Amazon scam: How to protect yourself from scammers impersonating online retail giant

CHICAGO (WLS) — Here’s a quick tip to avoid scammers who are pretending to be from Amazon.

The company said if you receive a message about a purchase, do not respond to the message or click on any link in the message. Log into your Amazon account or use the Amazon mobile app to confirm that it is really in your purchase history before taking any action.

Also, use the app and website to pay. No one from Amazon will ever call you and ask for a payment over the phone. In addition, no one from Amazon will ever call you asking you to pay for merchandise with a gift card.

Check what others are saying. See if anyone else has reported a similar situation. In the U.S., Amazon has partnered with the Better Business Bureau to provide consumers a searchable scam tracker that enables you to search suspicious communications reported by others by email, URL, phone number and more. Amazon’s help pages also include information on how to identify scams and report them.

When in doubt, stop engaging with the potential scammer and contact Amazon directly through its app or website.