Understanding Paypal Scam Emails

The internet is one fabulous tool to remain in touch with the world and friends. It is an information highway that helps and guides the user in all walks of life. It is also a world of entertainment with all those videos from movies and song clips that can regale you for hours. You can see and talk to your friends and relatives sitting thousands of kilometers away as if they were sitting in the same room. Internet is a great help at office and home as it makes work simpler and faster. With so much to offer, internet has become an integral part of our lives these days. However, if it is a boon, we have to welcome it along with all the dangers such as viruses, malware, hackers, phishing, popups, spyware etc. These are malicious activities and programs that have the potential to take the fun out of internet surfing. Sometimes the dangers are so real and harmful that people feel helpless despite having installed strong antivirus software in their systems.

What is Phishing

Hackers and people with malicious intentions always remain a step ahead of all those who want to safeguard your system while surfing. This is just like real life where police comes into action after a crime has taken place. However, this is not to say that you cannot protect yourself or prevent any attack on your system. These days a new form of duping unsuspecting internet surfers is being employed by people with malicious intentions to get access to their personal details such as social security number, bank account details, passwords etc. known as phishing. It is a fact that most people use PayPal to make payments on the internet, and suddenly one day an email arrives in your mail inbox saying that your PayPal account has been temporarily suspended. You obviously become concerned as losing your PayPal account is a big jolt as you cannot shop on internet in that case.

When you open the mail, it looks business like and addresses you as a valued customer of PayPal (herein lies the catch). It then mentions how PayPal values your security and frequently conducts screening of accounts for any unusual activity. It then adds that your account has been suspended as your account has been accessed by different computers with multiple failures during password login (no big deal as you forget passwords often and also because you log in your PayPal account from different computers in home and office).

The next part of the email is where the real crux of the matter lies as it is requested to pass on your sensitive information to be able to resolve the issue. A separate form is attached that is to be downloaded and filled out to restart your PayPal account. You are asked to log in your PayPal account after sharing the relevant information.

The language used to dupe unsuspecting customers is such that it is easy for anyone to become a fool and believe that the mail has indeed come from PayPal and one should fill up the form by providing sensitive information such as Bank account details, social security number and password etc. Once you fill the form, you are asked to click on the submit button and then you are assured of resolution of your problem and told that your account has been restored.

Do you know the kind of information that these phishers ask from you? Along with confidential information, they also ask for innocent looking details such as your first and last name, your address, city, state, zip code, landline number, mother’s maiden name, date of birth etc. But the information that these hackers are really interested in are your social security number, credit and debit card number with expiry dates of both, and the bank issuing your credit card.

If you take a look at the information being asked, you will certainly smell something fishy. Why would PayPal need your social security number or bank account details, let alone credit card numbers? They didn’t ask for this information when you set up an account with them and have been running it successfully for so long, right?

If you too have received any such mail, the first thing to see is where the mail has come from. You must have been receiving reminders from PayPal earlier and all of them have come from Paypal.com, didn‘t they? But this fishy mail comes from some obscure address such as updates-int@Paypal.net or something like that.

What to do in such a situation

Again, Paypal always addresses you with your first or last name or your business name, and never as a valued customer. If you receive such a mail, do not panic and try to log on to your PayPal account. If there is no problem, you automatically realize it is an attempt to hack personal and sensitive information. Compose a mail to PayPal and forward this mail to spoof@paypal.com. Never forward it as an attachment and finally, delete the suspicious email from your inbox. PayPal responds promptly after going through the mail to tell you that it indeed is a fraud and an attack on your personal sensitive information.

Not a set pattern to dupe

Apart from such a mail, there are other ways to fool a customer. Another mail coming from even more credible looking addresses is circulating these days that says a credit card linked by you with the PayPal account has been found to be involved in suspicious activities. The sender asks you to click on a link to restore access to your PayPal account. But never fall in line by clicking on the suggested link and just try to log on to your PayPal account. If you are able top log in normally, you can be pretty sure that the email is indeed an attempt to hack your information.

It is not just PayPal

PayPal is not alone and there are other shopping sites like EBay and Amazon from where people are getting phishing emails trying to hack their sensitive information.  Now that you know what such an email means, you will not fall prey and take correct action.

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