Warning: Using Amazon.com to Dupe Sellers

Season shopping generates tremendous additional traffic to ecommerce stores. As a result, many cyber criminals see this as an opportunity to scam the unsuspecting public. Online shopping is simple, fast and convenient. Sites like Amazon.com are popular places to complete your holiday shopping list. To capitalize, some hackers have created customized, fake receipts for their users.

The users take these receipts and bring them to Amazon stating they never received their product, thus asking for refunds. If sellers are not quick to check the fake transaction, they could ship the items out to these cyber criminals without them every paying for the merchandise. Due to the chaos that accompanies the holiday season, now is the best time for crooks to dupe unsuspecting retailers.

Unfortunately, phony receipt generating software is available for free on the internet. As a result, many individuals are going to try to achieve fake merchandise by utilizing this program. The Amazon Receipt Generator.exe program is not new, in fact it has been circulating for a few months. The software creates fake HTML receipts sent to retailers. The interface is easy-to-use by providing a form that can be filled in to generate the receipt.

Required information includes:

• The date of the order
• The item name
• The order number
• Price
• Address information
• Country of origin

Once the “Generate” button is clicked, an HTML file of the receipt is generated and looks exactly like an Amazon.com receipt. The software does an excellent job of producing an exact replica of the receipt so the scam has the potential to work effectively.

There are methods retailers can do to check details and avoid being scammed. First, double-check with Amazon to ensure the order number is valid. Second, in the payment information section, payments made by Visa may have a few extra digits added to the credit card number.

This program has spawned many similar receipt-generating programs to begin circulation. However, simply check the main details of the receipt to avoid being scammed. Organized and vigilant retailers will be able to avoid such scams. It’s those that do not take the time to check the records that will have a problem.

This program is so simple yet is causing so many issues in the online retail industry. Although this should not affect Amazon’s reputation with customers, it could cause a problem with the retailers in the Amazon Marketplace trusting the company. Hopefully this is resolved so the merchants can return to selling without additional worry.