Is This a Scam?

Poststructural Pub
1

In my email today:

"This email is to inform you that we recently received a report of your account and we need you to confirm your information.

Date: January 23d, 2009
Case ID Number: PP-137-579-035

This is a reminder to log in to PayPal as soon as possible.

Be sure to log in securely by opening the following affiliate PayPal website:
http://74-33-187-41.br1.civl.wi.frontiernet.net/ssh/www.paypal.usa.com/webscr/pp/

Once you log in, you will be provided with steps to restore your account access. We appreciate your understanding as we work to ensure account safety.

We thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. Please understand that this is a security measure intended to help protect you and your account. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Regards,
PayPal Security Center"

— Just to clarify that I have never knowingly used a PayPal account; wondering if I’m maybe dealing with identity theft. Advice, please? Thx.

2

Yes, a very popular type of phishing.
They haven’t stolen anything from you
yet, so all you have to do is delete the
email and everything will be fine.

If you did have a paypal account and
you were tricked into going to their link
and entering your password, then the
scammers would be able to use your
paypal to buy stuff. So, that’s the point
of the scam.

3

Thanks loads, fearfaoin. Just got my first Nigerian scam attempt ever today, too. Wonder what took these yayhoos so long.

4

well I tried going to yer URL…
Firefox seems of the opinion that this is a known “web forgery”

Actually I came down their directory structure as their server allowed it… :laughing:

5

The quickest way to spot these is that your PayPal userid is not mentioned. The scammers don’t know it. Many of them don’t even know your name, just your email address. I forward these all to spoof@paypal.com.

I’ve been getting tons of PayPal scams lately. What worries me is that I seem to get a whole pile of these soon after every time I have used PayPal to make a purchase on eBay. So what are their robots looking at to be able to pick this type of activity up?

djm

6

Definitely a phishing scam.
If you ever get something supposedly from a known company regarding your account (eg PayPal, eBay, etc) go directly to that company’s website and do NOT click on the bogus link. Find “my account” or some similar link on the official website, and if they need to tell you anything, it should be there.

7

It’s just so…cute that this is novel to you Nano! Makes me want to get you a cookie or something.

8

forward this post to 10 of your friends and tell them to each send 1 cookie to Nano and to also forward that forward to 10 of their friends who will also forward 1 cookie to Nano and forward that foward to 10 of their friends, continue and continue, your wish will come true, especially if that wish is that Nano will be crushed by cookies. If you break the chain, Nano’s life will be saved.

9

This was EXACTLY what went through my mind, too. I also had the urge to give him a soothing pat on the head. :slight_smile:

10

Very phishy email there, but I’m glad you didn’t take the bait. Even if you didn’t recognize it at first apparently your common sense kicked in and more than made up for it.

You’d be surprised how many just… fall for it.

11

Anything legitimately from PayPal or eBay, will include your username, and will not tell you to go to any link or other contact. If you have any question as to the authenticity of an email from either of those, simply log in to your account as you normally do, and see if you have any messages there. DO NOT CLICK ANY LINK IN A SUSPICIOUS EMAIL!

Anything that sounds alarming, or asks you to click a link, call a number, or otherwise send sensitive info, is almost certainly a phishing scam, and should be forwarded, with all the email routing info, to either Spoof@ebay.com or Spoof@PayPal.com.

You can do this by either forwarding as an attachment, or

Rightclick on the email,
choose ‘properties’,
click “details”,
copy the info in that box (pasting it to a notepad file is handy),
Rightclick again on the email, and choose “Forward”,
paste the copied info at the top of the new email,
put the appropriate “spoof@…” addy in the “TO” box.
Send.

Yay! They are reported, and you can now delete the dirty little wad of crap from your inbox.

12

Gee, thanks. You and the rest of the Internet, looks like.

So, this Spoof@PayPal-dot-Com thingum: I blithely deleted the email already, but I have the text. Here, as it happens. Would this be good enuf, or would it have been better to have the address it was sent from? I’m guessing a resounding “Yes. Duh.”

Hey! I was able to retrieve the address anyway. Don’t bother chalking it up to my Mad Skilz. But, Hmm. Looks like I need to set up a PayPal account just to interact with these guys. I’m not exactly willing, there.

Thanks for the tips, Annie. I just tried that, and wonder if the fact that I deleted it has anything to do with the fact that after “Properties” I can’t get “Details”…

13

I have received ebay scam mails that included my username. That is a bit spooky, but it was over a year ago and nothing bad has happened.

T

14

Keep in mind that those behind the scamming also pretense everyday banks, not just Paypal and Ebay.

Unless it’s mail that you are knowingly expecting, you are better going to you bank accounts on your own instead of using the “convenient” link.

15

'Tis true. I almost never trust “incomings” whether they be by email or phone. Yesterday I got an answ. machine message from the brokerage I use about a “time-sensitive” matter, so I made sure I called them back using the phone number I already had rather than the one they left in the message. It was legit (dang–I bounced my state estimated tax check by a margin of about 1% of its value) but I tend to err on the side of caution.