The Amazon scam

I have been getting a lot of emails from Amazon recently regarding cancelled orders. They are obviously fakes and you should ignore them. Delete them and don't click any links in them. They are part of some sort of scam that is designed to relieve you of excess money or to spread a virus, Trojan or other malware.  It is probably targeting Windows users, but you can't be sure these days and Macs are under attack too.

There are several ways that you can tell that the emails are fakes and the first is easy for me. The messages try to convince me they are from amazon.com, but since I'm in the UK I always shop at amazon.co.uk. If you normally shop at amazon.com then it won't be this obvious that they are fake emails.

Another way to tell that they are fakes is that the scammer has sent so many that there are several in my inbox. When you get multiple emails that are very similar, you know there's something up. Three different orders cancelled on the same day? I think not.

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A dead giveaway that emails are fakes is the URL that links point to when the mouse hovers over them. You can see in this screen shot in the bottom left corner that the URL is not an Amazon one. Always mouse-over links and read what it says in the status bar and never click a link that doesn't go to the expected website or page.

It can be difficult to tell sometimes because big companies sometimes use marketing companies or special URLs rather than the usual company email address. However, fake addresses are usually obvious.