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I have been sent a spoof email claiming to be from paypal, asking for my account details etc. 20 of my students have also received this same email in the last couple of days too.

The subject of the message is "Update and Verify Your PayPal account" and appears to come from account@paypal.com.

I've forwarded the email to paypal for them to check it out.

I just thought I'd warn people about it.

I get about 5 different paypal spoofs per day. Some of them fairly ingenious. The only thing I can say is that if paypal ever really needs to contact me, they'd have a lot of trouble as I generally delete them.

Wayne

[Turambar]

I get em all the time too with various creative subjects like "your account has been marked for deletion" etc. All get blocked and deleted, if paypal has something important to tell me i normally get it when i log in to paypal. Paypal/ebay themselves probably dont give a {bleep}.

Turambar wrote:
I get em all the time too with various creative subjects like "your account has been marked for deletion" etc. All get blocked and deleted, if paypal has something important to tell me i normally get it when i log in to paypal. Paypal/ebay themselves probably dont give a {bleep}.

This one claims that a foreign IP address has successfully logged into your account, and you must click this and enter your username and password.

Credit to gmail though, it warned the message did not come from where it claimed it did.

[TheMagicM]

I've recieved some which have a 'button' to click on but it shows a Paypal URL.. another hoax..beware of that one also.

[Cymric]

I've even had one which linked to a site which would fool a casual and hasty observer, although it is still quite bogus. However, these cretins forget the cardinal rule from PayPal which I quote below (it's hanging on my wall lest I forget):

PayPal will only address you by your first and last name, or by the business name associated with the account.

As a corollary, any message starting with 'Dear PayPal member' or 'Dear PayPal user' or any other friendly greeting is BOGUS and should be considered a phishing attempt. You can enhance your protection by adding an extra letter to your surname, so that the account is in the name of, for example, 'Wayne X.' Hunt. That prevents a particularly clever scumbag from combining publically email addresses with a forged PayPal header, as the X. in my example would not be publically known.

[badalias]

PayPal has a special e-mail address that is for verifying such such e-mail are really scams... spoof@paypal.com Use it whenever you get one of these phony PayPal e-mail scams... Oh, yeah, by the way: If it's legitimate, PayPal will generally ask you to go to their website and log in rather than place a link or button in the e-mail.

badalias wrote:
PayPal has a special e-mail address that is for verifying such such e-mail are really scams... spoof@paypal.com Use it whenever you get one of these phony PayPal e-mail scams... Oh, yeah, by the way: If it's legitimate, PayPal will generally ask you to go to their website and log in rather than place a link or button in the e-mail.

Yeah, I forwarded the mail to that address as soon as I got the mail. The automated response confirmed the mail was a fake.

[amigamad]

I have been getting paypal and ebay spoofs for ages the latest one is to become a powerseller if you hover your mouse over the link you can see its not paypal or ebay .<p>

For anyone that is unsure you never give your paypal or ebay password or credit card details .

[K7HTH]

I love spoofs because I fill out all bogus information in the information fields and cuss them out in password fields. Most of the info posted looks genuine so this makes them work in circles to hack and wastes their time. Isn't technology great?

[swift240]

If it would the the GENUINE Paypal they would put your name up front, and not "Dear valued Paypal user" or "Dear valued Paypal customer"

If it aint got your name then it aint GENUINE, I get these at least 3 times a week and I send them off to Paypal spoof.

The person or persons doing this should be kicked to death or at least thrown to a pride of hungry Lions.


But thats just me......

Mike.