Fact Check: Amazon is not giving away returned products for free, the viral message is fake

New Delhi (Vishvas Team). A message is going viral on WhatsApp in the name of the shopping site Amazon. It is being claimed in this message that Amazon company is distributing returned products for free. A link is also being shared with this. Vishvas News has also received this claim on its WhatsApp chatbot for a fact check. In the investigation of Vishvas News, this claim has turned out to be fake.

What is going viral

A message is going viral on WhatsApp. This message reads, ‘Amazon Returned Products Giveaway 10.000 FREE products for you.’ With the post, the users are being asked to click on the link below ‘https://tinyurl5.ru/e121730620/’

Investigation

Vishvas News first clicked on the link being shared in the post. We found that this link can be opened only on mobile and not on a laptop or computer. The link that opened on clicking on the link was not Amazon’s official website.

We also searched the Internet with the help of keywords like Amazon Returned Products Giveaway, but we did not find any information about any such offer. If a well-known shopping website like Amazon organizes such an event, then authentic media definitely covers it.

We contacted Amazon directly in this regard. We asked Amazon Help for information about this viral post through a tweet. In response, calling it fake, we were advised not to click on this link.

We contacted Ayush Bhardwaj, cyber security expert and former IT consultant of the Public Grievances Committee, Government of Rajasthan, for more information on this topic. He told us, “This website is created by cyber criminals and is also hosted from outside the country. The basic purpose of creating such websites is to insert malware into the users’ mobiles. After that, keylogging is used to steal the secret information typed by the user like NetBanking ID, login information of social media accounts, and password of email account. These keyloggers send user details to a text file every few hours to cybercriminals. Sometimes these links are also used for the purpose of click-betting. In this, users are kept engaged on the website for maximum time by luring them with lotteries, discount coupons, mobile phones etc. By doing this, ads are shown to them. The ads are also shown on different pages of the website and in the name of the survey the user is taken to the different pages. It is based on “pay per view”. Which means these cyber criminals get money “per view”.

This post has been shared on Facebook by a user named Orai Putra CP. The user lives in Dubai.

Conclusion: In the investigation of Vishvas News, this message being viral in the name of Amazon turned out to be fake. It has nothing to do with Amazon. Clicking on such unverified links can be dangerous for you.

Tags

• Amazon
• Fact Check