Searching for Amazon Web services? You might be giving your credentials away if you use sponsored ads

As popular as Amazon Web Services is, this is probably no surprise. While I can’t give you the URL to use, you need to be careful as actors are now faking the real Amazon site. Once they get your credentials, they redirect you to the real one. By that time, its game over, says the article.

There are three items on how to avoid these malicious ads.

• Avoid clicking on sponsored links or advertising whenever you search for something through Google. Instead, type all web addresses directly into your browser, so you know you’re going to the official site.
• If you are unsure about a link, hover your cursor over the link to get a preview of the destination.
• Always have a trusted antivirus program updated and running on all your devices. We recommend our sponsor, TotalAV. Get an annual plan with TotalAV for only $19 at ProtectWithKim.com. That’s over 85% off the regular price!

If you’re using a screen reader, hovering over the link won’t do you any good. Even when your browse mode cursor is on the link, you can’t easily get access to that unless you know exactly what to do.

As soon as NVDA is updated with the changes that have been talked about with my suggestion of making it easier, a full page will be developed on what I’ve learned. Here is what I can tell you about item 2 so far.

• With Jaws, while focused on a link, hit ins+f1. That’s context sensitive help. While on a link, this does give the entire web address of where you’re going within the window and tells you that pressing enter will activate the link.
• When using NVDA, you have two options. First, hit context key while on the link and select copy link or something similar. Then hit ins+c and it’ll verbally tell you what the link goes to. You can’t view it at this time, but that functionality is coming in 2023.1. We’re on 2022.4 now.
• No matter NVDA or Jaws, you can copy the link as described above and paste it in to any notepad or word document for review.
• Mac and IOS have a keyboard equivilent similar to Jaws. You hit VO+shft+u and it’ll voice the link. This assumes that you have a Keyboard for IOS. If not, double tap and hold and select copy link and paste it in to a note or google docs.
• I still need instructions for Android, so if anyone uses Android, please get in touch with me. You can email me at tech at menvi.org or pign me on Twitter or Mastodon.

For other Windows screen readers, if there is functionality to do this, please send me an email and let me know. This is important to me as a technologist that we cover as much as we can.

Again, the article is titled This Amazon phishing scheme is stealing passwords and was posted on the 10th. I’m a bit behind, but I’m trying to do my best.

Learn together and use the tools given to you to know how safe you are on the net. Thanks for reading and have a great day!