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Businesses Crime

Why Am I Receiving Unordered Boxes From Amazon? (bbb.org) 62

It's an unexpected surprise that's been popping up "all over the country," according to the Better Business Bureau. People are receiving boxes of unordered merchandise from Amazon. The companies, usually foreign, third-party sellers that are sending the items are simply using your address and your Amazon information. Their intention is to make it appear as though you wrote a glowing online review of their merchandise, and that you are a verified buyer of that merchandise. They then post a fake, positive review to improve their products' ratings, which means more sales for them. The payoff is highly profitable from their perspective...

The fake online review angle is only one way they benefit...they also are increasing their sales numbers. After all, they aren't really purchasing the items since the payment goes right back to them.... Then there is the "porch pirate" angle. There have been instances where thieves used other people's mailing addresses and accounts, then watched for the delivery of the package so they can steal it from your door before you get it...

The fact that someone was able to have the items sent to you as if you purchased them indicates that they probably have some of your Amazon account information. Certainly, they have your name and address and possibly, your phone number and a password. The company either hacked your account themselves or purchased the information from a hacker.

The BBB notes that although it's strange to receive boxes of unordered merchandise, "You are allowed to keep it. The Federal Trade Commission says you have a legal right to keep unordered merchandise."

"The bigger issue is: What do you do about your information having been obtained by crooks?"
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Why Am I Receiving Unordered Boxes From Amazon?

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  • by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Sunday August 18, 2019 @04:10PM (#59100118)

    if the product was bad, you can leave poisonous scathing review alongside the fake one

    • One review per purchase.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jrumney ( 197329 )

      Presumably they created a fake account in your name and address, which you don't have the password for, to order and review the products. Since the product wasn't reviewed from your account, you won't be able to edit the review.

      • Presumably they created a fake account in your name and address, which you don't have the password for, to order and review the products. Since the product wasn't reviewed from your account, you won't be able to edit the review.

        No, but you can create a separate review (it just won't be "verified") and explain what happened.

        A different scenario where I could write a verified review: I ordered a pack of underwear once and there was a card in the package offering a free extra pair if I left a 5 star review and sent them notification after I had done it. I could have left a 5 star review and then modified it after I received my free pair- but I didn't, I left a 3 star review (they were 4 star underwear at best), saying I was knocki

      • Don't need to edit it, just need to post right next to it. That I can do, any Amazon member can do.

    • if the product was bad, you can leave poisonous scathing review alongside the fake one

      I would probably do so anyway even if it were good if it were part of some ratings scam.

    • by Ranbot ( 2648297 )

      When fake reviews are orchestrated by the seller/manufacturer the shipped item is usually different [and cheaper] from the product the fake review was placed on.

      NPR's Planet Money did a story on this last year: https://www.npr.org/templates/... [npr.org]

  • by mrsam ( 12205 ) on Sunday August 18, 2019 @04:12PM (#59100128) Homepage

    If someone wants to send me some free stuff, even if it's electronics, and even if it's not, shall we say, of the highest quality, there's no need to go to extreme measures to try to steal my Amazon info. Just drop me a note and I'll gladly provide it.

  • Huh??? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MikeDataLink ( 536925 ) on Sunday August 18, 2019 @04:15PM (#59100134) Homepage Journal

    In neither of these scenarios do they need your Amazon account information. I can get your address from google maps or by looking at your mailbox.

    • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
      Yea, but they also need it to show up as a "verified purchaser" in the review, and that is tied to your account.
      • Re:Huh??? (Score:5, Informative)

        by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Sunday August 18, 2019 @04:30PM (#59100174)
        LOL never mind. Looked into a better source, the sellers are making fake accounts with real addresses. No account compromise needed. That's what I get for relying on old-people twitter for actual facts.
        • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          Not so fake accounts. Another account with the same name and the same address, just different payment details. So delivered to you, at your address, from another account that happens to have you details with your address but different account payment details, no hacking required. At one level it is delivered to you at an entirely different level it is paid for by the account holder, your name but not you credit debit information.

      • Re:Huh??? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by I75BJC ( 4590021 ) on Sunday August 18, 2019 @04:31PM (#59100176)
        Will you show up as a "verified purchaser"? Not according to Amazon's customer service department.

        Will it show up on your account? Not according to Amazon's customer service.

        I asked.
        • Will you show up as a "verified purchaser"? Not according to Amazon's customer service department.

          Will it show up on your account? Not according to Amazon's customer service.

          I asked.

          Who? Because neither of those things were happening. LOL.

          • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
            The selling company builds its internal US .com reputation as a trusted company that's selling a lot and that delivery is correct and on time.
            Not all ranking is about what a "human" buying the product takes the time to enter as a consumer data set later...
        • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
          Are you one of those people who think customer service drones know anything at all?
      • Not quite. They make a fake account, send the item to your address and use the fake account to do the review. They don't need any access to your account. All they need to know is your address. There are probably people selling these fake accounts and reviews as a service.
    • It's the same company in China that sent me some socks. That's how they've got my address. Different company name, to be sure. Same address label and name of person sending on the shipping label.
  • At the end the BBB gives a list of things to help prevent this, yet not mentioned is "Enable 2-factor for your amazon account". Yes it's weak-AF SMS 2FA but it's better than nothing, especially for something like they are saying is going on here.
    • by ledow ( 319597 )

      How's that gonna stop someone who you've ever purchased from (hence they have your address because they had to send it to you) selling your address, along with millions of others, onto rogue companies who deal with that data.

      2FA will stop them impersonating you. This is literally just someone having a valid name and address and posting stuff to you.

      • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
        I'm talking about this list from the article:

        The bigger issue is: What do you do about your information having been obtained by crooks? Here are some helpful tips:
        Pay attention to who is actually handling transactions on sites like Amazon. It is often from a third-party seller. You may want to only purchase items that are shipped by Amazon directly.

        Notify Amazon or the retailer by going to their website and getting contact information. Don’t answer an email.

        Change your account passwords. You may want to consider a password manager service to improve account security.

        You may want to freeze your credit with one of the three main credit monitoring services.

        Report the fake review to Amazon or wherever it appears. Brushing is illegal, and they will take the review down.

        Look up any company you are considering doing business with at bbb.org.

      • by Bengie ( 1121981 )
        My address, birthdate, where I was born, is all public information. Not sure I care about it being sold. I googled my name and was able to get every address that I lived at since I was a child, the list of everyone in my family and their relation, where I currently work, phone number, and other information that I have long forgotten about. It's all in public records. I can get this information on pretty much anyone through free web services.
    • Yes it's weak-AF SMS 2FA but it's better than nothing, especially for something like they are saying is going on here.

      Actually, after you've enabled SMS two-step authentication you can switch to using an authenticator app as your preferred method.

      Unfortunately, though, you can't disable SMS as a fall-back after having enabled that.

  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday August 18, 2019 @04:31PM (#59100178)

    If so, this may explain it [theonion.com]...

  • by Indiana Joe ( 715695 ) on Sunday August 18, 2019 @04:47PM (#59100190)
    You know how sometimes scammers will ask for payment in Amazon gift cards? They need to convert those into cash somehow. Here's how it works: They buy cheap crap from AliBaba or some other Chinese e-commerce site. They put it up on Amazon for an inflated price. Then, they use the scammed gift cards to buy the junk from themselves. They probably use random addresses because Amazon might notice that all these purchases were going to one address.
    • by shellster_dude ( 1261444 ) on Sunday August 18, 2019 @04:57PM (#59100206)
      Came here to post exactly that. This technique is commonly used for a whole bunch of money laundering techniques. Basically they purchase cheap crap with highly inflated prices. The seller then ships the junk to your random address. Then, if Amazon checks, they can see the package was shipped, and it looks like the buyer was just an idiot. However, in reality the seller is working with the buyer to launder large amounts of cash. Similar techniques are used with itunes and google play, by doing "in-game purchases" for crappy games that are mostly a mechanism for ingesting fake purchases.
    • They probably use random addresses because Amazon might notice that all these purchases were going to one address.

      But they won't notice that they're all going to the same seller? I don't know how sellers get paid, but that seems to be the weak link here. I doubt Amazon cares, but I'll bet the IRS does.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        They're counting on Amazon and the IRS treating it as a valid sale to that seller. The point of money laundering is to have a stream of valid income that they actually pay taxes on. It's the BUYER of these transactions that's faked, and the actual items are an expense to the fake business. Money doesn't just launder itself - it costs real money to have clean income.

        You might keep the item, but if the IRS gets to the bottom of this, the IRS could accuse you of receiving income (the value of the item). There'

        • so the IRS sees unwanted stuff as income? when the FTC law says you have a legal right to keep it as a free gift.

          • you don't seem to understand money laundering. The business/seller is trying to make an illegal enterprise/source of income appear legitimate. By faking sales to random addresses the seller then pays tax on the sale and pays themselves in the gift cards via amazon, yes it does mean they are giving up a chunk of money to the government, but in doing so they have converted money they previously couldn't easily use or distribute without raising questions with various government agencies into clean taxed revenu
      • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Whats a 1000 international sellers with their own nations "trusted" merchant accounts that all work on time and in the correct way?
        The product was sent, the money flows.
        The other nation sees their citizens doing digital export and thats good. Thats paid tax for the gov, US currency and new economy jobs.
        Something that gov wants to stop, go looking into?
        The US gov detects another US person buying something online from anther nation. Not something thats very different from an average persons spending p
      • by gtall ( 79522 )

        The IRS is being defunded, they do not have the resources to check on small stuff. Who's defunding them? The morons in Congress and the useful idiots in the alleged Administration. The idea is that if the IRS doesn't know what you did, then it didn't happen. A politician's wet dream.

    • by shanen ( 462549 )

      Won't the Trump Organization accept Amazon gift cards for the purchase of condos in Trump Tower?

