Online shoppers, don’t fall for this ‘Amazon locked’ scam

NEW DELHI: If you have an Amazon Prime account and tend to shop a lot from the e-commerce portal then be very careful.

A new phishing scam has emerged online in which Amazon Prime account holders are getting a mail on their registered email IDs informing them that their Amazon account has been locked.

The email requests Amazon customers to login to their account via link (provided in the email) to continue shopping. The email tries to scare people by making them believe that their Amazon accounts will get locked if they don’t follow the instructions given in the mail.

Note that this is not an official communication from Amazon and it is a classic phishing scam. Readers are highly advised not to open the email or click on the link provided in the mail, instead, delete it the moment you receive it.



While phishing attempts have become a regular affair, this particular ‘Amazon locked’ email is different and even scary because the fraudsters have tried to replicate a genuine Amazon communication from a verified “@Amazon.com” address. Not just that, the subject line of the email tries to showcase the message as a system generated “automatic statement”.

This email comes with a Word attachment with the file name “Account-Summary-Amazon”. While the attachment appears safe, the link that is embedded in the Word file redirects users to a fake Amazon website to steal the login credentials of the user.

Meanwhile, a similar phishing scam was active during the festive season last year. Taking advantage of the festive season sales by Flipkart and Amazon.in, some miscreants ran a fake 'Amazon sale' campaign to trick people to share their personal information.

A message was circulated on WhatsApp claiming to provide up to 99 per cent discount on a range of products along with a "Shop Now" link.