An email purporting to come from Amazon Prime saying my test period was over and the full 24 month payment of € 759 will be taken tomorrow. I checked and I paid €69.99 last November for the year, nothing about any other charges so I got a chat with them and they assure me it is spam and nothing will be taken before the €69.99 next November.
But what if they or I have been hacked? And the money is taken. Can’t see them refunding it.
The bank is closing shortly and will not reopen till Tuesday can it be taken while the bank is closed?
David it’s unlikely you have been hacked - such "phishing’ emails are very common - they don’t have your personal info, but the aim is to plant anxiety about an incorrect bill and trigger you into clicking a link, and then giving your personal info to a fake website!
Amazon Prime just renews automatically I think, they don’t send out reminders.
Anyway you did the right thing by checking with them.
Yes they are and Amazon said don’t worry it will not be taken but of course they mean ‘by us’. He also said do not click on anything but the problem is, I think I might have done. I thought it was genuine and the €759 meant the sum of my orders over the year but before I realised that was not realistic I pushed the button ‘vos commandes’
Just got back from the bank and she said nothing much to do apart from cancel the card, which I don’t want to do, so fingers crossed. The main bank is open tomorrow and she did report it while I was there so maybe they might put a block on that figure if it comes up.
I feel really stupid because my email address was hacked a year or 2 back with no consequences except that if I use that address to people who don’t check their spam account, and surprisingly many don’t, they simply don’t get my message. I suppose I was so shocked at the amount, the very thing that should have made me suspicious.
Don’t, it is terribly easy to get fooled by these emails - especially if in a 2nd language.
It is also no longer necessary to have your email “hacked” - I think scammers probably try swapping email addresses and domains that they have harvested around to produce new addresses - probably assuming that somename123@yahoo.com might have a gmail account which will ge somename123@gmail.com. Judging by the email addresses on failed spam coming into my server they try completely random addresses as well.
As I have mentioned before, nothing is kept on my computer, all is on 2 external hard drives which are unplugged over night.
When I tried to open my account on the No. 1 drive a message came up saying it was already in use. So I quickly unplugged them both and when I put them back all was ok but I did notice 3 loud pops when I went back to emails, as if some one was doing a very loud one with a finger in the mouth.
Not sure if that is reassuring or not, but so far no money has been taken out of the account.
David I had exactly the same thing happened. Checked my Prime account. Valid till Sept so realised was a scam. Reported to Amazon. Checked bank account for a week as I had opened the email. Everything ok. But it is so worrying things like that. Hubby was scammed last year on a fake SNCF email which entailed changing card etc etc. So I am now super vigilant and paranoid.
No money taken so far, just checked, yet again, but I am wondering, perhaps forlornly, that they might think they have connected to my bank account when in fact they have connected to my spreadsheet on the external hard drives.
I very much doubt anything was accessed on your machine David even if you clicked the link as long as you did not enter any data such as Amazon username, password or bank details.
These sites will not “hack” your PC, they will present you with a screen that looks like your Amazon or Bank account log in and will try to capture your log in details from there.
Increasing use of 2-factor identification (where the bank sends a confirmation code by SMS, for example) means that a) you should be alerted that something odd is happening ad b) they won’t be able to log in.
With Amazon if it detects a login on a previously unused device you get an email and/or text to alert you.
To be sure log into your bank, change the password and check for any unusual transactions. Ditto your Amazon account. With changed passwords if there is no unusual activity you should be safe.
When you say “tried to open my account on the No 1 drive” I’m not clear what you mean - just a spreadsheet as you mentioned above?
Seriously - “hacking” your PC is not how these phishing emails work. There are scams like that but they will want you to install remote control software on your PC and you will usually be talking to the scammer if that happens (typically they will be a fake call about some “problem” with your PC or a fake virus warning pop up inviting you to phone a number).
Can only be taken by direct debit surely, there’s a gaurantee and if a scammer had withdrawal rights on your account they would have done it - without even letting you know!
I’m curious, how do you see the random addresses - wouldn’t the mail server reject them as not a valid address - or are you seeing them on a log. Presume their format is something like randomcharacters@yourdomain.com ?
There’s stuff like ll3q5d71lmumxh@mydomain.tld which is pretty random
Then the next attempt from the same IP was dhernandez@mydomain.tld which looks like someone has tried what might be a valid username in some other domain - lots of those
After that I had statement@mydomain.tld and festival@mydomain.tld - which could be valid usernames or could be someone throwing dictionary words at my domain
It’s pretty incessant 7000-8000 such attempts to invent email addresses every day.
Yes, that is exactly what I mean, tried to access the spreadsheet for that account and the ‘already in use’ message came up. I unplugged and replugged it and all was well.
Thanks both of you for the relax message. But I will log on every now and then just to be sure. Also, as the bank has been notified, maybe such an unusually large amount after I have reported it, might block it.
Most of the bills I pay online and my purchases from Amazon and the like require an intervention with my bank where I provide a four digit key. Don’t you have any protection like that?
That must be the bank’s policy then, not Amazon, strange because I do have to do it with some deals so perhaps the size of the purchase is the trigger.
Good news if so because they would certainly do it for 700 euros I would have thought. But I will ask at Amazon or the bank and try to find out.
It probably is driven by the bank because I have the same protection when paying bills online. If I use ApplePay instead of my debit card that step disappears and the payment is instantaneous.
