Paypal phishing attempt?

DivingDuck

Unsure if this is the right place to post this, but wasn't quite sure where to put it, so mods please move it with my apologies if I'm in the wrong!

Received an email from Paypal today about legal agreements changing— ignored it at the time, and then later discovered a family member had gotten the same email.

This person doesn't do online banking, and has, to their recollection, never used paypal to send or receive money.

Both emails were correctly addressed to us by name (firstname and surname). Family member's email is first.surnamegoogle, which is where they might have got the name to address the header to, but mine is a fairly random combination of letters, so if it's not legit, they have my name and email on a database somewhere.

The emails are coming from "paypalmail.paypal.com", and the "view online" link leads to "https://epl.paypal-communication.com". My receipts for previous purchases do come from "serviceintl.paypal.com", so I'm not fully convinced it's a scam, but it does seem very unusual. I have not and will not be clicking on any of the links in the email to verify by that road.

Is this possibly legit? If so, how did they get my family member's email? If not, I'm still concerned how it was obtained along with my own. Has anyone else experienced this? Slightly concerned by it all, to be honest.

johnnysmack

I actually got the same email today too. Deleted it. I rarely use PayPal and its been yrs since I've used it so ive no interest it and like you I was suspicious of it.

I occasionally get an itunes email too saying ive purchased something that looks quite convincing but again, its rubbish.

L1011

Its genuine - well, at least, they had genuine idential emails today and they own that domain name. The family member likely bought something online that used paypal as a credit card processor.

ED E

+1 Genuine. Also received.

DivingDuck

L1011 wrote: »

Its genuine - well, at least, they had genuine idential emails today and they own that domain name. The family member likely bought something online that used paypal as a credit card processor.

Thanks for the info.

What do you mean regards using paypal for a credit card processor? I feel as though I should know what that means, and yet somehow I don't.

Sleeper12

It's genuine. I've several email addresses for different businesses. I got the PayPal email only to the two email addresses that are linked to PayPal

lucast2007us

It's Genuine if they use your full name and scroll down it should be linked to Luxembourg

""
How do I know this is not a Spoof email?

Spoof or 'phishing' emails tend to have generic greetings such as "Dear PayPal member". Emails from PayPal will always contain your full name. ""

Copyright © 1999–2016 PayPal. All rights reserved. PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. et Cie, S.C.A., Société en Commandite par Actions. Registered office: 22-24 Boulevard Royal, L-2449, Luxembourg, R.C.S. Luxembourg B 118 349.

DivingDuck

lucast2007us wrote: »

It's Genuine if they use your full name and scroll down it should be linked to Luxembourg

I did see that, but being as they should not, to the best of our knowledge, even have my relative's name, it still gave me pause.

Besides, despite their advice, I wouldn't personally consider an email address like joesmithgoogle to be above spoof attempts targeted by name. Maybe some attackers wouldn't bother going through the address database to see whose name was easily extractable from their email address itself, but surely it would make sense for them to do so if people are being advised to rely on this as a marker of authenticity? I also didn't think it was a good move to click on any links in the email to see where they went to, but if this is genuine I can at least breathe a sigh of relief.

Still concerned as to how they got the other person's email address, though.

L1011

DivingDuck wrote: »

I

Still concerned as to how they got the other person's email address, though.

Two options:
1: They signed up for an account and don't remember it. Do a password reset and log in and check.

2: Another firstname lastname is an idiot and signed up to Paypal using that email thinking it was theirs. I get piles of that, having [only slightly uncommon first name].[extremely common surname]@gmail.com. Surname is in the top 50, top 10 in a few counties that would be more prone to untranslatable Irish language first names. Have been signed up for Playstation, UFC, Ask.fm, Donedeal (repeatedly - I modified one ad a tad...) and so on by idiots with the same name.

Cantona's Collars

Rather than starting a new thread,I was checking my emails and in spam I found one with a title of login from Mac using Mozilla 4.8. I don't have a Mac and haven't used Paypal in absolute ages. There was a link and an attachment in the email which naturally I avoided. Has anyone got similar emails informing them of logins to their account?

nava

zerks wrote: »

Rather than starting a new thread,I was checking my emails and in spam I found one with a title of login from Mac using Mozilla 4.8. I don't have a Mac and haven't used Paypal in absolute ages. There was a link and an attachment in the email which naturally I avoided. Has anyone got similar emails informing them of logins to their account?

Yes seen them before, from Paypal and Amamzon, they are looking for you to login using their link so they can get you email address and password