A new favorite tactic of scammers is to try and convince you that one of your accounts has been suspended and that you need to take action to regain access or lift the suspension. The image above is from an email recently received by a BCT staff member that says, in rather poor grammar, their Prime account was not renewed because the provided billing information is no longer valid. It then goes on to say that the Prime membership will be cancelled if payment is not received within "2x24 hour(s)."

This is a classic scam that uses a sense of urgency to try and get the recipient to click on a link for fear of their account being canceled or suspended. Scammers don't want you to stop and think about the legitimacy of a message, they want you to hastily click on a link so that they can download malware onto your device or steal your personal information.

Be on the lookout for scams like these - some of them may even use legitimate-looking logos or email signatures, but there are always telltale signs of a scam. Watch for poor grammar or nonsensical sentences, a sense of urgency to take an action, and validate the actual context of the message. In this case, the recipient knew that their payment method was valid, because they had just made a purchase that went through a few days earlier.