WARNING!!! Scam on PayPal accounts!

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Hey, I just got an official-looking email from PayPal (I have an account). the Subject reads, "Account Flagged".

The body reads something to the effect of my account has been flagged as a routine security measure and that I need to click this link to verify my account information.

The email came from [email protected]. Everything looked official, so I clicked.

The page opened to the standard PayPal sign-in page so I logged in. The next page opened to the Profile page, and said to update my information, and had all the boxes for Credit card number, address, phone, etc.

Everything looks official. But then I kicked myself--I'm not usually a sucker for email scams.

I closed the window I was in (I was already filling out the CCard info!) and went back to my email.

I clicked the link again, then entered my email and password again, only this time I used a false password...

The page accepted the fake and opened to the Profile page again!

Here is the URL of the "paypal" page the link took me to. Maybe some of you experts can figure out where this really came from.

login page: http://83.148.101.122/www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/
The page directed to after logging in: http://83.148.101.122/www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/[email protected]&login_password=

I'm going to try to find an address to contact PayPal about this (or maybe I'm wrong and it's all legit?).

Hope this message helps someone. If you know who I should contact, please let me know.

Sincerely,

General Tsao

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Never, I repeat, never give out credit card, bank account or other sensitive information by answering an E Mail request. I have gotten requests from banks where I do not even have accounts.

You don't know where the E Mail is coming from.

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PayPal and Ebay both have stated that they will NEVER send you an email requesting your information like that.

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General--

I also received a note from "Pay Pal"--and I never did figure out how to register properly.

Unfortunately many of the Internet scams target those of us who are tidy-minded and generally cooperative.

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General- I went to the "login" page. I entered as my E Mail address "sh!thead@sh!thead.com. My password was, "big dope" Guess what??? I got through!

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General - Open the e-mail. If yo are using Outlook or outlook express you can click "View" at the top and then select All Headers. The header info is what Paypal / Ebay needs in order to investigate.

You can also open the email, click File and then click Properties to get the senders e-mail address. From that info they can be reported for SPAM and possibly other things.

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BTW, please go immediately to Paypal and change your password right now if you haven't already.

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I'm usually really aware of this stuff--scam email usually has misspelled words and poor grammar, but this looked like any other PayPal email I routinely get.

Also, the email headers indicated the letter coming from PayPal, and the URL had "www.paypal.com" in it...what raised my eyebrows was the series of numerals preceding the paypal.com. That looked suspicious to me.

Someone like my mom never would have noticed that, for sure. But I am, still, a "big dope."

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Nice catch. I did some research and found where you can report it to paypal.

E-Mail: [email protected] [Note:
Forwarded m essages only]
Notice:
http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd
=p/gen/email-security-outside

Here's a link for more info. http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/fraud/Phishing.pdf

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I got the same e-mail, but since PayPal is such an easy target for scammers I went to PayPal's official site by typing it in manually rather than clicking on the link in the e-mail--this avoids a lot of risk. What is disturbing about this particular scam e-mail, though, is that it fooled my allegedly "high-security" spam blocker. My account's only supposed to accept incoming e-mails from known & authorized e-mail addresses that I have manually entered/approved. How this PayPal scam got through I have no idea.

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OK, I've changed my PW. Thanks for the reminder, Squinney!

I'll contact spoof right now.

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One other thing, for anyone else dealing with paypal or Ebay, ALL legitimate e-mails from Paypal and Ebay will include your name. ANY e-mail addressing you as Dear Ebay Seller, Dear Paypal Member, or any other wording that is not your correct REAL name as registered with them, is a fake. This will be your REAL name, not a user name.

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I got a phisher e-mail claiming to be from Paypal as well. I didn't fall for it, but it sure looked official. I have my e-mail client set to not download pictures unless I tell it to. The link to paypal without pictures looked like this when I scrolled over it: http://www.paypay.com%redir/something.de (somewhere in Germany).

With pictures downloaded (a mistake on my part, but it only lets them know I exist), the link then appeared as "http://www.paypal.com".

When I forwarded this e-mail to [email protected], I did so buy trying to copy/paste it into a new e-mail. When I did the select-all/copy, it tried to download a virus onto my computer. Fortunately McAffee caught it.

Bastards.

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I've gotten emails like that and I only knew they were a scam because paypal had sent me something in the past stating that these scams were out there and since they never ever send out emails asking for personal information, I should never respond to them and inform them about it. I just copied the email and sent it to the report desk and they sent me an email varifying that it was a scam.

My mom would have fallen for it as well, which is why I'm glad she is not interested in computers. Those emails look very legit and I would have done the same thing you had if I hadn't had that previous warning email from Paypal.

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lab rat wrote:

I got the same e-mail, but since PayPal is such an easy target for scammers I went to PayPal's official site by typing it in manually rather than clicking on the link in the e-mail--this avoids a lot of risk. What is disturbing about this particular scam e-mail, though, is that it fooled my allegedly "high-security" spam blocker. My account's only supposed to accept incoming e-mails from known & authorized e-mail addresses that I have manually entered/approved. How this PayPal scam got through I have no idea.

It is trivial to spoof the sender's E-mail address.

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WARNING!!! Scam on PayPal accounts!

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