I got an email supposedly from Amazon saying that someone in China tried to access my account

[MIButterfly]

Just to clarify, I ordinarily don't do Amazon but I did have a couple of gift cards a dear friend had given me and once I did buy an Amazon gift card for another dear friend who loves it. Anyway, the email looked very convincing, it even had amazon.com as its address but I never click on links I'm not sure about. Besides it began the email with "Dear Customer" and not with my name, so that immediately made me think it wasn't legit. About a week later, I got another email saying that my account has been locked and to follow the link to unlock it or else go to my account and follow the instructions. Again, I didn't click on the link; instead I went to Amazon's website and got on my account with no problem. It didn't look locked to me so I think I did the right thing by ignoring those emails. But I have to say, they sure made them look like they were legitimately from Amazon.

[sboatcar]

1. When in doubt, just go to the actual website and see what's up

Also check the return email address. Those are more difficult to spoof, and if its not from '[e-mail]' then its not legit. I get those kind of emails constantly from robinhood, even though I closed my account there years ago.

[MIButterfly]

2. The return address did say amazon.com but I was still suspicious

A lot of scam emails come from foreign countries. Before I retired, I worked as a paralegal at an intellectual property firm so I recognize country codes in email addresses and a lot of times that tells me the email didn't come from who they claim it's from.

[ihaveaquestion]

3. No company will send an email notifying you of fraud. None. Nada.

They will not call or text you either. If fraud occurs with your bank accounts or credit card, they will deal with your bank who may flag your card if they agree that there was an incident.

Never, never give out or acknowledge personal information to these people. Always check with the actual customer service department before doing anything in response to these notifications.

[MIButterfly]

4. Good advice

I never give out my personal information to anyone who calls, emails or texts me. I am even sometimes reluctant to give out my personal information when I'm the one who called them! I guess I'm not very trusting, but I've heard so many horror stories, as have we all.

[AnotherMother4Peace]

5. There are some pretty sophisticated phishing scams out there. A new word I learned

the meaning of. I got an official looking email from Capitol One, saying my new card was on it's way. I'm not associated w/this company & I deleted it. A few days later I get an email saying my "new card" is in the mail. It looked awfully official, down to the email address, so I became alarmed someone was opening credit cards in my name. I called Capitol One to investigate. They said no card had been applied for or sent, and they suggested I check my credit with one of the credit rating companies. Nothing. So I reported, blocked, and deleted this email, but still felt somewhat violated - I spent a couple of hours trying to figure things out.

There was a time when I worried about crooks getting into my house, now it's crooks getting into my computer.

[MIButterfly]

6. "There was a time when I worried about crooks getting into my house, now it's crooks getting into my computer"

Amen, sister!

[ihaveaquestion]

7. One way to protect yourself is to freeze your credit information at the three credit agencies.

This prevents anyone from checking into your credit history, or running credit checks on you - which you only need done if you are applying for a loan or a new credit card or something similar.

This is free to do, but you have to do it separately at each agency, experion, transunion, and equifax. This will not affect your use of your current credit cards or anything else. If you do need for someone to do a credit check for good reason, you can get the agencies to unfreeze it temporarily and then freeze it again. It's all free.

Search online for "freeze credit" and you'll see links to each of them with instructions - can be done online or by phone - your choice.