Scammers send emails with Amazon letterhead, offering to get paid for testing products. Don’t be fooled by the lure of profit, this is a scam aimed at collecting your personal data!
It’s well known that Amazon is a real nest of scams. Between fake reviews – which abound all the more since generative AI like ChatGPT now makes it possible to write fraudulent comments in a chain -, counterfeits, fake travel guides or even unclaimed parcel scams, it’s difficult to know forge a safe path on the e-commerce platform! And that’s without counting on identity theft! The latest is a strange letter offering you the opportunity to benefit from a “free article for testing” and perceive a “commission of a certain amount” which can go up to €40. You are invited to scan a QR code then contact Amazon using an equally strange email address: [email protected]. Obviously, this is a scam aimed at stealing your personal data.
Amazon scam: don’t scan the QR code!
If you scan the QR code, you will be asked to enter a lot of information, such as your name, your first name, your postal and email addresses, or your bank card number. The particularity of this scam is that it is not sent in an email, which would mean that it would have a good chance of ending up in spam, but the old fashioned way, by post. As a result, it is more likely to deceive the victim because paper mail has a more “serious” side which tends to make us lower our guard.
Questioned by FranceinfoChief Warrant Officer Nicolas Renaud, gendarme in Haute-Savoie, recently received one of these letters at his home in Annecy. “What tipped me off was the quality of the support, the printing, the closing words of the letter: ‘all my best wishes’, and then, above all, an email address that does not did not correspond at all to Amazon”, he explains. Once collected, your data can then be resold on the Dark Web or used to mount much more sophisticated phishing campaigns. For example, scammers may contact you a few weeks later pretending to be your bank advisor. “The criminals say they have detected atypical transactions on their victim’s account, mention the correct first and last names and correct bank details so as not to alert the victim”, explains Nicolas Renaud. Their operating methods are becoming more and more sophisticated. If you receive a letter of this type, do not scan the QR code. Forward the scam to Pharos or report it to the site internet-signalement.gouv.fr. And, more generally, be wary of this kind of proposition that is too good to be true: Santa Claus does not exist!