Attn: PayPal Account Holders

[462]

If you have a PayPal account, please be alert to an e-mail scam saying that there has been a recent unauthorized attempt to access your account. I received one, this morning, and I must say that it appeared very authentic and almost fooled me. The tip-off was the request to open the attachment/link. I’m extremely vigilant, when it comes to Internet scams, and have never opened or clicked on any link or attachment. Unfortunately, some people aren’t as wary and fall victim.

I contacted PayPal and was told that they never add a link nor attachment to any of their e-mailings and that they always use the account holder’s first and last name.

Instructions per PayPal: If you receive what appears to be a phishing or spoof scam, do not open the link, as directed. Instead, forward the e-mail to spoof@paypal.com, delete the e-mail from your mailbox, delete it from your trash bin, and contact PayPal. They will look into it and report back.

[Junior1942]

I got it too. It was really, really authentic looking.

[theperfessor]

Appreciate the warning, I'll look out for it.

I haven't fallen for a phony email -yet- but it's good to know about specific threats.

[Bad Water Bill]

Thanks for the update. Will be on the lookout.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I haven't fallen for a phony email -yet- but it's good to know about specific threats.

+1 ...knock on wood !

[DLCTEX]

My wife received one that said the ability to access emails from PP would not be possible unless info was entered. She went directly to PP and could find no notifications, so she contacted PP, who said it was a scam.
She also got a letter from a Bank in England stating she had won $250,000 and a check for $3,800 would be sent to her to pay the taxes so she could receive her winnings, but she must call for directions before cashing the check. Right! Checked out to be a scam.

[L1A1Rocker]

Thanks for the heads up. I'll pass the info on.

[fatnhappy]

always a good reminder

[waltham41]

Any authentic letter from PayPal will have your full name in it.... if it doesnt, its a scam. Have got plenty of them over the years.

If they send out 10,000 emails and hook one sucker it was worth it to them

[Wayne Smith]

WOW! This is new? I've been ignoring e-mails from PayPal for years. Never had a problem that way, but only have a credit card on my account and don't recieve payments, either.

[semtav]

I got that one too.
I also recieved an email yesterday with my full name on it confirming an order I placed. total was around $450. I about panicked because I never placed an online order anywhere but Midway. This wasn't it.
It said it was a credit card order. Their mistake was to say the items would be shipped as soon as they recieved payment. ( if it was a credit card order, they would already have payment.)

Never clicked on any links to see what my order was.

[dragonrider]

I got something similar that in essence said my recent paypal payment, a donation to cast boolits, had failed and I should contact blah, blah, blah. If fact the payments happened. I am pretty sure that was a scam also.

[fatnhappy]

The best way to avoid scam emails from paypal and ebay is to treat them all as though they were from Gpal.

:kidding:

[Dannix]

Another tip is to not only not open attachments, but instead of clicking on any links, browse to the website yourself. That way you can be sure you're not clicking on a cooked link.

[gunnut14]

Darn Dale only $250,000?
Heck I am up to 3.6 Trillion . Most from the united Nations.
All I have to do is give them a bank account number to send it to.
Also have 3 million coming from a relative that was a great white hunter in Africa, need a name and address to send it to..

I get about 10 e-mails a day and I only used my e-mail address here once.


gunnut14

[Dannix]

gunnut14 , if you posted your email in a thread i.e. something@somewhere.com, that will get picked up by the spammers and scammers. If you did, try hunting down that thread and modifying your post.

Another possibility is that your email was just easy to guess. (They try random email address hoping to find a valid one).

I've switch email providers to a for-pay provider just shy of a year ago, and I have yet to receive a single spam email. I only use it for a few known-good vendors , this forum and one or two other forums, and a few friends who are tech-savy enough to steer clear of any virii. So it's not like the Castboolit database got hacked or something.

[shaune509]

Scammers will try any thing.
This summer my spam file has had nurmerous scams that the reservation desk made mistake, please clic on attachment to verafy -- NOT--.
Second one was a speeding ticket from some small town in New York and the full summine would be in the attachment, first I live in Washington and have never been east of the big river secand I would never give a inforsment officer my email.
Shaune509

[Tom-ADC]

I use the spoof pay pal email any time I get an email that doesn't have my name on it.
Thanks for the heads up on this one.

[Harter66]

Thanks for the spoof link. I get PP notices a couple of times a year, I don't even have an account. There was 1 of those lottery,unclaimed estate,gigs,and me being feisty that day I replied"so take the fees out and an extra$10000 for yourself , and drop a bank check in the mail". Actually it was bad enough for a while I saved a copy of the above and another that would have made a blue blooded skinhead blush and alternated between them for blank replies that I'd send about 15 times. 1 of the lawyer guys sent back"you know it doesn't work like that".

[Dannix]

Thanks for the spoof link. I get PP notices a couple of times a year, I don't even have an account. There was 1 of those lottery,unclaimed estate,gigs,and me being feisty that day I replied"so take the fees out and an extra$10000 for yourself , and drop a bank check in the mail". Actually it was bad enough for a while I saved a copy of the above and another that would have made a blue blooded skinhead blush and alternated between them for blank replies that I'd send about 15 times. 1 of the lawyer guys sent back"you know it doesn't work like that".
FYI you are doing them a flavour. You are confirming the validity of your email address.

Now there was one story I heard about several years ago where a spammer's physical mailing address got published online. I'm sure you can imagine how many cheap magazine subscriptions and the like he got spammed with at his physical mailing address. :mrgreen:

[evan price]

I've been getting "You have joined such & such Yahoo Group" emails with "Please click here to verify and activate your membership". Uh, no thanks.

I moderate a couple forums, the spammers have started logging a new account and then they find some old thread and copy/paste one of the responses. I guess that's to see if they can really post. So I always look out for the activity on necroposts for spammers.