars to John’s credit card. Once John was notified of these charges, he contacted me, as I have knowledge of several types of scams, and I advised him to contact his bank immediately. The bank was able to work fast to stop the transactions and to obtain some of the money John lost. After this incident happened, I showed John some ways to see if the email was legitimate.
Tip #1
Whenever you are suspicious of an email, you should go straight to the source. For example, in this incident, I would go to Google and search Amazon and log into my Amazon account to see if something has been ordered. If I do not see anything on my personal account, then I know that the email I have obtained is a scam.
Tip #2
If there is a phone number attached to the email, the second action to take would be to search the phone number on Google to see if it is linked to another scam. If I typed in the phone number that was attached to the email above, Google would not show any matches. However, if I type in “802 scam phone numbers,” then I get some information that indicts that this phone number is linked to a scam.
Tip #3
The third action to take is to investigate the hyperlinks attached to the email. If I obtain an email that has several hyperlinks attached, I never click on the links especially if I am already wary. Usually, I will scroll over these links to see if they look suspicious. After looking at these hyperlinks, I will go to Google and type in the domain name from the link to see if this link is associated with known scams.
Conclusion
Be wary of every email you obtain. There are several articles on the Internet that warn people of scams that are just one search away. This could save you a lot of time and money if you do your research before you fall for a scam.
