GFI Software Unfolds Online Scam Targeting Amazon.com

Amazon.com (News - Alert) is the apparent target of an online scam which creates fake receipts for items sold through Amazon.com and its partners.

GFI Software made the discovery and alerted Amazon.com about the deception which comes in the middle of the busy holiday selling season.

“Many of the items in the fake printout are convincing as a whole, but once you start digging into the details a little bit, it quickly falls apart. If a ‘customer’ seems a little peculiar, ensure you take a good look at their receipt,” Christopher Boyd, senior threat researcher, GFI Software, advises in a company statement.

“The free program available online allows scammers to create an HTML ‘receipt’ for phantom Amazon.com purchases. By capturing a screenshot of the fake receipt, these cyber criminals are able to email unsuspecting sellers claiming they are missing items. This type of fraud, perpetrated en masse, could result in massive losses for retailers, especially during the holiday shopping season,” Boyd said.

GFI lists ways to detect whether a receipt is fake:

The seller or Amazon should be able to verify whether it is a valid order number.

The merchant does not have a record of the purchase.

Amazon should be able to confirm that no purchase was ever made.

The program appears to add “random digits” on the “Visa: payment method” section.

Merchants should check the order number (in orange) at the top of the receipt because the numbers are randomly selected.

“The scammer is relying on the seller not checking the details and accepting the printout at face value,” Boyd adds in a recent blog post on Sunbelt Blog. “After all, how many sellers would be aware somebody went to the trouble of creating a fake receipt generator in the first place?”

In other company news, TMCnet reported that GFI Software said the most prevalent malware threats for the month of November were dominated by Trojans. Seven of the top 10 malware threats were classified as Trojans, GFI said.

GFI Software is a provider of web and mail security, archiving and fax, networking and security software and hosted IT solutions, the company said.