Amazon Offers 50% Off Coupon-Scam!
Summary of eRumor:
Forwarded emails and social media posts claim Amazon.com is offering a 50% off coupon to shoppers who complete a number of surveys.
The Truth:
The so-called 50% off Amazon coupon making the rounds is a survey scam.
In this type of scam, “marks” are promised free stuff (or a coupon) from a well-known retailer like Amazon.com. You’ll be asked to “share” and comment on the offer on social media and then fill out a survey to redeem the offer.
The survey will ask you for personal information that will then be sold to a third-party by the scammers, or used to sing you up for expensive subscriptions without your permission.
The best way to identify survey scams like the Amazon.com 50% off coupon is to look closely at the website’s URL. If the URL does not come from the official company website, or from the company’s official Facebook page, consider it to be a scam.
In this case, the so-called Amazon 50% off coupon was offered by the website www.Amazon.com-season.xyz/. The “Amazon.com” portion of the URL is what’s known as a subdomain. Although it appears that you’ll be directed to an official Amazon website by clicking on the link, you’ll actually be directed to a different website that has created an Amazon.com subdomain in an effort to trick you. Go Daddy explains subdomains as such:
Subdomains are extensions of your domain name that you can forward to URLs or point to IP addresses and directories within your hosting account. For example, you could create a subdomain for pictures on your site called “pics” that is accessible through the URLpics.coolexample.com in addition to www.coolexample.com/pics. It’s easy to create a memorable Web address for unique content areas of your site by using subdomains.
You can add up to 100 subdomains per domain name. You can also add multiple levels of subdomains. For instance, you can add info.blog.coolexample.com to delve into an even more specific area of interest on your site. Each subdomain can be up to 25 characters long.
Also, the scammers who started the original Amazon coupon hoax later changed the survey scam “bait” to a $100 gift card for Amazon.com. Don’t fall for that scam, either. The website is not affiliated with Amazon, and you won’t receive a $100 off coupon.