      (Couldn't resist. Just reading several books about Russian money laundering...)

      • by gtall ( 79522 )

        No, that's Greenland of which you are thinking. If Trump can use U.S. government funds as the moral equivalent of his German banker friends, then he can get his grifter family in on the ground floor to...realize the opportunities available with Greenland's natural resources.

  • I thought this box of butt plugs and chastity belts really was from Rob Malda...

  • by pz ( 113803 )

    After all, they aren't really purchasing the items since the payment goes right back to them....

    Wrong. They are purchasing the items. They have lost the income from the sale that will presumably be booked as a marketing expenditure. It is not a zero cost transaction if you look at more than just the surface: count the money before and after, and then count the inventory before and after, too.

    • And also to mention the big cut of the purchase price that goes directly to Amazon for the use of the site - and even more if they use the distribution network.
  • I'm not going to DOX Bezos here, but his email address is public knowledge. Your second guess is probably right. It actually gets seen by a human being, though I doubt his are the first eyeballs. Still, it's a channel.

    I was actually reading about this topic recently. The book is called Reading the Comments and it mentioned Slashdot in several places, too. This particular scam was not mentioned, but there was a lot of stuff about manipulating online reviews and Amazon's review system, among others.

    What I c

  • Iâ(TM)d be happy with the stuff I did order arriving.

  • by vix86 ( 592763 ) on Sunday August 18, 2019 @06:35PM (#59100386)

    The companies, usually Chinese, third-party sellers

    There, fixed it for ya. The only reason this continues to happen is that the rest of the world continues to let China act like they're poor and suffering, they're not. They have the second largest GDP in the world and pay next to nothing in terms of shipping to other parts of the world. No other country in the top 10 GDP gets to send a $0.50 pen internationally for a few bucks and then get their government to reimburse the shipping costs. If the rest of the world stopped letting China get developing country shipping rates, then half their manufacturing industry would probably implode overnight.

    • So.. China will make an item for cheap and then their tax payers will even partially pay for the shipping? Ok. So?

      And you don't think US trading companies take nothing from US tax payers in terms of the Panama Canal, Suez Canal, military bases all over the world, and the largest naval fleet patrolling trade routes? There is also the direct tax incentives to encourage international operations.

      How about all those Army Core of Engineers projects that deepen ports, or make shipping lanes, or rebuild after a n

      • "Also, as long as most Chinese are still very much poor, they will remain a developing country."

        If that's the standard, the USA will be a developing country in no time

    • If Chinese products are better value than US products then I will choose China every time. As a non-American I have no reason to side with the US when I can get a better deal elsewhere. If the US wants my business then they need to find a way to provide better value for money/
      • If Chinese products are better value than US products then I will choose China every time.

        Trouble is, they are mostly not better value, they are crap. And it is getting hard to find things not made in China, so there is no choice.

        A steering ball joint wore out in my car four years ago (the original, after 15 years of use, fair enough). The Chinese replacement lasted 13 months until the rubber boot split. So did the replacement for that. So did the replacement for that. I can't find one not made in China - even the main car dealer now uses the Chinese clone crap. It might be cheaper but I d

  • Where do I sign up to be a capitalistic whore... more so than I am now?
  • I've ordered enough stuff from amazon that I think I deserve some of this payola.

    Maybe it's because I left a review so scathing a few weeks ago that Amazon actually deleted it. I'm not sure what I said that was objectionable but it you mail collectible items in envelopes where they're sure to get crushed in transit don't expect your customers to be pleased.

    I must have crossed a line, but they won't tell me how and I can't remember if I said it was "crap"or something worse, but let's be honest. The product arrived damaged and that's total bullshit.

    I really hope Target and Walmart and other retailers can step into the online market and take a big chunk out of Amazon's business Not because I want to hurt Amazon, but because competition is good for the consumer. I know, they're trying, but still Amazon seems to be the default choice for online shopping.

    • Walmart might take a chunk once they improve the quality of their packaging. The procedure for dealing with missing items needs work as well.

  • I am offering my reviews for any hard drive greater than 4TB. WD and Seagate please sponsor me! My NAS can only last so long!
  • I received a small package from Amazon. It clearly was from China, and was some make-up remover pads, and some kind of make-up thingy. I thought it was somehow a mistake, my wife had no clue what it was. It was also addressed to me, and we have separate Amazon accounts. I just set it aside.

    About three weeks later I got a bottle of diet / fat burner pills. Again, same circumstances. I kept checking my Amazon history, wondering if maybe my account was hacked... but nothing. I contacted Amazon help, and

  • "The bigger issue is: What do you do about your information having been obtained by crooks?"

    When you say "crooks:", who do you mean ....
    - actual organized crime?
    - disorganized crime?
    - MPA/RIAA and friends? (on their own cuz I'm not really sure which of they above they qualify for)
    - Telecommunications Companies?
    - Spammers?
    - Politicians?
    etc

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