Watch out, the PayPal scammers are on the loose

[Todd R]

Got an E mail this morning that appeard to come from PayPal.
It said there was unusual activity on my account so it was being closed down until I signed in and completed some forms.

Clicking the link brought me to a site that looked identical to the PayPal site, but the web address looked funny.

Fortunately I remembered that the actual PayPal address always starts with "https", the "S" standing for secure, so I pulled up the usual PayPal web page and sure enough it had the "https" in the address.

I didn't log into the fake site fortunately, otherwise they would have had my password. I went back to the E mail message and viewed the source. Surprise! It said the address had been faked and the address it was sent from was an anoymous address.

So be careful out there!

 

[MichaelFranks]

phishing is all the rage these days, apparently it works on roughly 5% of the people who actually receive the mail. I have been inundated with citibank spoofs, none from paypal yet though.

good heads up Todd!

 

[Mr.PD]

I love those emails.
I click the links in them, and sign in. I type in some great password like "up yours" or "screw **u" and, amazingly it's always the correct password.

Then I send the emails to paypal's or who ever's fraud department.

 

[Todd R]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr.PD I love those emails. I click the links in them, and sign in. I type in some great password like "up yours" or "screw **u" and, amazingly it's always the correct password. Then I send the emails to paypal's or who ever's fraud department.

oohh,
Great Idea, I'll have to try that.
I did turn them in to PayPal. It's spoof@paypal.com if you want to report these.

 

[warubozu]

Here's a link to the Anti Phishing Working Group which has various examples and updates of email scams from Ebay, Paypal, Citibank, etc.:

http://antiphishing.org/

 

[mbriant]

I get at least one of these fraudulent PayPal e-mails at least once per week. There's some floating around trying to get your e-bay info as well.

 

[meat01]

I clicked on one of their links one time, just to see how lame their web page was and it went to a page that loaded a script or something and my anti-virus warning popped right up. I did not think that you could get a virus from clicking on a web site, but somehow that is exactly what happened. Be careful.

 

[Edwood]

NEVER EVER CLICK ON ANY PAYPAL LINKS IN ANY EMAIL, PERIOD!

Even if it looks correct. It is not difficult to disguise a link.

e.g.
http://www.head-fi.org


Scary part is that after making a pretty sizeable transaction through PayPal, I got no less than 5 identical scam PayPal emails saying that there was a problem with my transaction and that my account would be frozen until I clicked on the link and logged in.

So be careful, phishing schemes are getting more and more sophisticated.

-Ed

 

[StevieDvd]

I seem to attract emails for every bank even some I've never heard of. If the link still exists and is reading the input details I also enter passwords like 'hackerloggingin' and names like MichaelMouse as others have. Can't wait to hear about someone caught as they tried real stupid logins without realising.

Oddest one I received the other day was an embedded picture of an email rather than actual text. The sender was either too lazy to type it or had a foreign character keyboard that would have given the game away! But it was such a bad scan it was laughable.

 

[averydonovan]

I get lots of those emails purporting to be from PayPal and also ones that try to claim they are from Ebay and that I need to log into my account immediately because it was shut down. The scammers really need to try harder, though. I can easily see that the links are fake just by hovering over them. Always log in to your PayPal and Ebay accounts only from the respective web sites for those companies, never click on links from emails claiming to be from them.

 

[Zuerst]

Sometimes when I'm really bored I enter a bunch of profanities into those "info sheets" and send it back to them...

 

[MichaelFranks]

it frightens me that the auto-fill "feature" could divulge my personal information accidentally, so I don't even try clicking on any of them...

 

[fiddler]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zuerst Sometimes when I'm really bored I enter a bunch of profanities into those "info sheets" and send it back to them...

Somebody should write up a script that sends them thouands of those a day. They'll have a helluva time sorting out which accounts are real.

 

[recstar24]

ach!!! bose, no!!!

 

[Stephonovich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Edwood NEVER EVER CLICK ON ANY PAYPAL LINKS IN ANY EMAIL, PERIOD! Even if it looks correct. It is not difficult to disguise a link. e.g. http://www.head-fi.org Scary part is that after making a pretty sizeable transaction through PayPal, I got no less than 5 identical scam PayPal emails saying that there was a problem with my transaction and that my account would be frozen until I clicked on the link and logged in. So be careful, phishing schemes are getting more and more sophisticated. -Ed

Indeed. Although I'd hope that wouldn't actually fool anyone. Truely sophisticated phishing scams use an exact mirror of the site in question, along with some nifty exploits that cause the fake URL to be displayed in your browser. Some of them even use SSL. Hey, the scammers don't want anyone else getting their stolen info, right?

The easiest method of ID'ing these scams is SpoofStick, now available for IE and Firefox. Displays a customizeable line in your browser that tells you what site you're currently browsing - not what URL your browser is displaying.