Paypal users Beware!!!

[Tytus Gerrish]

today i giot a very convincing fake email .aparently from paypall. the adress was service@onlinepaypal.com not service@paypall.com like it should have been. i almost feel for it except it asked me for my credit card info and my social security number. DO NOT FALL FOR THIS!!!. it is identify theft. make shure you never give out info when you arent on a secure page.

[thegathering]

I got that email back in late july. I found that I was a scam when I tried to enter a false account name and password and it accepted as if the account name/password were actual logins.

Always keep an eye on where the link the email provides directs you.

[Elgin Clock]

I get these all the time from Ebay and Paypal phishers.

Forward Ebay spoofs to Spoof @ ebay.com

Forward Paypal spoofs to Spoof @ paypal.com

Anytime you get an e-mail asking you to verify personal information, it's 99% of the time a scam.

[Jay H 237]

Scammers are trying many different things.

Another email to keep a look out for is a fake "Receipt for Your Payment to ......."

I got one back during the summer. I clicked it and it looked just like any other of the emails I get after I've paid through Paypal. The problem was it was thanking me for sending something like $465 for buying a Nokia cell phone. It included an ebay auction link to an actual auction for a Nokia cell phone with a "buy it now" option of $465! There was another link on the page to dispute this charge. After clicking this link it wanted my social security # plus all my account info. At this point I knew something was wrong.

I contacted Paypal by phone and was told no charge was actually charged to my account.* They also told me to send the email, and the auction link to spoof@paypal.com. They sent me an acknowledgement email and said they would look into it. I have heard nothing else since then but I've been getting 3-4 emails a day supposedly from Paypal wanting me to update my records. I was sending them to the spoof email address for them but I got tired of it (didn't seem to be stopping them) and just delete them now. Looks like I somehow got on one of the spammers email lists.


* I also contacted Discover, the credit card I have my Paypal account tied to, and there were no charges placed on it.

I've got just over 200 transactions on ebay with Paypal plus other uses (like here on CD ) and haven't had any actual problems with Paypal yet. You just have to look out for those fake emails.

[Andrew Blair]

Originally Posted by Jay H 237

Scammers are trying many different things.

Another email to keep a look out for is a fake "Receipt for Your Payment to ......."

I got one back during the summer. I clicked it and it looked just like any other of the emails I get after I've paid through Paypal. The problem was it was thanking me for sending something like $465 for buying a Nokia cell phone. It included an ebay auction link to an actual auction for a Nokia cell phone with a "buy it now" option of $465! There was another link on the page to dispute this charge. After clicking this link it wanted my social security # plus all my account info. At this point I knew something was wrong.

Yeah, we got the same one about a month ago. It really looks authentic, but when we got to where it asked for lots of info, we stopped and called Paypal. One thing to look for on all these things is that Paypal will head all e-mails with your full name. The spoofs don't do so.

[Matt_Kaplan1902]

I worked at an eBay Drop-off store for about a year, and we received at least 20 emails a day from PayPal, so it could be very easy to fall for a scam. On a lot of the emails that ask for an update of your records you can simply hover over the link and it will show you that the link will take you to non-eBay/PayPal page. Just remember to check for anything out of the ordinary and if you have any suspicions at all you can simply contact PayPal.

[Mike Schroeder]

i realized they were fake, cause i got them and i dont have a paypal account

[chris31]

I get atleast 5 Paypal scams a week. After awhile its real easy to spot them.

[Phalanx]

One thing I have noticed that these spammers/phisers don't do is spoof the origination IP address in the headers of the email.

What I do when in doubt is find the origin IP address in the e-mail header, then do a IP whois lookup for it.

The IP lookup should show the same name as the service, if it doesn't then it is highly probably to be a spam/scam/phising e-mail.

This is something I learned to do many years ago for my profession, before all these anti-spam tools were invented to be relatively sure the e-mail was valid.

[KenWittlief]

Ive been told if you open these spam emails the sender is able to tell the email has been received and opened, so they know you nibbled

best to just delete them without opening it, otherwise you will start getting them just about every day

if ebay needs to contact you they will do so through the messages on the ebay website. You can check the status of your paypal account on their website. They have no reason to be sending you emails. If you have not purchased anything recently and you get a 'payment sent' email from paypal, just delete it. If you want to be sure, check your paypal account directly.

[Phalanx]

True they can find out if you open it by various methods, some of which can be defeated.

The most common method is read notifications provided by MS-Outlook, which is why I will never use Outlook or Outlook Express for mail. So make sure your email program as the ability to deny receipts for mail both received and read.

They can also tell by using java script within the e-mail, hence I disable java-script support in emails.

They also love to use click this link "to check on", or "to unsubscribe", so don't do that either. Don't click on links even to unsubscribe.

I've been very successful in getting very very few spam/phising emails for many many years following these concepts.

One final point is to never publicly post your email address in any web page anywhere. That prevents spammers from collecting email addresses from popular web sites.