Amazon Prime Day Cyber Risks

Luis Alvarez Talks Tech: Amazon Prime Day Cyber Risks

Each year, Amazon holds its Prime Day. This is a day exclusive to Prime members. It offers two-day, free delivery and lots of savings on a ton of items. But that’s not all. This event, which is actually two days long, is the biggest shopping day(s) ever for small and medium-sized businesses. Who else benefits from Amazon’s Prime Day? Cybercriminals. In 2020, Prime Day was October 13th and 14th and is one of the busiest days for cybercriminals.

According to Luis Alvarez who sat down with Tech Talk to discuss this topic, Cybercriminals “will do whatever they can to transfer money from your hands into their pockets.” And they see the excitement of Prime Days as the perfect opportunity to scam thousands of people.

When asked what to look for in an Amazon Prime Day scam, Alvarez said to look for phishing emails from scammers. There will always be a link that will take you to a website that looks similar to Amazon and prompts you for things like your credit card number or bank routing information. Some scam emails will tell you your Amazon account has been compromised and they want you to follow a link to sort it out. Again, this is most likely a scam.

Now they even text people links, which is smart because these shortened links can be disguised. Just ignore these links, and if you suspect anything is wrong with your Amazon account, go to the site by typing in Amazon.com manually. Also, pay close attention to the link. It will probably end in Amazon.com but then there will be another addition, like .info, .ru, or .ca. If so, you can be sure this link is not legit.

Remember that Amazon is doing all it can to stop cybercrime related to their site, but it is ultimately up to you to question and avoid any phishing emails or links purportedly from Amazon. The safest thing you can always do is manually sign onto the site.

To hear more about this topic, listen to the interview with Luis Alvarez here.