I received an email at midday today which appeared to be from PayPal. It told me that my PayPal account was in suspension because some of my details were incorrect. It was necessary, it said, to click on the link provided and do a verfication of my account. I clicked on the link and it took me to an almost perfect PayPal website which showed a page for me to log in. I put in my email and password and it came back and said I'd done it wrong, so I did it again. It didn't react as I expected, then I noticed that the top half inch of the website was missing - suddenly the penny dropped and I realised that this was a fake website and the email was a fake email and I had given these lousy B's my PayPal password. Lucky I woke up to it quickly, I immediately informed PayPal (I was able to log in to the proper website no trouble) and then rang my bank and had my Credit Card declared lost, destroyed my card on the bank's advice, and I will get a new card. Meantime no one can put anything on my card.
I went back to the PayPal website to tell them that I had cancelled my Credit Card - what bothered me is that 3/4 of an hour later I was still able to access my account with the compromised password. I still have not received the promised response from PayPal - in the meantime, had I not cancelled my card, these B'scould be helping themselves to what money I have!
Take care out there!
Kenv
If you have a PayPal account - Read this!
Moderators: nzmacro, Ken Ramos, twebster, S. Alden
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- Posts: 545
- Joined: Sun Oct 10, 2004 9:23 pm
- Location: Tucson, AZ USA
Hi Ken,
Change your paypal password immediately!
I got one of these last week. You're right that the website really looked like the real thing. The email said that my paypal account had been tampered with and it needed my attention. Before I went to the site, I just went to the paypal site directly, and noticed that my account was just fine. For fun, I went to the bogus site and looked at it hard, and it looked like the real thing. Then I noticed that the URL was written as paypal.com in the email, but the actual address in the browser was a numerical IP address. So I knew the mail was horse crap.
The phishers are getting more sophisticated, and one had to watch out!
Hope it all turns out well.
Steve
Change your paypal password immediately!
I got one of these last week. You're right that the website really looked like the real thing. The email said that my paypal account had been tampered with and it needed my attention. Before I went to the site, I just went to the paypal site directly, and noticed that my account was just fine. For fun, I went to the bogus site and looked at it hard, and it looked like the real thing. Then I noticed that the URL was written as paypal.com in the email, but the actual address in the browser was a numerical IP address. So I knew the mail was horse crap.
The phishers are getting more sophisticated, and one had to watch out!
Hope it all turns out well.
Steve
- S. Alden
- Site Admin
- Posts: 2780
- Joined: Thu Apr 29, 2004 8:25 am
- Location: Pennsylvania, USA
- Contact:
The best practice is to not click on any link provided in an email. Paypal, Ebay and most all on-line companies WILL NOT send email requesting this type of action with an embedded link.
Go to paypal as you would normally do, and change your login information, and forward the fake email you received to paypal.
Go to paypal as you would normally do, and change your login information, and forward the fake email you received to paypal.
Sue Alden
Administrator
Repost of my images are welcome
Administrator
Repost of my images are welcome