Security News > 2020 > September > Vishing scams use Amazon and Prime as lures – don’t get caught!
The V in vishing stands for voice, and it's a way of referring to scams that arrive by telephone in the form of voice calls, rather than as electronic messages.
We can't tell whether this is just one group of crooks who are focusing on both vishing and the UK at the moment, or if it's a broader global trend, but we are experiencing unwanted vishing calls at a much greater rate than any time in the past few years.
We're not talking about interactive scams here, like those fake technical support calls where a crook with the gift of the gab call up out of the blue to pester, lie, cheats and frighten you about made-up malware on your computer in order to talk you into buying a fraudulent "Cleanup service" that you didn't need in the first place.
In the UK there is - rather annoyingly - a different procedure for reporting scam calls, which is where someone calls you up and talks a load of lies or unwanted junk into your ear, and abandoned or silent calls, which is where the caller cuts the connection before a human comes on the line at their end.
If you are worried about a fraudulent transaction, whether it's via Amazon or any other coronavirus-friendly online merchant, login to your account yourself, or call the company's helpine yourself, using contact information you already have.