weird email from amazon

I got this email from amazon

This is an important message from Amazon.

At Amazon we take your security and privacy very seriously. As part of our routine monitoring, we discovered a list of email address and password sets posted online. While the list was not Amazon-related, we know that many customers reuse their passwords on several websites. We believe your email address and password set was on that list. So we have taken the precaution of resetting your Amazon password. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused but felt that it was necessary to help protect you and your Amazon account.

To regain access to your Amazon customer account:

1. Go to Amazon and click the “Your Account” link at the top of our website.

2. Click the link that says “Forgot your password?”

3. Follow the instructions to set a new password for your account.

Please choose a new password and do not use the same password you used with us previously. We also highly recommend that you choose a password that you are not using on any other sites. We look forward to seeing you again soon.

Sincerely,

Amazon

My name at the top of it, from what looks like a genuine amazon email.

Theres no click through link in the email (which is what i thought the scam would be) However the email address this went to is my work one, which isn’t the registered one with amazon. I’ve also gone direct to my amazon account and my password hasn’t been reset……

so what gives, is this just a very good look alike designed to just annoy people or is there an underlying scam i cant see??

I’ll forward it to amazon and see what they say, but anyone else had this??

What email address is it from? And if it is legit, they are telling you to change your password because it might have been compromised, so it is to be expected that it (your password) is still the same.

I’ve had that. Just went directly to the amazon site and reset it

What’s the full email address it came from?

I got this email from amazon

I bet you didn’t.

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/alleged-amazon-phishing-scam-is-scarily-sophisticated-031016.html

Its a scam

watch your amazon accounts

and if you use the same log in details elsewhere change them

account-update@amazon.co.uk

and that’s the address that comes up when you hover the mouse over it….

The Mail says my password has already been reset and i need to go through the forgotten password process.
It hasn’t.. my current password still works.
If its a scam i can’t see how it works, but its suspicious, like i said its not to an address currently registered with amazon (i think it was in the past, but i changed it years ago)

ohh thanks Drac,

Hmm.

The only explanation I can think of here is that it is a genuine email, but Amazon are emailing everyone on the compromised list rather than cross-referencing it against their own user database to send to people who actually have accounts. In any case, reusing passwords is a bad idea so it’s good advice.

Worth stopping by here – http://haveibeenpwned.com/ – to check whether your accounts have been compromised.

Ah so this is how people get scammed I’ve always wondered who falls for these things.

Ask yourself this simple question – the amazon email went to an email address thats not registered with amazon. How do you think they managed to do that?

Blimey – from Cougar’s link – 1,801,838,008 pwned accounts !

Mine’s not one and my Amazon password has been the same ordinary text word since Amazon started up 8)

I’ve always wondered who falls for these things
Me too. Presumed it was just old biddies.

Googleing for the words in the email suggests it’s genuine from Amazon. It doesn’t say your Amazon password has been compromised, just a password that’s associated to your address, so if you used a different password for Amazon, it will be safe. Noting that the OP posted later that the address it was sent to may have been registered with Amazon in the past, that may be what’s happened; Amazon would have reset the password on the old redundant account, they wouldn’t link it to the more recent one as they won’t know the addresses belong to the same person.

The “from” address is meaningless. I can send email with any “from” address, just using the standard Thunderbird mail client. The only way to check is to look at the headers and see where the email started – it may not give an obvious domain, but you can look up the IP address to see who it belongs to.

One possible reason for a spam email with no obvious trap is that it’s checking to see if your address is valid and whether you open emails with subjects like that. If you view the email as html there is often a hidden link (a one pixel transparent gif image); if it’s downloaded, the sender knows you read it. I always view suspect mails as the source file first. Unfortunately Outlook makes this difficult.

Ask yourself this simple question – the amazon email went to an email address thats not registered with amazon. How do you think they managed to do that?

From one of the publicly available (if you know where to look) lists of compromised accounts. It’s an odd thing to do – why not just mail all your customers? – but it’s certainly possible.

One possible reason for a spam email with no obvious trap is that it’s checking to see if your address is valid and whether you open emails with subjects like that. If you view the email as html there is often a hidden link (a one pixel transparent gif image); if it’s downloaded, the sender knows you read it. I always view suspect mails as the source file first. Unfortunately Outlook makes this difficult.

Outlook blocks remote image downloads from unknown senders for just this reason.

Although it says to go to the website to change your password try also rolling your mouse over the amazon links/logo to see where they really go.

You’ll need to look at the linked URL really carefully, they are masters of hiding domain names within domain names or using misspellings.

This is a nice example..

Steam example.

If all good then as Greybeard says it could just be a email authentication/capture process to sell on.

You’ll need to look at the linked URL really carefully

Theres no click through link in the email

How carefully? 😉

With an especially bignormous microscope…

Should have said rolling over any images of logos/text/cats/ other fluffy pictures in the email and checking out the linking URLs. That sort of thing.

Without getting the messages headers it’s alwasy hard to delve/suggest things init…..

Googleing for the words in the email suggests it’s genuine from Amazon.

I did that and found the link above which was the first recommendation.

You’ll need to look at the linked URL really carefully, they are masters of hiding domain names within domain names or using misspellings.

Or unicode. Would everyone spot something like http://www.?mazon.com ?