PayPal Fraud Email

Mimikyu

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Canis Lupus

Only idiots fall for those emails.

Tar.Aldarion

Eh don't fall for that, good lad.

Celticfire

Throw out a net big enough and your'e sure to catch some fish.......

Stompbox

Its obvious its fake. It says "Dear Paypal"

HelterSkelter

Canis Lupus wrote:

Only idiots fall for those emails.

Only idiots make comments like that. It does sound convincing and I can understand how an inexperieced computer user could fall for it.

AngryBadger

Solitaryman666 wrote:

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Bad english makes Batman's danger sense tingle

Canis Lupus

HelterSkelter wrote:

Only idiots make comments like that. It does sound convincing and I can understand how an inexperieced computer user could fall for it.

Being an inexperienced computer user is no excuse for the lack of common sense shown by people who fall for these scams, it's akin to someone walking up to you on the street and telling you they work for a bank and need your credit card pin number for security reasons. I work in a company that deals with similiar type things on a daily basis and as such I can verify from personal experience that people who fall for these things are idiots and I can guarantee when they do fall for these scams it's usually anyones fault but their own.

rubadub

Gmail is great at filtering out this crap. I got a surprisingly good scam email, discussed here
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054875670

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

These emails are predicated on only getting about 1 in 100,000 successful respondants. I know someone who lost a fortune on that Nigerian email scam. There are people out there...

HelterSkelter

Canis Lupus wrote:

Being an inexperienced computer user is no excuse for the lack of common sense shown by people who fall for these scams.

An inexperienced computer user could easily be fooled by one of these. I'm thinking specifically of people in my parents' age category who just don't understand computers, they would easily fall for stuff like this. They grew up in a totally different age and don't get computers at all. One of my mam's friends bought a PC and she hasn't a clue. I reckon she could fall for something like this.

Do you know much about cars? If not I'm sure someone who is a qualified mechanic could easily pull the wool over your eyes and rip you off when it comes to fixing your car. It's the same thing.

Canis Lupus wrote:

it's akin to someone walking up to you on the street and telling you they work for a bank and need your credit card pin number for security reasons.

It's not. An equivalent senario is this. Imagine if you knew absolutely nothing about banks, never seen one, never been in one before. You find out about them one day and decide to open an account. A few days later some guy arrives at your door in an AIB van with AIB photo ID and spins some story to get you to reveal your account number. Now you know nothing about banks but he seems legit, is driving an AIB van, has photo id so you give him your details.

homah_7ft

Canis Lupus wrote:

Being an inexperienced computer user is no excuse for the lack of common sense shown by people who fall for these scams, it's akin to someone walking up to you on the street and telling you they work for a bank and need your credit card pin number for security reasons. I work in a company that deals with similiar type things on a daily basis and as such I can verify from personal experience that people who fall for these things are idiots and I can guarantee when they do fall for these scams it's usually anyones fault but their own.

Wallet inspector.

Eoin

Some of the emails are very good imitations, and have a bit more thought behind them than the usual Nigerian 419 ones.

I can't believe that PayPal don't have this link displayed more prominently on their homepage, but here's their page regarding spoof emails:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/general/SecuritySpoof-outside

Basically, forward it on to spoof@paypal.com and they investigate it.

boardy

Solitaryman666 wrote:

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Thanks for the warning Sol. I did a brief comparison of the 2 sites and they look identical.

The idiots comment by lupus is not very helpful. I'm sure that a lot of the 419 victims were educated and intelligent people, who may have been somewhat naive.

GLaDOS

Most convincing scam I've seen

Mimikyu

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jimmycrackcorm

I had to examine the page source to see what the actual link was.

Anyway I never click on such links - even got a similar mbna email that looked suspicios execpt it actually had my correct details - still and all I use a seperate browser.

boardy

I did some work on the 419 Nigerian email scam, and I can tell you that it has progressed from an obvious scam (with incorrect spelling, bad grammar, Nigerian address) to a more sophisticated, professional-looking fraud.

It is only a matter a time before they perfect it.
So, be careful of the links you click.

Canis Lupus

boardy wrote:

Thanks for the warning Sol. I did a brief comparison of the 2 sites and they look identical.

The idiots comment by lupus is not very helpful. I'm sure that a lot of the 419 victims were educated and intelligent people, who may have been somewhat naive.

