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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)" 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: ![]() 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)
Tagged: amazon.com, identity theft, phishing, security Previous: How do I upgrade my MySpace profile to Profile 2.0? Next: How do I delete my Google Gmail account? View Mobile Version Subscribe!
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