The fake “your Amazon account was hacked” messageA message that says your Amazon account was hacked, locked or used for an unusual order is far more likely to be the scam than the hack. The FTC has documented the pattern in its Data Spotlight on Amazon impersonators: the scammer claims to be Amazon, says something is wrong with the account, and then asks for money, a code or access to your computer.The FTC data covers July 2020 to June 2021. In that period about one in three people who reported a business impersonator said the caller claimed to be from Amazon, and people aged 60 and over were more than four times as likely to report losing money to one.The numbers are old, but the scripts have changed little. The common versions are a refund that was “sent by mistake” and must be paid back, a hacked account that must be “secured” with gift cards, and a request to install remote access software so that a refund can be processed.The FTC also says that no real company such as Amazon, Apple or Microsoft will ask you to pay with gift cards or cryptocurrency. Amazon’s own advice, as reported in the coverage we read, is that it will not send an unsolicited message asking for personal information, and that you should find its contact details on its website and not in an email or text.A reporting page at amazon.com/reportascam has been named in news coverage; we did not open it, so use the contact options inside your own Amazon account.A second kind is the fake Prime renewal mail with a cancel button that leads to a copy of the Amazon sign-in page. Entering your password there gives it to the scammer. That is how a fake alert becomes a real hack.The usual shape of the fake Amazon account hacked alert, from the pattern in the FTC Data Spotlight.
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