PayPal users look at this

[speedshot]

There is a email scam going around I thought everyone on this board should know about......The email you get says your paypal account has had an outside access attempt and we need to verfy your info to maintain and update your account.......if you do someone out there will have your info and start using it. This just happeded to me last week. I had been using my account to get payed for prints and thought it was legit, but I was wrong. Cap One CC called to ask about odd activity on my account and that is when I got the bad news that some had been using my CC to the tune of $500 for on line gaming ect and set up a new paypal account with it. (talked to PayPal and they cut them off)
I JUST WANT ALL OF YOU TO KNOW SO THIS WILL NOT HAPPEN TO YOU.
PayPal has told me if the email does not use YOUR NAME AND OR BUSINESS NAME ITS NOT THEM DON'T REPLY.
HOPE THIS HELPS SOMEONE ELSE.
Able can you make sure everyone sees this note

[suzyjazz]

I am sorry this happened to you. That stinks. I get these emails all the time, and it's very annoying.

[srwatters]

Never ever respond to an email that supposedly comes from either Ebay or PayPal. Always go directly to their website with the https:// for secure encrypted access. They will alert you with a system message on the website. Email is insecure unless encrypted and signed with an electronic signature.

These Phishing bastards need to have their naughty bits removed with a dull object! IMHO of course

[JamesB]

this is one of the older paypal email scams resurfacing. I have been using paypal forever and have never had any problems.

you should forward any email that appears to come from paypal that has questionable content to paypal (I think its spoof@paypal.com)

Same goes for ebay.

James

[acer0001]

I get these all the time. One way to check if they are legit is to hover your mouse over the link they want you to click on and look at your status bar at the bottom of the IE browser and see where it goes. Most of the time they are URLs that have nothing to do with Ebay or PayPal and sometimes they are IP addresses. I just usually delete them all and if there is a message for me, they Ebay and PayPal will email me with thier message system. Better to be safe than sorry.

[CincoJoe]

I think I get this one and the FBI scam almost every other day.

[JamesB]

this is another reason I have started using email forwarders and aliases.

I have my own domain with unlimited email accounts and unlimited aliases.

I set up several email address

my main email I use to email friends and family.

then I have an email address for the photography sites I visit
then each individual web site I am registered at I have an email for that site.
TFP@xxxxxxxx.com
that TFP@xxxxxx.com is forwarded to my photography email address and I receive that in my outlook.

I have an email address for purchasing stuff from various trusted web sites (B&H, buy.com and so on) these all get forwarded to my buying email address.

I have done the same for my paypal and ebay accounts.

this way I can tell right away who is sending me spam and I can delete that aliases and create a new one if needed and it stops the spam right away.

sometimes it can be a lot of work, but I have gone from getting 200+ spam emails a day down to under 10 a day. my hosting provide is getting a lot better at filtering spam as well.

my hosting provider also provides me with a "catch all" address, I can turn it on and see just how many made up email address spammers are trying to send to using my domain name. Its pretty scary

James

[BobbyC]

I always forward them to spoof@paypal.com, don't know if it does much good, but I do.

Paypal is very safe if you follow one simple rule:

Always open a new instance of your browser and manually type https://www.paypal.com in the address bar. You can't go wrong that way.

Edit: Sorry, my laptop sat here for a while and all the other replies weren't there yet!

[rogerfsmith]

Another way to play it safe is to use an email program that when you hover over the link in the email, pops up a notice if the link you'll actually go to doesn't match the link that is visible in the email. Eudora is an example of an email program with this feature. If you use the bottom line hover technique, you need to know a little about how URLs work. What you see down there very well might have paypal.com in the URL, but you have to be sure that it is really the "root" domain, rather than some other. Here is a typical example of a spoofed URL with paypal.com in it: "http://218.111.35.210/popups/.../paypal.com/xyz" and so forth (the /'s are the tipoff as well as an IP address at the beginning.
I've basically determined that it does no real good to forward them to paypal since all you ever get is a form response. By the time you forward it, it is already too late for them to do anything anyway, since millions of these are sent all at once. I get about 10 of these a day for banking, ebay, paypal, etc.
Cheers,
Roger

[bbailey]

Yep, phishing scams really suck. Working in tech support I must see a new one every week. The advice given above is dead on. Just never follow a link in an email asking for updates/verification for account or similar info. This goes for Paypal, Ebay or any other site, espicially banks. I've seen some pretty creative scam emails for Citibank and Chase before.

[epronske]

Any email that says "dear paypal or ebay customer" is a fraud; in other words the greeting is generic and not specifically addressed to you.
Erik Pronske

[BobbyC]

I had one a year or so ago, it actually tried to paste a strip of white over the address bar wtih the paypal address, but it was misaligned a bit and I could see the real address behind it.

I also got a new one recently for ebay scammers. You get a message from an ebay user that appears to be coming through ebay as a complaint against you for not following through on payment for an auction. Of course you get mad and click on the auction link, enter your user name and password because you want to get this thing straightened out. Of course you just gave someone your username and password. It's not like getting at your bank account raided through paypal, but it sure could be a pain in the behind to get straightened out before they ruin your rep on ebay.