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Strange Emails from Amazon?

4K views 16 replies 14 participants last post by  baldricko 
#1 ·
Has anyone else this evening gotten an email from Amazon asking them to update their banking info? It went to my spam folder but seems legit.

KDP Customer Support <support+5002E00001g0pnpQAA@kdp-support.amazon.com>
Mon 11/9/2020 5:34 PM
Due to a recent change with our banking partners, we found the "Account holder name" field in your KDP account's bank information is incorrect. Your payments, including those scheduled for the end of October, will be on hold until you update your bank account information. Please follow the instructions below so that we can remove the payment hold.

To receive your payments, please sign in to your KDP account, delete the existing bank account, and add your bank information as a new bank account. When you add a new bank account, confirm the "Account holder name" field exactly matches the person's name associated with the bank account. If this information does not match the name associated with the bank account, we may not be able to deposit payments into the account. If you're unsure who the account holder of your bank account is, contact your bank for additional information.

To edit your bank account details, follow the direction on our Help page:
https://kdp.amazon.com/help/topic/G200634350#change_bank

After you've updated your bank account details we will automatically review to confirm they're correct. Then we will remove the payment hold and issue any payment due in our next payment cycle.

We apologize for this inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding.

©1996-2020, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. All Rights Reserved. Amazon and Kindle are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. 410 Terry Avenue North Seattle, Washington 98109 US.

Please note: This is a transactional message regarding your account. Your subscription preferences will continue to be honored for all future commercial e-mails from Kindle Direct Publishing.
The only difference in my name that I could find was my middle initial. I updated it.

I also got an email from Amazon in Chinese tonight as well which is super odd, especially since it also seems legit. Anyone else get it?

Here it is in the original Chinese:

Amazon Advertising
Mon 11/9/2020 9:31 PM
View in Browser
Amazon Advertising
诚邀您参加亚马逊广告体验问卷调研,此份问卷预计用时约 10 分钟,您的意见将有助于我们在今后提供更好的服务和体验。请点击下方按钮开始回答。感谢您的参与。
开始问卷

亚马逊广告 | 服务商页面

此次调查由外部机构 Qualtrics 主持,因此以上链接并不会指向我们的网站。亚马逊的隐私声明适用于您的回复内容。如果您对此邮件的真实性有任何疑虑,或者想要详细了解亚马逊的调查计划,请访问亚马逊客户服务帮助页面。

希望此邮件对您有所帮助,如果您不希望继续接收亚马逊服务发送的此类电子邮件,请取消订阅。

© 2006 - 2020 Amazon.com, Inc. 或其附属公司。保留所有权利。 Amazon, Amazon Advertising, Amazon.com, and the Amazon logo are registered trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. Amazon.com, 410 Terry Avenue, Seattle, WA 98109-5210.
Translated:
Amazon Advertising
You are invited to participate in the Amazon Advertising Experience Survey, which is expected to take approximately 10 minutes and your comments will help us provide better service and experience in the future. Please click on the button below to start answering. Thank you for your participation.
Start the questionnaire
Just to be clear, I didn't click on any links in either of these emails, but they honestly seem legit, but it's also like they did all they could to make the emails suspicious.

Anyone else get these? You may want to check your spam folder.
 
#2 ·
I never respond to any email that asks for any account info ... if I have anything that needs my attention on any account, Amazon, banking, whatever - I go direct to that site and ask ...  Too much phishing going on today.

I've had several emails that appear Amazon, but are not -- hover over the sender, and it will show. Or, go direct to Amazon and ask ...
 
#4 ·
Okay, these are outright scams. Avoid or report them. I've had two Amazon warnings in my email today, both telling me my account will be shout down if I don't verify/update personal info. This seems to happen right after I make several Amazon book purchases, which I did. But I get regularly too. 
 
#6 ·
ImaWriter,

Thanks for the reminder. I checked and the banking message isn't listed in my Amz acct, but if it is a phishing message, it's not very good since there are no links in the message except to the KDP Support page about updating banking info.

I sent a message to support to double check.

