Shopping on Amazon is extremely popular both with consumers and scammers seeking to exploit Amazon’s popularity.   I have warned you many times over the years about scammers who send various types of phishing emails which purport to be from Amazon attempting to lure you into either clicking on links which can download malware, such as ransomware or providing personal information that can be used to make you a victim of identity theft.

The email below is typical of those presently circulating. This latest Amazon phishing scam starts with an email that appears to come from Amazon informing you that your account has been locked due to some unspecified “billing issue.”  Anyone receiving such an email would certainly be concerned that their account  and might be lured into clicking on the link provided to verify their identity.  Phishing emails often try to entice people into providing sensitive personal information that can be used for purposes of identity theft or to click on links that may either ask you for personal information or merely by clicking on the link you may download harmful malware.

This particular phishing email is very sophisticated.  The logo used appears legitimate, but it is very simple to counterfeit a legitimate appearing logo.  The grammar, however, is a bit suspect with a few grammatical errors unlikely to appear in a legitimate email from Amazon.  Often a telltale sign that the email is a part of a scam is that the email address of the sender has absolutely nothing to do with Amazon, however, in this case, the email address used appears to come from Amazon although, if fact, it is not a legitimate Amazon address. Many people are not aware that all legitimate Amazon email addresses have a dot before “amazon.com” so although the phony Amazon email addresses used in some Amazon phishing emails appear to the untrained eye to be legitimate, they are not.

This phishing email also is suspect because the targeted victim’s name is not used in the salutation, but rather the targeted victim’s email address which I have blocked out.  I also removed the link where the words “Account Verify” appear.

Here is a copy of the email presently being circulated.