EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

This year’s online shopping extravaganza is slated to take place on October 13th. The annual retail event is one of the perks included with an Amazon Prime subscription, as the discounts are exclusive to subscribers. But Amazon’s Prime subscribers aren’t the only ones who eagerly anticipate this annual event. Cyber criminals want to cash in too.

Security researchers with Check Point Software have determined that ahead of Amazon Prime Day, hackers are liable to register malicious, Amazon look-alike domains. Look-alike domains, or malicious websites that mirror authentic websites, can prompt users to unintentionally hand over personal information to bad actors.

Across a 30 day window, researchers observed a 21% increase in domains that contained the word “Amazon” as compared to the prior month. More than 25% of the look-alike domains appeared malicious, while another 10% were deemed suspicious.

On Amazon Prime Day, keep the hackers at bay with these tips:

  1. Take note of any links that misspell Amazon.com. Misspelled domain names are a common means of fooling the average joe into falling for phishing. And if the site ends in ‘a.co’ rather than ‘.com’, that should also alert you to a look-alike domain.
  2. Look for the lock. You’ve probably noticed that most websites are no longer ‘http’ but rather ‘https’. To recognize whether or not a site is safe, be sure to look for both the ‘S’ in ‘https’ and a lock icon to the left of the URL in the address bar or in the status bar. If the website lacks a lock, that’s a red flag.
  1. Create a strong password for Amazon. Prevent hackers from getting in. Ensure that your password is creative, unguess-able and contains a mix of letters, numbers and symbols.

For more info on how to stay safe during Amazon Prime’s deals day, check out this blog post.