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I came across an interesting post on a community app a few days ago.
The scam
Someone shared that they received a gift card from Amazon in a letter addressed to them. When they opened the envelope, they saw the Amazon gift card.
The poster stated that the return address on the envelope was to a park in Babylon New York.
Thinking this could be a scam, they contacted Amazon directly. The customer service rep they spoke to requested that they not scan the barcode on the back of the gift card. The rep instructed them to throw the gift card away.
Where’s the risk?
Well, it looks like the access to your account would be at risk.
If you use the Amazon app you can scan the gift card barcode and add it to your account. This then would allow the senders to access your account and order at will it seems.
The poster shared that Amazon is aware of this scam.
These are similar to other scams we’ve seen previously
This is reminiscent of the brushing scams that have been going around for the last few years. People were being sent random gifts mainly rings. That included a QR code. Once you scanned the QR code it may have added malware or some other spyware on your smartphone.
If you are not sure of what a brushing scam is here’s a video I posted a while back explaining about them.
How to report this to Amazon
Amazon has a support page where you can report these types of issues.
All we can do is get the word out so no one falls for this scam.
