5 On Your Side

Preventing scammers on Amazon from accessing your account

One Oxford woman learned this lesson the hard way, after around $160 worth of purchases showed up on her bill - purchases that she knew she didn't make.

Posted Updated

By
Monica Lalibete
, WRAL executive producer/5 On Your Side reporter
OXFORD, N.C. — Stop the scammers before they get you.

One Oxford woman learned this lesson the hard way, after around $160 worth of purchases showed up on her bill – purchases that she knew she didn't make.

"I was wondering what the heck did we order that we forgot? Cause you know, I’m on top of stuff that we order," said Lisa Compton when she got emails alerting her to three different purchases on Amazon.

One email came at at 3:00am, another at 4:30am and the other at 6:46am.

The items added up to almost $160 dollars that Compton did not spend.

Some of the items, like lanyards and a face mask, didn’t even show up in her Amazon order history. But the order numbers emailed were accurate, so she was able to log in and cancel them.

Compton checked reviews on the seller’s site and found several pages of people sharing similar experiences: "I did not order this item."

Compton alerted Amazon and took steps to protect her accounts.

"We pulled all of our credit cards off of our Amazon account, and we’ve gotten into the two-step sign-on," she said.

The next day though, she received more charges, which Amazon immediately flagged in an email saying in part, "…an unauthorized party may have accessed your account."

Compton then canceled her credit card completely.

Amazon told 5 On Your Side:

“Whenever we detect unusual account activity, we immediately notify customers – which is exactly what we did in this instance. We’re glad were able to help the customer address any concerns," wrote Leah Seay, a spokeswoman from Amazon.

The company says whatever happened took place outside of Amazon, and Compton was not held responsible for any of the charges.

In the meantime, Compton smartly added two-factor authentication to protect her account. She also uses notifications on all accounts from Amazon to credit cards.

She also says she’ll pay close attention to shipping alerts.

"I don’t normally question those things, but now I’ll be questioning those things," she said.

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