FRAUD Alert: Amazon Account Hack
Diabolical “hijackers” get away with whatever they will
O, the irony!
A few months ago, I changed my Amazon password to prevent fraud. “They” had emailed me a heads-up as to a recently placed order, asking whether I’d authorized it — which I hadn’t. I replied accordingly and immediately amended my password.
Given what I learned today, thanks to my savvy friend— and confirmed by a call to Amazon customer service — the notification purporting to be from Amazon was a hack. I’ve gotten scam phone call alerts as to Amazon fraud, but it hadn’t occurred to me—duh! — that the email notifications were fraudulent as well.
What remains puzzling is that in one or two instances, I got an email alert as to legitimate charges for orders I’d just placed, which led me to assume that Amazon was being vigilant in my behalf. In retrospect, I realize that “Amazon” and its minions are devious.
I wonder: did the demons do this in order to lure me into changing my password so they could somehow snatch it and obtain control of my account? There was a lull of a few months between my password change in response to the email and the fraudulent charges.
The good news
Looks as if the fraud commenced recently — two identical charges on 4/18 and 4/19 — so I likely will get credited by either Amazon or my bank for the total: $871.24. When I initially noted the fraudulent charges tagged with “Amazon /Seattle WA,” on my bank statement, I scanned my account history and panicked when I noted charges going back through last summer. The debit card customer support said Amazon is based in Seattle, so those transactions are not of concern.
Meantime, my Amazon account and my debit card have been duly disabled.
The bad news
This may be the tip of the iceberg that sunk the Titanic.
Playing detective
I have a clue to as to the perpetrator, for what it’s worth.
Alas, it isn’t worth a scammed nickel nor a counterfeit dime.
Amazon shows no interest in tracing the scammer via the delivery address to which he had his order sent. Nor will they release that information to me. (Catch-22: now that my account has been closed consequential to my report of fraud, customer service rightfully is suspicious of my request.)
Moreover, the police tell me that fraud investigators won’t bother getting a court order for AOL to release information pertaining to the person who set up the email account — [email protected] — as I noted was attached to my hijacked Amazon account.
I am SOOO tempted to try to smoke out the SOB by setting up a dummy AOL account and initiating correspondence, attaching a pic of a J-Lo lookalike to lure him to his doom.
I came up with an idea — I sent danielnismo email with subject “ship-to” address, no text. If he responds, I will say I received an Amazon shipment — which I hadn’t ordered — that had his name and email on the packing slip and ask where I should forward the package. It’s a long shot, but I wanted to try. So far, he hasn’t taken the bait.
This is the second of three hacks inside of a week.