Wait till you do my job, my compassion for the people who get scammed by these and similar things dissappeared after a few days. Personally I think I'm in the wrong profession cos the scammers are making way more than I am that's for sure and I stand by my comments, people who fall for these scams are fools cos god knows they are parted with their money easily enough.

boardy

Canis Lupus wrote:

Wait till you do my job, my compassion for the people who get scammed by these and similar things dissappeared after a few days. Personally I think I'm in the wrong profession cos the scammers are making way more than I am that's for sure and I stand by my comments, people who fall for these scams are fools cos god knows they are parted with their money easily enough.

Since you work for a company that deals with "similar type things on a daily basis", why don't you offer advice and guidance instead of calling people idiots and fools.

Canis Lupus

boardy wrote:

why don't you offer advice and guidance instead of calling people idiots and fools.

Don't click the link.

Happy now?

boardy

Canis Lupus wrote:

Don't click the link.

Happy now?

Now that's good advice.

HelterSkelter

Canis Lupus wrote:

Wait till you do my job, my compassion for the people who get scammed by these and similar things dissappeared after a few days. Personally I think I'm in the wrong profession cos the scammers are making way more than I am that's for sure and I stand by my comments, people who fall for these scams are fools cos god knows they are parted with their money easily enough.

I hate the condescending attitude of computer 'experts' and nerds towards ordinary people who don't spend every minute of their day playing with their computer.

Canis Lupus

lol, now I didn't call you a nerd did I? There is no need for that unless maybe you have previously fallen for one of these scams and resent my previous comments.

Anyway I'll state again that being a nerd or a computer 'expert' as you so eloquently put it has nothing to do with it. I'm fairly confident my mother who has never used a computer in her life wouldn't fall for something like that. It's called common sense, some people have it, others don't.

HelterSkelter

Canis Lupus wrote:

lol, now I didn't call you a nerd did I? There is no need for that unless maybe you have previously fallen for one of these scams and resent my previous comments.

Anyway I'll state again that being a nerd or a computer 'expert' as you so eloquently put it has nothing to do with it. I'm fairly confident my mother who has never used a computer in her life wouldn't fall for something like that. It's called common sense, some people have it, others don't.

I never fell for one of these scams and never would as I have a lot of experience with computers. I don't however look down on people with less experience of computers who would be susceptible to these scams.

okidoki987

I think there's a bit of a difference here.
Firstly the Nigerians scams are mostly on the lines of
"if you send me money and or your Bank/Credit card details,
I will guarantee you that you will receive xx million"
Now for this type you don't need to be a genius to figure out that's a scam and greed is the reason that people have fallen for it.

The 2nd one is the OP's e-mail which is a very different story.
You receive an e-mail from a company that you may deal with (Paypal),
that looks spot on and when you click on the link, it still looks spot on.
This one is the much harder one to figure it's a scam.

First one is the stupidity/greed factor, the second one is most certainly not.

ambro25

For all things Paypal (and eBay, let's not forget those - got an eBay scam email a short while back that was very, very convincing - and I've been using both(eBay and Paypal) since the day they exist), a simple and foolproof rule of thumb is:

(i) never, ever click an emailed link, no matter what

(ii) always use your browser and the site's bona fide page to log in and check whatever needs to be checked

my €0.02

Philbert

Solitaryman666 wrote:

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jimmycrackcorm wrote:

I had to examine the page source to see what the actual link was..

Am I missing something? Does the link in the email not link to the genuine paypal site? Looks to me like it does?

seamus

Philbert wrote:

Am I missing something? Does the link in the email not link to the genuine paypal site? Looks to me like it does?

That's only text copied in. The link was created by vBulletin.

Philbert

seamus wrote:

That's only text copied in. The link was created by vBulletin.

Duuhh! :rolleyes:

Thanks..

jimmycrackcorm

People should be aware that when they are about to click on a link to quickly check the actual address in the status bar.

In fairness there are plenty of people using computers who are not experts and could easily be fooled but don't have the time to study up on everything from firewalls, anti-virus, OS updates, phishing etc. Ordinary people who have much better things to do in real life than watch a computer screen for five hours in the evening.

seamus

jimmycrackcorm wrote:

People should be aware that when they are about to click on a link to quickly check the actual address in the status bar.

A proof-of-concept exploit was released early last year that proved that checking the address in the address bar is no longer sufficient. Using certain character sets, you can register a domain name that the browser displays identically to the original. E.g. you register paypal.com where the first a is taken from a different characterset. So everything about the url is different except that the browser displays it as "paypal.com", and the user knows no better.

