Dubai: Bargain-hunting shoppers on Amazon Prime Day, beware, hackers will use this opportunity to flood inboxes with fake deals and offers, designed to dupe people into downloading malware or share payment information and account details.

Amazon Prime Day, happening on October 13^th and 14^th, offers sales and deals to consumers just before the busy Christmas period but hackers also will be busy targeting the same customers.

According to a cybersecurity firm Tessian, cybercriminals will always follow the money and with more consumers than ever turning to online stores for their shopping due to Covid-19, experts are predicting more phishing scams than ever, purporting to offer sales on behalf of Amazon.

“It won’t just be consumers looking to take advantage of the once-a-year deals offered this Amazon Prime Day. Hackers, too, will see this as a golden opportunity to launch phishing attacks that dupe people out of money and trick them into downloading malware or sharing personal information,” Tim Sadler, CEO at Tessian, said.

Moreover, he said that popular shopping days like Amazon Prime Day create the perfect environment for hackers’ phishing attempts and consumers are expecting to receive more marketing and advertising emails during popular shopping periods, and this makes it easier for cybercriminals to ‘hide’ their malicious messages in people’s noisier-than-usual inboxes.

Attackers can also leverage the ‘too-good-to-be-true’ deals, using them as lures to successfully deceive their victims, he said.

“Throughout this year, we’ve seen cybercriminals “piggy-backing” on high profile events to make their phishing attacks as convincing as possible. We can expect similar tactics this Prime Day, with hackers impersonating Amazon in their emails and supposedly providing people the deals they are seeking,” he added. 

What to do about it

• If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Be wary of emails that offer special deals or coupons associated with Prime Day – especially if those discounts can only be accessed by clicking on a link or from a brand or name you don’t recognise. 
• Always check the sender and verify that it’s a legitimate email address. Scammers will often take advantage of the fact that mobile email only shows a display name, as opposed to the full email address. This means that a bad actor could send a message from an unknown email address, but change the display name to “Amazon” to make it appear legitimate.
• If you receive an email or text that has an associated action or a sense of urgency or deadline, it’s most likely a scam. Ask yourself, does this request make sense?
• Check for spelling or grammar mistakes. Legitimate messages from large companies will rarely have errors.
•  If a message contains a link or attachment, it is likely fraudulent. As a rule of thumb, be sceptical of any hyperlinks and don’t click.