WARNING: Fake PayPal mail !!

[Jesper]

Some time ago the forums here were "cracked" because of a bug in the forum software, which Pekka solved by installing new software.

A lot of members got spam e-mail, which was supposedly from PayPal. A hacker had gotten access to the e-mail addresses of forum members and tried to gain access to their PayPal accounts by asking them to go to a certain website and verify their account information.

Just a few days ago I got an e-mail which looked like it was from PayPal. Most of the time, with scam e-mails, if you're an experienced Internet user you notice that there's something wrong if you look carefully. But this e-mail REALLY looked like it was from the real PayPal.

The mail even included a link to the PayPal website (or that was how it looked!), but in reality the link pointed to the website of the scammer.

I became suspicious only because I received the e-mail on my second e-mail account, which is not the account that I have registered in my PayPal profile.

So I forwarded the mail to the real PayPal and today I got a confirmation from them that this is indeed a scam and that they're investigating it.

So if you got a mail with the subject "Your account will be suspended", asking you to click the link to verify your account, DO NOT CLICK THE LINK and if you already did, go to the PayPal website (by manually entering http://www.paypal.com in your browser) and log in, and CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD IMMEDIATELY and check your account regularly to see if someone has been trying to buy things on your account!

[psk4363]

Jesper, thanks for the warning.

Barry

[CoolToolGuy]

I got one in the last couple days, too. I deleted it in my preview pane without opening it. I should have forwarded it to PayPal, but I guess I wasn't thinking at the moment.

Send these to spoof@paypal.com and they will investigate.

The rascals are at work - be aware!

Have Fun,

[roanjohn]

NOT AGAIN!!!

Thanks for the heads up!!

Ro1

[kb244]

quite an old one too. One of the nice reasons to log into paypal directly than to use a link, also with all the ones I got in the past its so obvious when the url is a IP address, and the nature of the email as well.

[Ikinaa]

Maybe it's in relation with this here : http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/56110 (german only, babelfish.altavista.com may help here...)
An Article about a new phishing trick.
They use non-ascii caracters in domain-names.
Like the first 'a' in paypal is replaced by a cyrillic 'a', that way you can't see the difference.

Anyway... Never ever click on a link in an email. If you want be sure, type it again in the address-bar of your browser...

[steven]

Best advice is that if you get an e-mail about any account that states you need to contact / update them DON'T use any imbeded web link. Always open a browser and type in the web address yourself.

By now just about all the web acount systems accept this as a problem and will not (and should not) have web links in their e-mail. They should just tell you to contact them.

[Jesper]

quite an old one too. One of the nice reasons to log into paypal directly than to use a link, also with all the ones I got in the past its so obvious when the url is a IP address, and the nature of the email as well.The scary thing about this e-mail was that the link looked like: https://www.paypal.com/... so you couldn't see it was really a link to an URL with just an IP address, going to a fake PayPal website!! :(

They didn't use non-ASCII characters in the link - somehow, the link looked really like it was pointing to the real PayPal site, while it wasn't. I don't know how the scammer did that.

[robertwgross]

You want to know how I knew that it was a fake Paypal message?

Because I don't have any stinking Paypal account at all.

---Bob Gross---

[4walls]

I just got another fake PayPal email asking me to login and verify my account details. Although it
appeared to be from PayPal, the link was a numbered IP address (when I looked at the source code
of the email). All the graphics in the email were linked from PayPal's site. Clever.

My gmail account flagged the message as Spam and put a warning above the message text saying
that it may not be who it appears to be from.

I had already guessed that much because I don't use that gmail account with PayPal.

[Candid Bandit]

Yeah.. Paypal always uses your name. Not just dear customers. They always always use your name!! If you typed your user name and password then you better go and change it before your accound gets robbed!!!