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Did someone hack into my Amazon account?

I'm concerned about an email I just got from Amazon.com saying that an order I'd placed had been cancelled, but I haven't placed an order for months. Did someone break into my account that I got the message "Amazon.com - Your Cancellation (2706-81146-4342895)"


Dave's Answer:

I understand that with the prevalence of warnings and companies selling apps to prevent identity theft that you'd be paranoid and automatically jump to the conclusion that your account had been hacked and someone was playing with your account, ordering and canceling stuff.

Rest easy, though, that's not what happened.

What's surprising is that the bogus message you've received isn't a "phishing" message either. That would make sense, where you click on the "learn more" link and it says "enter your Amazon credentials" so, logically, you do, never stopping to realize that it's not actually amazon.com and you just gave some hacker your account credentials.

The one I've seen, however, was just a dumb way to send you to an online pharmacy site.

Here's what it looked like when I got it:

fake amazon cancellation email

Move your cursor over the words ORDER INFORMATION, and you'll see this URL:

  http://berhosting.net/defeated.html

We can step backwards and find out that berhosting.net is owned by:

BER WEB DESIGN SERVICES, LLC
PO BOX 43308
BALTIMORE, MD 21236

But they're not to blame, they're likely completely clueless about their part in this redirection trick. Go to the URL above and you'll actually be given this code:

<html><head><script type="text/javascript">window.location="[REDACTED]";</script></head><body><a href="[REDACTED]">Click</a></body></html>

Suffice to say, it's a redirect and it's not cool. Your best bet, as with any email you get, be skeptical and leery of clicking links. If you'd really had an order cancelled from Amazon.com, for example, you should be able to just go to "amazon.com" and click on "My Account" to learn the details, right?

Be careful out there!


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Categorized: Computer and Internet Basics   (Article 9335, Written by )
Tagged: amazon.com, identity theft, phishing, security
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Reader Comments To Date: 1

Andrea Kroninger said, on July 11, 2011 3:18 PM:

more of a problem than a comment on the above. My account was hacked via Amazon.com and the hacker opened a new account on Amazon.uk. which resulted in gift card orders in excess of 500.00 going to an email address. Now, my bank is working on it but it took Amazon 2 weeks to tell me I needed to work directly with Amazon.uk. After 8 emails and telling the situation to 13 customer service reps at Amazon! Now I come to find that the updated credit card I entered in my original account-not the hacked uk account, that my new credit card info transfers to the uk account as well. This being the account I never opened. Where do I go to get results and a straight answer on all this?

Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!











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