Beware PayPal Fraud

January 3, 2008

Ever heard of “Phishing?” According to Wikipedia it is

an attempt to criminally and fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.

Well, in the past day I’ve received two different emails labeled Receipt For Your Payment meant to look like it came from PayPal. They both confirm that I’ve sent out a payment. The first email looks kind of fake and I immediately new it wasn’t real:

Dear PayPal Member,

This email confirms that you sent $62.75 USD tocurrier6178@aol.com.

-----------------------------------Money Transfer Details-----------------------------------

Amount: $62.75 USDSubject: DVD Player Sony DVP-NS 39

Note:To modify or cancel this payment, go to the PayPal website at:Cancel transaction (Encrypted Link )

Thank you for using PayPal!The PayPal TeamSpeed through checkout whenever you shop online; just log in to youraccount at https:/www.paypal.com .Send money to your friends and family.Pay without revealing your credit card information.

Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot beanswered. Lift your sales. Add PayPal to attract more customersGet tools to make eBay sales simple.

PayPal Email ID PP126

Their plan here is to scare me into canceling the transaction. This is where they try to steal your password information. If you click on Cancel Transaction you are sent to the web address ecc.web.offsitenow.new/~bailey/bb/. Notice this isn’t a PayPal address!

Here’s the 2nd email:

PayPal

Dear PayPal Member,

This email confirms that you have sent an eBay payment of $42.75 USD to aathomas67@hotmail.com for an eBay item using PayPal.


Payment Details

Transaction ID: 8H273150XN822260H
Item Price: $42.75 USD
Total: $42.75 USD
Order Description: Digimax 148
Item/Product Number:
(4198125720)




Note: If you haven’t authorized this charge ,click the link below to dispute transaction and get full refund

Dispute transaction (Encrypted Link )

*SSL connection: PayPal automatically encrypts your confidential information in transit from your computer to ours using the Secure Sockets Layer protocol (SSL) with an encryption key length of 128-bits (the highest level commercially available)


Item Information

eBay User ID: aaroncarterworld
Name: Kevin Frase
Address: 164 Timber Crest Drive
City: York, PA 17404
State: United States


Kevin Frase has provided an Unconfirmed Address. If you are planning on shipping items to Kevin Frase, please check the Transaction Details page of this payment to find out whether you will be covered by the PayPal Seller Protection Policy.



If your email program has problems with hypertext links, then you may also confirm your email address by logging into your PayPal account at www.paypal.com/us. On your My Account page you will find a “Confirm Your Email Address” link. Click on this link and enter the following confirmation number:

1242-2584-9350-3815-5762

Thank you for using PayPal!
The PayPal Team

This email looks official and got me a bit worried. Maybe someone stole my ID somehow? After a few deep breaths I scrolled over Dispute Transaction and saw that it’s pointed to www.corlett.com/uu/. That can’t be PayPal, right? Just to see I clicked on it and was brought to what looked like a real PayPal login page. Except the address in my browser was www.fanli.com.tw/www.paypal.com. Again they were hoping I would log on to dispute the transaction and in the process capture my password and User ID!

I went to the official PayPal site to look up security information. They have a whole section about these types of scams. They instruct anyone who comes across an email like these to forward them to spoof@paypal.com and then delete the email.

According to PayPal they will never ask for personal information in an email. Also, their emails will address you by name. Notice the two emails I received say “Dear PayPal Member.”

PayPal also suggests that to be safe you open a new browser and open www.paypal.com from there. Never click on any links in an email to get to the site. Like the email above, the landing site may be fake.

You must be careful! These emails are playing on fear and they hope the person reading them will panic, click on the email link, and enter their information!

As a note I use FireFox as my web browser. When I clicked on the email link a FireFox window popped up say Suspected Web Forgery. At least FireFox is looking out for me.

Has this happened to you? Tell me your story!


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Tagged as: Money, online

{ 1 trackback }

carnival of struggling bumbling newbies - Jan 12, 2008 : SuccessPart2.Com
June 17, 2008 at 5:27 pm

{ 6 comments }

1 Father Sez (2 comments) January 4, 2008 at 4:00 am

I once got an email from someone at forbes.net, claiming that forbes wanted to inclue my blog in something or the other.

I just distrusted the .net ID and deleted it.

Good of you to publicise this new scam.

2 Free From Broke (113 comments) January 4, 2008 at 7:17 pm

Wow. I can see myself getting excited receiving an email like that. These frauds seem to come in all shapes and sizes don’t they?

3 ricardobueno (5 comments) January 8, 2008 at 3:20 am

I’ve gotten such an email amongst other scams and I can’t tell you how much it bothers me!

But gmail does a pretty good job of forwarding all of these types of junkmail to my SPAM folder.

The other big scam I’ve received are from investors from India trying to allocate their funds here recorded to be in the millions! Ha! Yeah right!

4 Free From Broke (113 comments) January 8, 2008 at 8:36 pm

@ricardobueno - For sure these PayPal emails aren’t the only scam emails I’ve gotten. Gmail does do a nice job of recognizing what’s bad. And some of those emails are really bad! It’s hard to understand how anyone can be fooled by some (I guess that’s a good thing). Some of the stories are amusing to read. The PayPal one with the logo though, I can see a lot of people logging onto the fake site. That’s what scares me.

5 rismo (1 comments) October 20, 2008 at 3:21 pm

I have stupidly got that email and panicked and filled it out…wot happens now? does that mean they have all my details officially should i close my account?

6 ffb (822 comments) October 20, 2008 at 3:37 pm

@ Rismo - You may want to consider closing your account. I would contact PayPal and let them know. Keep an eye out for fraudulent activity!

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