The Blog of Hans Eisenman

PayPal Scam Strikes Again

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Here's another paypal scam attempting to catch you unawares. 

Couple of dead-giveaways for you in case you are wondering how to spot these well-worded little ploys.

1. The first thing you should know about Paypal: they will always address you by name.  So if you don't see something like "Dear Hans Eisenman," in the beginning of the message, you know right away the email is false and just an attempt at stealing your identity (and thus your money).
2. If you place your mouse over the link (in the message below its the "https://www.paypal.com...", without clicking on it sometimes it will show you the ACTUAL link. So in the case of this one, if you mouse over it, you should see this link: http://86.80-203-198.nextgentel.com/attachments/.www.paypal.com/webcr.php?cmd=LogIn Note that the part after "http://" is NOT a paypal address.   It says "www.paypal.com" in it if you read down a bit, but the point is, the supposed email address (the one they are showing you in the email) is not the same as the one when you mouse over the link.  So that's another oddity.  Disclaimer: You might not want to use this point as your sole determination that an email is a safe or not, because these criminals can get pretty tricky about how they make an email look safe when they are really traps.

What you can always do, even if you're not sure of what to do
In every case, the safest thing to do, if you have any question at all about an email is to disregard the email sent to you and then log in to the website in question directly.  So in this case, you would open Internet Explorer and manually type in www.paypal.com and log in.  If the email you received was valid and important, Paypal would show reach out to you as you are logging in and say what they want to say. 

Clicking on the link below could greatly effect the security of your PC so don't take these warnings lightly. 

You probably already know all this, but because these phishing attempts keep getting more and more polished, and this one I receive below was a new angle (a message about "your security" not less), I thought I'd take a moment to reiterate ways to see through their criminal schemes.

Another Identity Theft Attempt

Here is another hoax.  Don't click on any links in this if you get it in your inbox.

The first thing that makes this obvious is that eBay/PayPal always, as a matter of policy, will put your actual name in the greeting instead of things like "Dear Member,". 

Give Me That Dough! ... D'OH!

You have to admit, criminals can indeed be creative--at least when inventing ways to relieve you of your money.

Here the age-old ploy of dangling free money in front of you is employed.  Unfortunately, this is not immediately suspect in the eyes of the average Lotto player.   No, it fits right in with the "give me something for nothing" American mindset.

Be warned, though, any time someone is giving you something for "free" or because you supposedly won it but don't remember playing the game in the first place, all four alarms should immediately start ringing in your head and probably is for those of us who have long since recognized TINSTAAFL.

Click onward to see the latest and, I must say, convincing fraud attempt from "PayPal".

eBay Scams Getting Trickier

Mark my word, this won't be the last permutation in a long string of attempts to get you to release your personal info willingly so some crims can rip you off.

New Angle On Same Fraud

Got a new PayPal identity fraud attempt in my inbox today.  A whole new angle this time.

The common thread here and with all these Paypal hoaxes is they will lie any way they can if it gets you to click on the link to "update your info" or in this case "contact customer service".    The lie is that an email address has been added to your Paypal account.  That has not happened.  And even if you want to be sure, you can check it yourself by manually typing in www.paypal.com into your browser's address and sign on to Paypal.  Then you can check your profile and see which email addresses are associated with your account.

These criminals are getting craftier.  They are not stupid.  That means you have to be more and more alert.  Alert is a far better word than "careful" because it means you're on the offensive (even if just slightly) and maintaining a viewpoint that is causative, rather than the opposite.  Being careful is just a step or two above being scared, and that just gives the criminals more room to do what they do. 

Criminals with followup!

Don't be fooled just because these crims can follow-up on their earlier "warning".  This is as much a fraud as the other attempts at stealing your identity.

More PayPal Phishing

Paypal identity theft attempt #4 (or 5, I'm losing track).

Note the bad spelling in the text of the message.

Also, I'd like to correct something I said in an earlier post:
Just mousing over the link will not necessarily always show you that the link is pointing somewhere other than PayPal.  Sometimes it will, and sometimes it won't.

So you should be alert to other things as well, such as gaps in professionalism, misspelling, etc.

Another eBay/Paypal ID Theft Attempt

Here's another attempt at phishing your personal info.  Note some of the clues:

1. Sent to more than one person at at time. 
2. Inconsistent font--unprofessional look and feel.  It just doesn't look right.  "Dear Customer is bold, but the body of the message is not.  Extra space between "Dear Customer and ",".  eBay has an editorial process that would catch these sorts of things.
3. The tell-tale sign: asking for you to update your info "or else"

Urgent: Latest Identity Theft Scam--Paypal Users Beware!

This just arrived in my inbox this morning.  I do a lot of eBay business and receive my funds through Paypal.  According to the message in my inbox, Paypal had just received $26 or so from someone.  Did something I have on eBay sell early?

So I clicked on "View the details of this transaction online" and thought I was going into Paypal to see what this person bought (I had already checked eBay but didn't see anything--but if you have a lot of things in your My eBay area, it's not so easy to search through the completed listings). 

When I clicked on the "View the details..." link, it took me to a site, but my browser popped something up saying that the site's security certificate was for (and note the subtle difference that makes this so slick but dangerous "paypal.com" and not "www.paypal.com".

Suddenly suspicious, I looked and saw that the link in the email was directing me to some other website and not Paypal.

This is what's known as a "phishing" scam.  They are fishing for your personal information so they can get into your Paypal account.  If you get an email like this, DELETE IT.

The big risk here is that, should you log-in, the phisher will get your username and password, go to your Paypal account and CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD.  That would block you out of your own site, while stealing your money.  You'd then have to prove to PayPal that you are you and that site is yours, etc.  Big hassle.

Please let others know about this.  It's the best attempt at phishing I have seen yet and is likely to make victims out of a lot of good people.