Dear Editor,

I almost fell for it. This is embarrassing, because I’ve been on the internet, including shopping online, for 25 years or more. I should have spotted the signs but I was one cup of coffee over my limit and just about to step out the door when I checked my email quickly and saw a notice from Amazon that my order was being shipped. But I hadn’t ordered from Amazon for months. The email included a picture of a . . .

wide-screen TV and Xbox for over $1,000 being shipped to somebody in Georgia — somebody I definitely don’t know, buying something I don’t want. Now, if I had slowed down a tad, I would have noticed the clues, the visual resolution was not good, it was a cut-and-paste job. There was a grammatical error in the subject line, big corporations usually manage to thoroughly proofread their mail-outs. This email had a subtle error. I should have spotted that. The biggest clue I failed to notice until afterward, was by clicking the ‘details’ option, to see if the return address was consistent. It was not and that should have killed the deal right there. Big corporations don’t farm out their fraud detection to outside operators. But I overlooked it in my haste and panic. 

There was a phone number to ‘report errors or fraud.’ I, like a classic dupe, called the number. The woman on the other end, with an accent so thick I had to ask her to repeat herself several times, said that in order to help trap these fraudulent scammers, I should go to a store where they sell Amazon or Apple gift cards and buy one and tell her the number on the back. Somehow, I still wasn’t seeing through the scam but I don’t know anywhere that I could buy such cards and said, “No, that’s not going to happen, so good-bye.” 

Then, it began to sink in — I had been saved by living in a small town, and being too stubborn to go through with their idiotic scheme. I almost gave away my Amazon password, which would have allowed them to buy anything they wanted, shipped to anywhere, at my expense. Then I received an email, this time legitimately from Amazon, saying that someone was attempting to access my account, allow or deny? I clicked ‘deny’, so I think that neutralized the threat. I went to the bank, to have them check if there had been any non-local activity on my credit card. There hadn’t been, so it seems I stopped just short of Stupid Mistakeville on the information highway. 

Be very careful, if you shop online, check the return address on suspicious email and don’t give out information to someone you don’t know. They try thousands of these a day, from anywhere in the world and all it takes is for you to be gullible for a few minutes, and hand them their pay check for the day. They’re hungry, they’re clever and they really have nothing better to do — it’s their job. 

Robert Wills 

Shawville and Thorne, Que.