Paypal Spoofing

[Papa]

This morning, I got an e-mail, purportedly from Paypal, that said that my account had been limited because of a possible breach of my account by a third party. It was very official looking, with all the Paypal formats. Then it asked me to reenter my credit card information. Alarm bells went off in my brain.

I went back to my browser and logged into my account from scratch. There was nothing there about any limit, so I called Paypal Security. The agent told me in no uncertain terms that the e-mail was bogus and asked me to forward it to spoofing@paypal.com, which I did.

Has anyone else beet hit by this spoof?

Papa

[LarryG]

Has anyone else beet hit by this spoof?

Yes, although it's been a couple-three years. As I recall, the one I received was quite authentic-looking.

It may have been the one that included what was, I have to admit, a particularly clever gambit. The body of the text included the familiar PayPal boilerplate saying that the email was addressed to me using my real name (as opposed to "Dear PayPal User" or similar) to demonstrate that this was a legitimate request from PayPal. However, it actually said, "Dear [LarryG email address]" -- not at all the same thing as my real name on my account.

I'm sure they were hoping folks would glance up the page, see their correct email addy, and think, "Yep, they've got it right!" and fall for the ruse. Sad to say, it probably worked as intended on a whole bunch of folks.

[sweensdv]

Thanks for the heads up, both of you.

[TB Roye]

I have gotten a number of them over the years. I always forwarded them to PayPal or Ebay. I haven't receive any for a long time now, not even in my spam inbox. I get a few for bank accounts I have never had, just delete those and they are from Africa and Russia.

Tom

[Russianwolf]

I love the ones I get for accounts I've never had. Say from Wells Fargo Bank.

I promptly enter my info into the pop up and don't think twice, hopefully they get busted trying to get into my non-existant account.

[Mildoc]

Simple.

NEVER click a link in an email! Unless you KNOW the site. If ANY email asks for ANY personal info, IGNORE it. No bank, PayPal, etc is going to ask you to do that in an email.

[woodturner]

Simple.

No bank, PayPal, etc is going to ask you to do that in an email.

You would think - and yet, they do.

Amex is notorious for that - most of their special bonus offers are sent as emails with special links, from a non-amex.com address. I've called CS about them before, and they don't usually know if the offers are real or not. Finally decided to give it a shot, found out it really was legit.

[herb fellows]

About 2 years ago. Paypal then assigned me a 'credit card' looking thingie that has a button on it. Every time you make a Paypal transaction, you have to hit the button and enter the code that comes up, or it won't let you into the acount.