OT - PayPal E-mail Scam **Be Warned**

[Jenn D]

Hey all, I received an e-mail today from an e-mail "[email protected]". It looked official, but it was odd because there was a ? placed with it by my mail service to show that it didn't recognize it (and I've used paypal many times....odd). I opened it and it still said From: PayPal (but the odd thing was that it had an AOL symbol in front of the name (again not usual....raising my suspicion even more). As I read the e-mail, it stated that it was a courtesy e-mail to inform me that an e-mail had been added to my account and I should click the provided link to fix it if I didn't authorize it (the link was a www.paypal.com/.......yada yada yada address - see below). I felt too odd about this and checked my paypal, changed my password just incase and contacted paypal (through the site). They just got back to me and confirmed that the whole thing, while it looks extremely official, is a complete hoax and could be very dangers (obviously).



Please be on the lookout for an e-mail similar to this.....



You have added [email protected] as a new email address for your

PayPal account.



If you did not authorize this change or if you need assistance with

your account, please contact PayPal customer service at:



https://www.paypal.com/row/wf/f=ap_email





Thank you for using PayPal!

The PayPal Team





Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot be

answered. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and choose the

"Help" link in the header of any page.



----------------------------------------------------------------

PROTECT YOUR PASSWORD



NEVER give your password to anyone and ONLY log in at

https://www. paypal.com/ Protect yourself against fraudulent websites

by opening a new web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer or Netscape) and typing

in the PayPal URL every time you log in to your account.



----------------------------------------------------------------





PayPal Email ID PP109

 

[Deleted deleted]

yeah, I get those from time to time.... especially interesting to me since I don't even have a paypal account!

 

[WXMotorSports DecalsPartsAccs]

If the email is NOT addressed to your Paypal ID it's ALWAYS fake. Send it to [email protected]



Thanks,

SST

 

[biznaga]

Got one too. But since I don't have apay-pal account and it was addressed to an email address that pay-pay won't let you use I knew it was fake.



I sent to to the real PayPal.

 

[Dave Scharff]

I actually got one also...I was duped into clicking on the link to go to the site, because I did not authorize the addition of the yahoo email address to my account (as the email indicated had been done). I used my paypal login and password, and the first thing that poped up was info., asking to confirm my credit card info....It then dawned on me that the email was what is called a "fishing" email. Where people "fish" for your personal info., and credit card info, etc. So I immediately called paypal and had the account closed (Had to call because my password would not work anymore...about 5 mins after I logged into the bogus site!), and contacted my credit card to advise them to be on the look out for fraudulent activity. Paypal advised that they had not seen and charges through them on the account prior to closing, and the credit card company said that they had not seen any activity either! Luckily the card that was on file with Paypal was expired (I haven't used paypal in over a year), so I think that I am safe. None the less it was a scary situation...I should have known better...I work in the systems group of my company! Just goes to show you that everyone can be vulnerable to these attacks! :wacko:



SKI

 

[Richard L]

SeattleSportTrac is absolutely correct.



PayPal will always address you by your PayPal ID (User Name) and not something generic like "PayPal Member", etc. It's called "Phishing" (like Fishing) The sender does not know your PayPal ID, so they cannot personalize the greeting, but PayPal knows your ID and will address any emails with your.



They hope you will think the message is real and will use the phoney Customer Service link to a login screen where you will be asked to enter your PayPal ID and Password. If you do that you will have given them access to your PayPal account, bank account and credit card accounts to drain the money out, or purchase items using your PayPal ID.



Never use the links to supplied in these emails to enter your ID and Passwords. Always open a new browser window to get the the PayPal site.



...Rich

 

[M B]

That's OK. I keep getting emails from PayPal and "statements" every once in awhile to my Yahoo! account. I've never opened an account with them with that address. I do have a PayPal account, but I have a different address for it. I've tried to log in and it denies me. I've gone so far as them saying I have to prove more information. So, I'm thinking someone opened an account using my email address. I've also tried to contact them about it, but PayPal doens't respond to my emails. So I delete them everytime I get an email from them.

 

[David Johnson 2]

The easiest way to tell if its a phishing scam is to look at the web address that appears in your browser for the link. An even easier way to tell is that ALL of the emails from PayPal asking to verify something with your account are scams. 99.9% of all emails that are from "PayPal" are scams, so always be careful.

 

[Dindo Perlas]

Not really djohnaisse.



These guys have become more creative. They can actually make it appear that the web address in the browser is "http://www.paypal.com". What they do is to display the web page asking for your account details as usual and draw a textbox with the "http://www.paypal.com" address over the browser's address bar. It's really hard to notice! I just noticed it when I dragged another window over the address bar and to my surprise the textbox with the "http://www.paypal.com" address was drawn over the other window!!! Then when I enabled my Yahoo! toolbar, it was drawn on the Yahoo! toolbar and not on the address bar.



I received the email last August 1. I was supposed to give you the address of that phishing site. But, just now I confirmed that it's down.



Spread the word and be very careful.