Paypal scam

I have just received an email claiming to be from Paypal. with the title "Your account is still Iimited!" It says "Please log in" the words "log in" are a hyperlink but it does not take you to paypal. It would take you to this URL

"http://ow.ly/HYil308nCFI" Which is NOT paypal. 
DO NOT CLICK on this link if you receive a simailar email. 
I expect it would take you to a web page that looked like Paypal
 and ask for your username and password. it would then probably 
then charge things to your account.

Les.

Edited By Les Jones 1 on 26/01/2017 17:13:39

It does not have to be a short bit of text. You could embed a false link in the text string that was correct for Pay pal's URL.

Les.

This type of scam comes in many variants, PayPal, eBay, apple, amazon etc. If you hover your mouse pointer over the hyperlink, the true address is shown in a pop up, but not everyone knows this. 

People are far too trusting. I have had two friends taken in by the Microsoft scam recently, despite this type of scam being many years old, one very nearly lost a lot of money, the other had a lot of valuable documents deleted that were unrecoverable.

The scumbags out there don't care what harm they do.

It is sad when one has to say this - but - don't trust anyone, don't believe anything in an unsolicited email or phone call, never give your bank details, passwords, usernames etc you have NOT won anything and you never have to pay upfront to reclaim a prize. 

There are dozens of scam lines out there, purporting to come from epay, taxes, police, phone companies, microsoft, friends, etc.

They arrive with regular monotony and all should be deleted, preferably without even opening. Worst is apparently having all files encrypted with a ransom demand following shortly afterwards. Apparently not only encrypts the source computer but also anything linked to it.

The joys of the internet!

Whenever I get an invitation that is not an obvious scam I always go directly to the vendors site without using the hyperlink. Scams go directly to the bit-bucket.

I don't know how much attention they really pay; but PayPal requests that we forward such messages to [email protected]

MichaelG.

HI, I'm with Brian on this one. Although the PayPal messages that I do get are genuine as far as I can tell, I still don't use any of the links.

Regards Nick.

If you are still unsure, there's always Sandboxie

(there are others)

Edited By Bandersnatch on 26/01/2017 18:30:13

With Paypal scam emails it is important to remember that scams usually call you "Dear Paypal User", while Paypal itself will always use your name.

A common one is the "Your account has been suspended, log in and validate your account to re-activate it" kind of thing.

Scams used to be conducted in person at Coffee Houses, what's the world coming to!

Still are, its the same industry now but the venues are called internet cafe's (or just Costa etc)

Ian P

We had a scam parking fine yesterday. Said it was from Barking and Dagenham mentioned a date and a few reference numbers also the name of a valid local councillor. However not my address or the car reg number. I phoned B&D to let them know. Clearly they had had a good few other people as the 'hello' telephone message explained that B&D do not email suchlike parking enforcement demands.

I received an email a couple of years ago purporting to be from Paypal saying that my account had been suspended. Being the disbelieving sort I did not follow the link and logged in to Paypal my usual way and found that all was fine. I try to keep my disbelief in gear at all times. Another time I had a phone call from someone saying that they were phoning regarding my motor insurance. I did not believe him and told him to write to me. He did, and had cancelled my insurance!

I pretty much cop one or two of those a week from paypal ,apple or lately the tax office .

Two things to remember :

Paypal and apple will always address you by name , not dear customer or your email name etc and their email never contains a link to your account , they always tell you to go to the official website and log in there .

I recently started getting messages from the tax office staiting they had processed my tax return incorrectly and i was due to receive a $250 rebate - just click on the link and apply for it !

There are a few issues with this message - the tax office has my bank details,and would deposit directly to that account if by some miracle they had made a mistake and an even bigger miracle would be them admitting to it ! The next problem is the tax office doesn't have my Email address as they never send emails - it is always via post .

Ian

"http://ow.ly/HYil308nCFI" Which is NOT paypal. 
DO NOT CLICK on this link if you receive a simailar email. 
I expect it would take you to a web page that looked like Paypal
 and ask for your username and password. it would then probably 
then charge things to your account.

These types of emails seem to turn up on a regular basis, I normally try to forward them to Paypal (see Michael Gilligan's post) or the banks named etc, most of the individual bank websites have instructions on how to do that.

Paypal usually send a thank you email and follow it up.

Edited By V8Eng on 26/01/2017 23:53:26

A quick easy check, but not neccessarily comprehensive, is to look at the email address of the sender at the top of the email. If it is not from [email protected] but instead is from some other address at hotmail.com, @bonzo.com etc etc, it's a fake. I get a couple a day in my hotmail junk folder I reckon.

So as a matter of principal I never access Paypal from an eMail link. Always log in directly to the Paypal site.