Amazon Prime Day: New Phishing Scam May Target Users' Sensitive Data With Faux Deals

While most of us are planning to spend Amazon Prime Day shopping, others are hoping to pull off scams. Hackers try to pull off phishing schemes with fake Amazon emails every day, but they could be even more active on Monday, when Amazon sees a spike in shoppers looking for deals.

On Friday, McAfee released a new statement on 16Shop, a phishing package they discovered in May that targets Amazon users and previously targeted those with Apple accounts.

The new Amazon Phishing Kit includes an email pretending to be a message from Amazon.com. However, the links in the email actually take you to fake Amazon pages, which are all made to entice users to give up emails and passwords, notes CNET. The hackers can then easily use that information to purchase items on your Amazon account you did not want.

"We believe that victims of this kit will be led to the malicious websites via links in phishing emails," McAfee said in its latest statement. "We recommend that if users want to check any account changes on Amazon, which they received via email or other sources, that they go to Amazon.com directly and navigate from there rather than following suspicious links."

In other words, you have to be hyper vigilant on Monday whenever you see an Amazon email, especially it is one that claims to "warn" you of changes to your account.

It is also important to check the URL in an email before you click on it. As Digital Trends notes, you can just hover your cursor over the link to see if it really takes you to Amazon.com. You should also make sure that the domain of the email address is "@amazon.com," or it will not be a real Amazon email.

Amazon Prime Day kicks off at 2:59 a.m. ET on Monday, July 15, or just before midnight Pacific Time. This year is the first time the sales event will run 48 hours, continuing into Tuesday.

Although Amazon does not specifically announce deals before Prime Day kicks off, the online retail giant has put its own products on sale every year and started some deals early. For example, the third generation Echo Dot is on sale for just $25, while the Ring Video Dorbell Pro and Echo Dot bundleis now only $169. You can also get the Fire TV Recast for just $129.99, as opposed to its $229.99 regular price.

You do need to be an Amazon Prime member in order to get the deals. The subscription service costs $12.99 a month or $119 a year. It always includes free two-day delivery, as well as same-day delivery where available. You also get to stream movies and TV shows through Amazon Prime Video, which costs $8.99 a month by itself.

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