Beware! PayPal Email Scam doing the rounds.

marcsignal

I just got this email (supposedly) from PayPal asking me to follow the link and update my account. A bit of Googling suggests to me, that it's an identity theft scam.

So I'm just posting the mail as a 'heads up' to anyone else who has a PayPal account and recieves a similar mail.

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Dear valued PayPal member,

Identity protection matters. And PayPal works day and night to help keep your identity safe. That's why it has come to our attention that your PayPal account information needs to be updated as part of our continuing commitment to protect your account and to reduce the instance of fraud on our website. If you could take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and update your personal records you will not run into any future problems with the online service.

However, failure to update your records will result in account suspension.


Once you have updated your account records, your PayPal session will not be interrupted and will continue as normal.

To login to your PayPal account and update your records click on the following link:
http://0x52.0x4c.0x8012/icons/small/secure/pponline/online/

Thank You for using PayPal!

The PayPal Team


Accounts Management will periodically send you information about site changes and enhancements, as outlined in our User Agreement.

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Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you will not receive a response. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and click the Help link located in the top right corner of any PayPal page.

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PayPal Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority in the United States as an electronic money institution.

PayPal Email ID PP358

********************************************************

Mods Move as appropriate etc.

Ruu_Old

These have been around for a while now. The biggest thing is Paypal address you by the account name and not "Dear valued member". I get heaps of these, from Barclays, HSBC, Bank of Scotland, Halifax, to name a few.

rejkin

Clicked on the site and firefox pop up told me it was a suspected forgery and dont put any personalised information on it,def a forgery

Wertz

The links are always a dead giveaway too...random IPs purporting to be SSL links with not even a .com or a paypal to be seen in the URL.
been getting loads of phishing mails from AIB the last while...mail servers won't let me forward it to AIB's fraud dept, because they think it's spam :rolleyes: Why the hell is it okay to send it to me but not to a f*ckin' fraud dept?

marcsignal

The thing that got me suspicious is that it came to an email address that I don't use, and have never used for my PayPal account.

Sneaky Bastds :mad:

Faith

I get loads of them, particularly from British banks I don't have accounts with (HSBC seems to be the most common). I did get a REALLY convincing PayPal one last week though, saying there had been attempts made to get into my account from several different computers, and several wrong passwords had been entered. I nearly fell for it except the link was wrong.

I got one two years ago from WorldPay that I really believed, only I hadn't bought anything with them recently. It's quite scary at times!

eamon234

Bottom line is if it's asking you for details it's fake these have been around for years now - quick way to check is to mouseover any links on the mail the web address will usually show up as nothing to do with the real site or have javascript on it.

Voodu Child

There are thousands of phishing scams 'doing the rounds' at any one time.

If we got an AH thread for each one of them, there'd be no room left for making fun of fatties and Romanians. Disgraceful I tells ya!:mad:
:pac:

just send them to http://www.antiphishing.org/report_phishing.html the quicker they are alerted, the quicker the site can be taken down!

Random

Put in some fake user/pass. Next page just gets better!

Shield

random wrote: »

Put in some fake user/pass. Next page just gets better!

I did just for kicks, and filling in that next page is like giving away your entire identity. You wouldn't believe the amount of people who come into the station to report these kind of sites.

Don't even get me started about this woman

"What do you mean there's nothing you can do...?"

Be wary of filling in any of those forms because in many cases the email has a "signature", each url sent has a unique string after the website name that identifys your email and proves you are "real".

Your email then becomes worth using by the crooks and you may get swamped by spam etc.

If you do want to "piss 'em off" remove the random string of numbers on the url before entering the site. eg www.phishc.nts.com/account/yt87f54yfty54 remove the stuff in italics before entering.

Edit: play safe and never visit any of these sites unless you are using a "dirty PC" one that can be hacked without risk to your data.

AlmightyCushion

Ruu wrote: »

These have been around for a while now. The biggest thing is Paypal address you by the account name and not "Dear valued member". I get heaps of these, from Barclays, HSBC, Bank of Scotland, Halifax, to name a few.

Yip. Easy way to tell if an email is a phising scam. Most companies you have an account with (like paypal or ebay) will address you using details they have for you, usually your username or the name your name. Anything addressing me as valued member or something like that I always treat as suspicious.

MrJoeSoap

Wow thanks, I nearly fell for this again.

Cheers dude.

Dord

I got a VERY convincing one for Google Adwords the other day. I actually use it and I knew my balance was running low. This was one of those emails warning of a low balance with a link to the account to topup. Luckily I checked the link with a mouse-over first. :eek:

Joe Robot

Joe Robot wrote: »

I got a VERY convincing one for Google Adwords the other day. I actually use it and I knew my balance was running low. This was one of those emails warning of a low balance with a link to the account to topup. Luckily I checked the link with a mouse-over first. :eek:

Unfortunately, that's one of the dangers of phising - hoping to catch someone offguard.

I usually get them from "banks" I don't use... :yawn: But I have also received from my "bank" I look then discard (the cleaver fúckers use the same email format as the bank), the rest deleted, without opening.

GhostInTheRuins

There's plenty of these doing the rounds lately. I got lots of those Paypal ones, AIB, bank of america, hsbc etc.

It would be interesting to know just how many people fall for them.

AIB's online banking has loads of warnings about scam emails on their login page now.

Overheal

That looks a good forgery.

Fortunately Norton did the goods and flashed up a phising warning before Firefox even got a chance

Never follow a link from an email for an account you own: always navigate to the host-site yourself.

Overheal

Overheal wrote: »

Never follow a link from an email for an account you own: always navigate to the host-site yourself.

+1 Good advice!