Sample Paypal Email Scams
By admin • Aug 22nd, 2007 • Category: Email Scams, Identity Theft, Internet Scams, LifeLock, PhishingI was prompted to write this article to warn people of these types of emails. I have been doing business online for years and yesterday I received another one of these emails and was scared when I first saw it. Here’s the email and Boy do they make it look so real.
Dear PayPal Member,
This email confirms that you have sent an eBay payment to
CoolSmooVe02752@hotmail.com for an eBay item.
———————————–
Payment Details
———————————–
Amount: $1604.63 USD
Transaction ID: 88o3361272967
Subject: DELL XPS 410 Gaming System
Note:
If you haven’t authorized the charge , Please refer to Section 1A.
—————————————
Thank You For Shopping With Paypal
—————————————
Section 1A
—————
Customer Service and Security are our top priority.Use the link below to dispute the transaction and begin the process of a full refund.
For Your Security A Link For Your Dispute Transaction Will Be Randomly Generated.
———————————–
SSL Encrypted Link: tacho.lu/index.php
———————————–
***If Link Does Not Show Copy Inside Browser***
———————————–
***About SSL Connections***
PayPal automatically encrypts your confidential information
in transit from your computer to ours using the Secure
Sockets Layer protocol (SSL) with an encryption key length
of 128-bits (the highest level commercially available)
—————————————————————-
Edward Harrell’s UNCONFIRMED Address
—————————————————————-
Edward Harrell
211 David St.
Springtown, TX 76082
United States
Important Note: Edward Harrell has provided an Unconfirmed Address. If
you are planning on shipping items to Edward Harrell, please check the
Transaction Details page of this payment to find out whether you will
be covered by the PayPal Seller Protection Policy.
—————————————————————-
This payment was sent using your bank account.
By using your bank account to send money, you just:
- Paid easily and securely
- Sent money faster than writing and mailing paper checks
- Paid instantly — your purchase won’t show up on bills at the end of
the month.
Thanks for using your bank account!
—————————————————————-
Thank you for using PayPal!
The PayPal Team
PayPal Email ID PP504
Phishing, pronounced ‘fishing,’ is growing in popularity across the web. It’s when unscrupulous individuals, companies or other entities try to take advantage of people by posing as legitimate financial and other real entities in order to get personal, financial and other security information from you.
Why? To steal your funds, your identity or any combination of things from you for their benefit.
And a main avenue of choice is to pose as Paypal, one of the largest, if not the largest, online financial institution today. Paypal serves not only individuals but huge third party services and companies like eBay, the world’s largest online auction, and all types of shopping carts online. Thus anyone who’s purchased online or who will purchase online at some point will more than likely establish and use a Paypal account regularly.
Popular Paypal email scams seem to grow almost daily. Beware of these – and others – that arrive in your in-box asking you to click a link and log in for any number of reasons like:
1) An official-looking Paypal email tells you that there has been a security breach. Your account, of course, has been suspended, it continues, inviting you to log in through the email to clear up the issues. But don’t!
2) Other emails come in regular saying they’re from Paypal and thank you for adding another person’s email to your account. Of course in reality you didn’t and don’t even know who has the email they sent in their letter. Don’t log in to check through this email, though.
3) More fake emails alert you saying that someone has just sent you a payment form Paypal and to please log in to receive your funds. Don’t log in through these emails! If you truly received a payment, it will be there when you log in directly at the site.
What To Do with Paypal Scam Emails
Never click these on. Always, always, always go directly to the Paypal site via your own browser and make sure you log in directly. You’ll have a secure connection starting with “https” instead of the regular “http.”
If you have received phishing or other false Paypal emails, here’s what Paypal advises:
a) Forward the email to spoof@paypal.comb) Then delete the email.
For more help, click on the Security Center link in the top right corner of Paypal. You don’t even need to log in, just regularly check their information for tips on identity theft protection. Be Safe.
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I also receive similar types of mails previously. In starting I think that someone is using my paypal for this transaction, later on when I confirm with paypal.
I found that it’s a fake email.
For safety purposes, next time you received any suspicious email from Paypal, instead of opening up the email, you should go to Paypal.com and log in to your account to verify. Never,never open any of these types of emails from paypal.
Thanks a lot for the information. I must be lucky that I have not been scammed yet
hey guys, I dont know if I fell for that e-mail or not. I opened it like a fool to check it out because I know I never ordered that. The link didnt show in the e-mail I recieved so again, like a fool I typed it in to the web address bar.. It said that the server was not found, did I give him my account information in doing so?
Is this PayPal logon page a fake ????
http://login3.paypalglobaldatabase.com/cgi-bin/webscr.php?cmd=_login-run
The link was sent in e-mail
This page:
http://paypalglobaldatabase.com/
Shows:
paypalglobaldatabase.com
This page is parked free, courtesy of GoDaddy.com
I like to think that now more people are aware of these types of scams making it bad for some people on the internet. We must all do our share to help clean up the mess that is out there to make it better for all.
Just came upon you article about Paypal Phishing emails. They quite rife at present, I spoke to paypal about these some time ago, and was advised not to open them because sometimes, the have a background program written into them (similar to a trojan horse virus) except this one records keystrokes from your computer. That’s quite scary.
Identity theft is a booming busines these days, leaving many people with thousands of dollars worth of debt.
best advice. notify the Real Paypal asap and most email servers these days have a link where you can just click on it to report phishing and it automatically forwards the email to your Intenternet service provider.
I enjoyed the article. hopefully the word about these scams will travel around the blogs and social networks, and help more people to become aware of them.
I recently published and article to my own blog http://www.im-post.com regarding identity theft through social networking.
regards
James.
I have also received similar types of e-mails. I visited my PayPal account before clicking any links in the fake e-mails (thank god). I did not witness the account activity in my PayPal account as stated in the fake e-mails.
You are so correct with the e-mails looking real. I’m sure that most people who do get these e-mails open them and click on the links in them as they are worried that someone has been using their account.
I have also received fake e-mails from Ebay, asking to update my account information. After writing Ebay, they stated they would never send an e-mail with a link to change your account information.
Thanks for posting this information. Hopefully many will have seen this post before they get an unlucky e-mail sent to them. Keep up the great work!
Just grabbed the feed… thanks for posting this.
It’s not just Paypal emails which should concern everyone, it’s the ones which come through from your bank (apparently) telling you that there is a security issue, updating your details please login, an attempt has been made to access your details please login. These are the ones which really get to me, never open an email from anywhere that deals with your financial information, always type in the URL manually. This way, you are not helping identity thieves. Best Identity Theft Protection