Elliott Sheffield, owner of Unified Office Services in Boise, does all of his work online. Each day telephone and online office supply orders are filed, and he processes them and fills them through distributors in Salt Lake City and Denver.
He says he spends a couple hours a day processing and working on the computer, so when he received a confirmation order from Amazon.com, he naturally opened the email.
"I wondered what had been ordered," he says, but didn't recall making a purchase, and his wife, too, said she'd not bought anything recently. "It was a fat-loss computer program for $149.50."
As he clicked on to open the link and view the order further, his computer slowed, whirred and popped up a warning: Virus Found!
Sheffield discovered that Amazon.com, the online reseller of books, CDs and DVDs, is again target of phishing scammers. During the past several months, scammers have used look-alike emails claiming to be "Credit Card Error," "Order Confirmation," "Credit Card Refused."
"When my anti-virus software caught the problem, I just deleted it," Sheffield says.
Amazon.com says apparently, the scammer hopes recipients who have recently made Amazon purchases will think their orders have been confused, there was a billing error, or trouble with a recent purchase.
"Look-alike phishing emails have been around for some time, but the new email are getting more elaborate, more closely resembling the company's logo, colors and styles," says Robb Hicken, chief storyteller at BBB serving the Snake River Region.
If you receive a suspicious email - from Amazon or another usually trustworthy source - go directly to the company rather than responding through the email. Generally this will redirect you to a lookalike webpage, which will ask for financial information.
"Don't give out personal or financial information to anyone you don't know," Hicken says. "If you've done business with Amazon.com, they will have your information already in their system, and will not request it via email."
Never click on a link in any email that throws up "red flags." Instead, contact the company directly - by phone or by typing its web address manually into your browser.
Robb Hicken is the media contact for the BBB serving Snake River Region. Reach him at 947-2115 or rhicken@boise.bbb.org.