The Chinese Amz advertising message claims to be from no-reply@amazon.com, but it isn't in my list of message either though a message confirming that I updated my banking info from tonight was listed. (I did update it to correct my name.) I'm still puzzled, but we'll see.
 
#7 ·
Windvein said:
ImaWriter,

... but if it is a phishing message, it's not very good since there are no links in the message except to the KDP Support page about updating banking info.
The label on the link ( kdp.amazon.com/help/topic/G200634350#change_bank) is an amazon page, but are you sure the actual link is that to that page? (Don't click it, hover above it or view the source if you want to find out)

We all know that the label on a link can be misleading, and that is also true if the label happens to be an innocent page address.
 
#8 ·
I got the Chinese email from Amazon Advertising asking me to fill out a survey.  It came to the correct email address that I use only for Amazon KDP and Amazon Advertising.  If these emails are not from Amazon, then Amazon got hacked because there is no other entity on the planet that knows that email address.

When you look at the HTML source of the email, the links in the email do appear to point to amazon-owned pages, but I am not clicking on them. 

Edit:  Actually, there is a link that reads "To view this email as a web page, go to the following address:", and that URI starts with
go.amazonadvertising.com which may or may not actually be Amazon.  A nameserver lookup says:

Non-authoritative answer:
go.amazonadvertising.com canonical name = amazonadproductsmarketing.mktoweb.com.
amazonadproductsmarketing.mktoweb.com canonical name = sjn.mktossl.com.
Name: sjn.mktossl.com
Address: 104.17.70.206
Name: sjn.mktossl.com
Address: 104.17.71.206
Name: sjn.mktossl.com
Address: 104.17.73.206
Name: sjn.mktossl.com
Address: 104.17.72.206
Name: sjn.mktossl.com
Address: 104.17.74.206

I am not familiar with mktoweb.com and so I am not sure what it means that the link points to them.  Of course the email does claim to be from a third party, so maybe Amazon hired someone to run the survey and they accidentally translated it wrong?

But no matter who sent it, I am not filling out any survey because Amazon 1.) won't share info with us and 2.) seem to use their own internal info about businesses' sales numbers through Amazon to identify profitable areas so that they can start their own operations in those areas to try to crush the businesses that had a nice margin.  So I see no reason to share info with them.  If authors were to report that they loved Amazon Advertising, my guess is that Amazon would take that as an indication that they can get away with raising their rates or lessening the usefulness somehow.
 
#11 ·
Had several weird ones this week, from people trying their luck.

'Suspicious activity - sign in here, or we'll permanently disable your account.'
'Bank account details need updating - log in here.'
etc etc

Funnily enough, none of the emails seem to know my name. Odd, that.
 
#13 ·
KDP Customer Support has confirmed that the banking email is from them. I submitted the question through the KDP Help form. So if you got the email, you may want to log into your KDP account and make sure your name matches what's on your bank account, though go through a bookmark and not a link through any email. (Though again, there was no link in the email they sent.)

JohnHansen said:
The label on the link ( kdp.amazon.com/help/topic/G200634350#change_bank) is an amazon page, but are you sure the actual link is that to that page? (Don't click it, hover above it or view the source if you want to find out)

We all know that the label on a link can be misleading, and that is also true if the label happens to be an innocent page address.
The link directs to the kdp help topic. I think the link was plain text and converted to a hyper link by my email.

I also got the Chinese Amazon Advertising email again. I'm ignoring it.
 
#14 ·
Yes, just got the Chinese one twice. And just about every other email supposedly from Amazon that says your account has been suspended or closed.

Funny that, when I'm making book purchases right and left with no problems with my account acceptance whatsoever. I've been allowed to review everything too, and they are standing firm.
 
#16 ·
Simon Haynes said:
Just got this one from AMS. Now they're apologising for spam I couldn't read in the first place:

Earlier, we mistakenly sent you an email with the subject line "诚邀您参与亚马逊广告问卷调研". You do not need to take any action, and we apologize for any confusion.
I also got that one. I never got the spam one, though.
 
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