Paypal Account Phishing Scam Takes A New Twist December 3, 2008
Posted by Andrew Wee in : Internet Marketing , trackbackYou’re probably already familiar with the old phishing scams where someone has passed away/fled a third world country/discovered some long-forgotten funds and needs your “help” to wire the money. For just a small “administrative” fee, the person will share the $15 million amount with you.
Though this online fraud has been exposed some time ago, people are still falling for it.
The latest scam has an interesting twist.
Here’s an email I received:
Dear User, We recently noticed that a transaction may have been made without your knowledge or consent. We are currently investigating the following transaction: ----------------------------------- Details of Disputed Transaction ----------------------------------- Seller's name: Hagio-Host Seller's email: yawvaar@gmail.com Seller's transaction ID: 7YW39066PT6017814 Transaction date: Nov 25, 2008 Transaction amount: -$80.94 USD Your transaction ID: 30L88064FF065545B Case number: PP-587-442-704 To see the details of this case, log in to your PayPal account by following the link below and go to the Resolution Center. https://www.paypal[dot]com/login?secure=ssl32?caseid=7YW39066PT6017814?=disputeTRANSACTION The seller has been asked to provide information about this transaction. During this time the funds are not available in your account, but if the unauthorized activity claim is decided in your favor, we will fully refund you for the amount of the transaction. Sincerely, Account Review Department 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 in the top right corner of any PayPal page. BC:PP-587-442-704:R1:USD80.94:11/25/2008:30L88064FF065545B
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This looks pretty legitimate, however, checking on the hyperlinked address to “fix” this problem, it goes to “http://paypal.update-user-info[dot]com/index.htm”
Which is obviously intended to harvest your paypal login and password.
They probably won’t catch too many people with this trick, but still it pays to be careful.
Always check the originating domain and you’re unsure, go to the Paypal website and drop them an email.
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Ya… one should always check the domain name and link address before proceeding. Fail to do that will cause you all your money.
As a habit I will only go to a financial site if I type the domain in directly or if I have previously bookmarked it.
I find it best NOT to navigate through links in emails to financial institutions.
Several major banks no longer place links in their emails for the very reason of scams. Instead some will send two emails. One to you email address advising to go to their site, and a second email delivered to your internal mail account.
Aside from all of that education and awareness are in my opinion the best tactic. — Thanks Andrew
–
Gustafson
http://www.theviewfromhome.com/worldnomadspromocode
Andrew, you freaked me out man! I had an email just like that last week… but it was actually from Paypal.
Thanks for pointing this out.
-Brian
Thanks for the advice, i will tell my friends about this.
i have numbers of scam email in my inbox… but not the paypal one.. sometime i like to play back with them reply their email until they try hard to get money from me…. then i stop… and its fun…
Someone broke into our PayPal account a few weeks ago, and actually changed our password! He then applied for a credit card, added a second credit card to our account, then tried to withdraw money from our checking account. PayPal actually caught him and stopped all the transactions within a few hours before we suffered any losses.
When PayPal initially called us, we didn’t believe it was really them, so we called back to the security number provided on the PayPal site. Just like this phishing scam, we didn’t trust the initial contact and instead took control of the communications. As you recommend, you just can’t be too careful when it comes to PayPal!
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