Holiday shoppers targeted as Amazon and FBI warn of surge in account takeover attacks

The report summarizes an FBI PSA and an Amazon alert on a rising wave of account takeover (ATO) fraud tied to brand impersonation, highlighting common techniques like phishing via fake support calls and emails, SEO-poisoned ads, look‑alike domains, and abuse of browser push notifications (Matrix Push C2). Researchers note tens of thousands of new impersonation domains, while metrics show ATO up 21% year over year (H1 2024–H1 2025) and 141% since H1 2021, with the FBI logging 5,100 complaints and $262M in losses. Recommended defenses include bookmarking official login pages, using official apps, being wary of spoofed caller ID, never sharing one-time codes, adopting passkeys where available, and reporting incidents to IC3.