Scots have been warned over an Amazon email scam designed to steal information from unsuspecting victims.
The scam sees Amazon customers receive an email supposedly from the tech giant themselves.
It tells the user that their account has been ‘locked’ and they need to carry out an identity verification process in order to get it back to full working order.
Opening the link then takes the person to a website that looks very similar to the real Amazon website.
Then users are taken through the identity verification process, which asks them to key in their credit card information, email address and a number of other bits of financial and personal information.
Action Fraud has raised concerns about the emergence of the scam, after they received more than 2,000 reports from potential victims in the last week.
The anti-fraud unit have urged Scots to be alert about the scam.
An alert from the organisation reads: “Action Fraud has received over 2,000 reports in one week about fake emails purporting to be from Amazon.
“The emails claim that the recipient’s Amazon account has been ‘locked’ and that they need to complete an ‘identity verification’ process in order to unlock it.
“The links in the emails lead to genuine-looking phishing websites that are designed to steal Amazon login credentials, as well as personal and financial information.”
They later add: “Your bank, or any other official organisation, won’t ask you to share personal information over email or text. If you need to check that it’s a genuine message, contact the directly.
“Spotted a suspicious email? Forward it to the Suspicious Email Reporting Service (SERS).”
Amazon has also issued guidance on how customers can avoid being the victims of scams such as these ones.
The firm tells customers that they will never ask for personal information to be supplied by email, and they will never request to update payment information that is not linked to an Amazon order placed or an Amazon subscription.
Scots have also been advised to go to the My Orders section of the real Amazon website - if they have not be prompted to update their payment method then the message is not from Amazon.
Users should also check the name and address of the person sending the email. Amazon emails will always come from an address that ends in @amazon.co.uk
People should also keep an eye out for bad spelling and grammar, which are telltale signs of a fraudulent email.
