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My partner recently had her Amazon account comprised. The scammers ordered a “random” pair of white socks for $20 that showed up at our door. Since the fraudst
by jdavis703 7y ago
My partner recently had her Amazon account comprised. The scammers ordered a “random” pair of white socks for $20 that showed up at our door.
Since the fraudsters never received the package I don’t think they gained anything directly by stealing from my partner’s debit card. So that made me think, how could they be gaining from this? I’m assuming some unscrupulous merchants or “marketing consultants” are using this kind of fraud to boost sales for themselves or their clients.
- colanderman 7y agoOr the merchants are the scammers. That's $20 for probably $5 of raw product. Even if the merchants are paying the scammers a portion, that's a good profit.
- vegiraghav 7y agoOr scammers decided to sell socks.
- stef25 7y agoYou'd need high volume to make it worthwhile and the amount of chargebacks leading to one merchant would make them look pretty suspicious.
- segmondy 7y agoThat's the beginning, so this is how it works. You get some random order at your house for $5-$20 with USPS deliver confirmation. Then you start getting billed for $90 every 30 days but nothing really shipped. When you realize it, it might have been 6 months. They fight the dispute claiming you ordered and agreed to a $5-$20 trial and subscription every 30 days. They claim they will cancel the subscription but you're liable for the other billings. They show proof that delivery was made with USPS delivery confirmation for that first order.
- pkaye 7y agoThen you ask for the USPS delivery confirmation for the remaining shipments.
- JoshTriplett 7y agoCould also have been a credit card "test" purchase.
- HenryBemis 7y agoI would agree to that. Nightmare scenario - this is the beginning of identity theft/fraud. The baddies now know: who you are, what you shop, home address (and probably phone number), habits, age/gender. All a good setup for a bad story. Also if you don't aggresively react to this (e.g. file a complaint, get your money back etc) they also get the info that you don't pay so much attention to these details, and that puts a bigger target in your head.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoAlso they presumably get notification about the delivery, so they have an idea if you're home to collect. If then they send a large delivery and notify "leave in yard" they've a pretty good idea an associate can drive past and pick it up once the "delivered" notification comes in.
- latchkey 7y agoPlease let your partner know that Amazon also supports 2FA, which would have likely prevented her account from being compromised.
- thefounder 7y agoAnd don't forget to tell him that 2fa is pretty useless...no better than a random password
- leowoo91 7y agoIsn't 2FA short lived and related to an additional device? What makes you think it's not effective?
- thefounder 7y ago2FA is already mandatory on Amazon. How well did that work? What you need is U2F.
- latchkey 7y agoIt is only mandatory for sellers.
- thefounder 7y agoYeah, and what's the subject of this post?
- point78 7y agoCan you explain further
- thefounder 7y ago2FA is just another password(albeit temporary). What you need is U2F