Here: http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2005Feb/gee20050208029041.htm
Firefox 1.5 has actually fixed this exploit. IE6.0.2 hasn't.

Surprisingly, that fraud email itself gives the best advice. Always type in the url.

copacetic

as above I have been inundated in the last while with really good fake paypal mails, a lot of them looking identical to normal paypal mails but without being addressed directly to me and with dodgy links hidden behind valid looking text.

I've noticed they have been more subtle, not saying log in now you are at risk, but more just random update type mails hoping that you might click through to check your a/c etc.

Anyhow basically I can see how people can fall for them as they aren't claiming to be 'get rich quick' schemes and they take the logos etc directly off the paypal mails, and the links look like proper links until you roll over them..

copacetic

seamus wrote:

A proof-of-concept exploit was released early last year that proved that checking the address in the address bar is no longer sufficient. Using certain character sets, you can register a domain name that the browser displays identically to the original. E.g. you register paypal.com where the first a is taken from a different characterset. So everything about the url is different except that the browser displays it as "paypal.com", and the user knows no better.

Here: http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2005Feb/gee20050208029041.htm
Firefox 1.5 has actually fixed this exploit. IE6.0.2 hasn't.

Surprisingly, that fraud email itself gives the best advice. Always type in the url.

that last bit was by favourite! the cheeky feckers, telling you to always type it in to make it look like a valid mail so u won't bother!

copacetic

Canis Lupus wrote:

Being an inexperienced computer user is no excuse for the lack of common sense shown by people who fall for these scams, it's akin to someone walking up to you on the street and telling you they work for a bank and need your credit card pin number for security reasons. I work in a company that deals with similiar type things on a daily basis and as such I can verify from personal experience that people who fall for these things are idiots and I can guarantee when they do fall for these scams it's usually anyones fault but their own.

i would say it is more like someone getting their card skimmed at an atm because they didn't notice the machine had been altered slightly. It's nothing like your example, as you well know, no-one would fall for yours but plenty of people fall for the emails and card skimming..

MorningStar

HelterSkelter wrote:

I never fell for one of these scams and never would as I have a lot of experience with computers. I don't however look down on people with less experience of computers who would be susceptible to these scams.

I don't know about that there are a lot of idiots about who don't think they should pay for their own waste and that is common sense. I do look down at people who don't think about the world they live in.

HelterSkelter

MorningStar wrote:

I don't know about that there are a lot of idiots about who don't think they should pay for their own waste and that is common sense. I do look down at people who don't think about the world they live in.

Huh? What have waste charges got to do with this? Could it be you are refering to my posts below in other topics regarding waste charges? Why do you feel the need to bring it into this debate?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=50423039&postcount=45

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=50732608&postcount=1

copacetic

HelterSkelter wrote:

Huh? What have waste charges got to do with this? Could it be you are refering to my posts below in other topics regarding waste charges? Why do you feel the need to bring it into this debate?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=50423039&postcount=45

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=50732608&postcount=1

cheers! I was wondering what that random post was about..

MorningStar

HelterSkelter wrote:

Huh? What have waste charges got to do with this? Could it be you are refering to my posts below in other topics regarding waste charges? Why do you feel the need to bring it into this debate?

I think it points out that you would think it suitable to give out about a "stupid" policy where common sense would say you pay your own way seems reasonable. Yet when somebody thinks somebody doing something stupid is stupid you would defend them. KNow the world around you and se how it works. Protect the innocent but adults should have enough sense

HelterSkelter

MorningStar wrote:

I think it points out that you would think it suitable to give out about a "stupid" policy where common sense would say you pay your own way seems reasonable. Yet when somebody thinks somebody doing something stupid is stupid you would defend them. KNow the world around you and se how it works. Protect the innocent but adults should have enough sense

I don't believe I used the word "stupid" when refering to the waste charges policy. In any case there is no link between my opinion on waste charges and my opinions in this thread. If you feel the need to discuss waste charges with me then post in the relevant thread. If you want to make a point about the scam emails then make it here.

MorningStar

I would prefer not to get spam and fraud e-mails.
I have only known idiots to fall for them. I have yet to see anything that would ever convince me that one looked legit.

People should think about the world they live in and how it works and that applies to everything.