Paypal fake emails

[fitnessk]

I am sure most people have gotten the spoof mail that is not actually from PayPal. I talked to PayPal yesterday and they said that if the email does not address you by your name that you used when signing up for your account that it is not legitimate.

[osafa]

Yeah I got it...however some people aren't aware...PayPal should sent out emails warning its members...

[Calypso]

I've gotten emails like that, too. They're called "phishing" scams, because the people who send them out are basically fishing to see how much information they can trick you into giving away.

In general, never click on links in emails, especially suspicious ones. Type in the web address manually, or use a bookmark that you've established is safe.

NEVER give out your password, no matter what.

In addition to fake emails from PayPal, I've also gotten fake emails from eBay, fake emails from my bank, and, amusingly, fake emails from banks I've never heard of. What a pain!

[tater03]

I don't think I got this one yet? I will have to check my email today. I have gotten the one from ebay though. But I would agree I don't get why they don't email something stating that these are out there. The ebay one I found out about because I got curious and emailed ebay and asked them about it. They responded that it was a scam and to forward them the email. Thank goodness I did this first.

[vicki2]

I get them in spurts about once a month. There are some new, cleverer ones out which purport to be a survey. Ha!

[cassiem0221]

I received two of these last week. I reported both to paypal and they are trying to find the source of the problem. So far they have nothing and most likely won't. Most of the ones I get claim they are going to "cancel" my account if I don't update it or something.. Its just crazy.

[tater03]

I have not seen the survey ones as of yet but I will definently be on the lookout for them. Thanks for the heads up.

[SageMother]

Anytime you get a letter from Paypal and it says something about your account, with instructions to log in by pressing the link, its best to ignore it or report it to Paypal.

You always know what to expect if you have made a purchase so there is no reason for you to use a link on an email that you aren't expecting. If you feel you have to check the information then go to Paypal from a new window and check things out. Better safe than ripped off!

[tater03]

You're right never click the link. I just feel bad for people like my parents who would not know this. Of course I have passed this along to my parents along with any other I have run across.

[Jim]

Yeah and not just Paypal. What about all the ones from banks, people wanting to send you money for nothing, Letters from the IRS wanting to give you some tax money you are supposedly owed and on and on ad nauseum. I only ever responded to one of those paypal ones and that was just to see where it took me. I responded with garbage information and a good swear word as a password. Once logged in it takes you to the legitimate Paypal account page but guess what? You aren't logged in. I didn't expect to be hehe. What they just did was took that login information and tried to access a non-existent account. So I succeeded in wasting their time.

I have a great idea, make a spammer to spam the phishers. Send them millions of replies with tons of random generated passwords and accounts. They'd be so overwhelmed with false data they would never be able to find legitimate ones. Hmmm now there's an idea for a website. Someone could forward phishing emails to it and they generate automatic random junk responses to the phisher. Bury the spammers in their own spam!!!!! I'm all for it.