Fake customer-service accounts

What’s the threat?

Scammers are pretending to be customer-support teams on Twitter, hoping to trick you into handing over your account details.

In particular fraudsters have been targeting Amazon customers who have complained on Twitter about late deliveries. They have been scouring Twitter for complaints, then sending a direct message to disgruntled customers from the account @amazonhelps2, confusingly similar to the real account name

@Amazonhelp.

The messages contained an apology, and a request for the email address used for the Amazon account. If the customer provides this, the scammers then ask for credit-card details “for security purposes”.

How can you stay safe?

We wouldn’t discourage you from contacting companies through Twitter because these days it’s often the best way to guarantee a response. But you should make sure you’re contacting a legitimate customer-support team. These will be marked by a blue tick (see screenshot). Hover your mouse over it and you’ll see ‘Verified account’. A similar symbol appears on Facebook to verify real pages.

Twitter has now closed the @amazonhelps2 account, but scammers are bound to return with similar names, and won’t just target Amazon customers. Last year they tried to dupe Natwest customers using the fake accounts @Natwest_helps and @Natwest_helpt, both just one letter different from the real @Natwest_help.

While you can report fake accounts to Twitter, you’ll get faster results by alerting the company that’s being impersonated. They should respond quickly to protect their reputation, and ask Twitter to remove the account.

When Amazon customers told the company about @amazonhelps2, it promptly tweeted that the account was fake, and advised people not to “engage” with it. For advice on avoiding scams visit Amazon’s Help & Customer Service page: www.snipca.com/25079.