Tuesday 29 May 2012

Amazon Scam

Just had a Nigerian criminal attempt to scam me using an Amazon item I have for sale.
Essentially they use the buyers question function to ask a legitimate question about an item you have for sale. They ask you to reply to a generic (gmail, yahoo, hotmail) address of theirs which is set up as an English sounding persons (johnsmith1960@yahoo.co.uk for example) - in my case they queried some scratches on the back of an ipod I'm selling.
I replied with a picture of the item and then the magic begins.
They now have your e-mail address so send replicated Amazon 'sold' e-mails to your e-mail account. Along with this is a mail from the questioner asking you to send it to an address in Nigeria as a surprise gift for a friend with a birthday next week. So of course they want it posted urgently.
It's a fairly transparent ruse for a number of reasons : the e-mails don't look right and are mispelt, I don't post items outside the UK anymore so couldn't have a buyer in anywhere but mainland UK, the e-mail account I used to reply is not the one I use for Amazon and lastly of course there's no payment data on my Amazon seller account.
That final item is the rub though - a lot of people might not even bother to go in and check their seller account - when you're selling a high end item a lot of sellers might just be excited to have sold it and just want to get the item straight to the post office.
So beware - check everything - these scammers will only get better at doing this - mine was pretty amateurish but even so if they send out enough question I'm sure some sellers do get caught out.

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