I have been receiving a steady stream of phishing emails targeting Amazon recently. All of these are basically the same, and contain some particularly amusing sentences. First there is the possibility that they may be in need of copies of your photo ID:

Amazon may also request in an email message scanned/faxed copies of one or more photo ID’s.

Next, if you got this email and you’re not an Amazon customer then you might be committing a crime by representing yourself as one:

If you received this notice and you are not an authorized Amazon account holder, please be aware that it is in violation of Amazon policy to represent oneself as an Amazon user. Such action may also be in violation of local, national, and/or international law.

An interesting way to handle the fact that they may send the email to some people who are not Amazon customers!

Finally though, my favourite of all:

Amazon will request personal data (password, credit card/bank numbers) only on our home site, wich is securely incrypted with SLL.

Must be something new that SLL incryption. Wonder if Amazon has the patent on it too 🙂

More seriously, if you ever get these things either delete then immediately or forward them on to the company’s anti-fraud email address. In the case of Amazon, that address is stop-spoofing@amazon.com. Here’s my basic tips for detecting phishing emails:

1. If it says anything about your account being suspended, it is almost certainly phishing.
2. If when you look at the link in the email it starts with numbers (an IP address) rather than the name of the company’s website, it is almost certainly phishing.
3. If it contains spelling errors, poor grammar or other mistakes, it is almost certainly phishing.
4. If the To line in the email header contains other people’s names/email addresses, it is almost certainly phishing.

If you have any concerns about the email, call the company’s customer support line or look up the address you can send spoof emails to in their customer support pages and forward the email. DO NOT REPLY TO THE EMAIL, OR CLICK ANY LINK IN THE EMAIL.