Gwent Police’s cyber crime team are warning people about a scam involving an automated telephone call claiming to be from Amazon Prime.

They say these calls are a scam and by January this year, this scam has seen criminals steal more than £1m from victims.

The call states that you have been charged for an Amazon Prime subscription and to ‘press 1 to speak to an operator’ to cancel.

However, pressing ‘1’ can connect your call to a criminal posing as an Amazon Prime member of staff.

There are variations of the scam, including being ‘owed a refund’ for a ‘fraud committed on your Amazon account’ - all of which aim to gain your information.

Typically the criminal will ask for your bank details, but in some cases they ask for direct access to your online device, giving various reasons why they need to do this.

To enable this access, they will ask you to install software onto your device. They may then ask you to login to your online banking.

The team are asking resident to follow simple rules if you receive an unexpected message by telephone, email or text:

*Verify the message using your own trusted method.

*Do not press ‘1 to speak to an operator’, or use contact information within the message.

*Go via your own trusted route to check with the company.

*Do not give out your personal or financial information.

*Do not click onto web links or attachments in the message. Protect your device and your data.

#CyberCSO #CyberProtect