PSA: How to check if that Amazon call, email, or text message is a scam

The next time that you get a suspicious call or message purportedly from Amazon, you can find out in a flash if it was real.

In a recent message to customers, Amazon said you can check to see if any phone call, email, or text message that claims to come from Amazon is legitimate, with the aim of helping to prevent people from getting scammed.

For its many, many, many, many, many, many, many failings, Amazon is — to its credit — doing at least this security thing right. All too often, scams start with a phone call or a text message claiming to be from a legitimate company, like a tech or retail giant, but use pressure tactics to trick someone into calling a phone number, emailing back, or clicking on a link. "Your account has been accessed from a new location," or "call now to stop the transfer," things like that.

With Amazon's message verification feature, you can check Amazon.com's message center, which contains a record of any time Amazon has contacted you by phone, email, or text. You can also use the Alexa feature on your Amazon Echo, or the Alexa chatbot feature on its website to check to see, "did Amazon call me?" or "did Amazon send me an email?". Or, you can forward the email to verify@amazon.com and wait for an email back before responding to the suspicious outreach.

Amazon isn't the only company that does this — financial platforms, major banks, and some health providers also offer a similar communication verification feature — but it's still encouraging to also see from a big tech company. (Sometimes it can be a challenge verifying that even legitimate messages are in fact from the companies that they claim, so having an easy and verifiable way to check is helpful.)

Scams aren't going away any time soon, so take that extra minute to check and verify before you respond to that inbound message. The scammers are counting on you not doing that, but it could save you from a nasty account compromise.