PayPal phishing mails doing the rounds again

[Merlin]

Just a heads up to you all.

It seems as if the PayPal 'Account Suspended - Please Update Your Information' phishing mails are doing the rounds again, hoping to grab some account login details from some unsuspecting people.

The e-mails look almost legit, but you should always check the message header, to see what mail address any mail like this came from and above all, DON'T click on any attachments or links. If you aren't sure, login to your account separately and NEVER use the link in the mail, as it will take you to a dummy site to trick you into revealing your details.

Remember, Paypal won't call you 'Dear Customer' when they contact you about anything.

Let's be careful out there...

 

[roy_bates]

cheers,thanks for the heads up.

i havent seen any of this sort of thing yet,luckily.

 

[Merlin]

cheers,thanks for the heads up.

i havent seen any of this sort of thing yet,luckily.

We've had three of these in the AmiBay Admin mailbox today!

 

[johnim]

yea i have them all the time on my hotmail account but i use gmail for paypal

:double

 

[roy_bates]

cheers,thanks for the heads up.

i havent seen any of this sort of thing yet,luckily.

We've had three of these in the AmiBay Admin mailbox today!

really?wow, i'll be very carefull then.

 

[Bryce]

Again? I didn't realise they had ever stopped.

Bryce.

 

[Merlin]

Again? I didn't realise they had ever stopped.

Bryce.

They are like commercial breaks, in amongst the mails from all of these poor Nigerian princes and high-ranking executives, that need some help from me to access their inheritances, following the death of a loved relative...

 

[NinjaRabbit]

This is a good tool to use to analyse any e-mails that you find suspicious. Just feed it the headers, and most often it can shed some light on the real source.

 

[Merlin]

Thanks! I've bookmarked that link, it looks very useful.

 

[NinjaRabbit]

No problem! I find that it's an absolutely essential tool - it's helped me to be extra sure about less-than-blatantly-suspicious oddball messages (as rare as such non-obvious ones are!) when people I know have had previously e-mail accounts compromised, too.

 

[-Acid-]

Personally I delete all and any email if it has to do with money without even reading it and on top of that most mail of any other sort that asks me to login somewhere. Just delete them and go to the site from your bookmarks and login that way... if something is wrong you will see it when you login to the website etc.

 

[Firthy2002]

My rather aggressive spam filter usually deposits phishing e-mails in the relevant place.

 

[demolition]

Got one a little similar last week, but I am not sure it was legit or not. It said that I would not be able to use my Paypal account until I had it verified, but the two links in the mail did point to the correct paypal.com domain, so I don't think it could have been fishing. I went to paypal.com (typing manually) and logged in but did not see any messages in there.

 

[Merlin]

Got one a little similar last week, but I am not sure it was legit or not. It said that I would not be able to use my Paypal account until I had it verified, but the two links in the mail did point to the correct paypal.com domain, so I don't think it could have been fishing. I went to paypal.com (typing manually) and logged in but did not see any messages in there.

That's the exact one I am talking about. You did the right thing.

 

[demolition]

That's the exact one I am talking about. You did the right thing.

But how would it work for them if all links were proper and there were no embedded images to identify me?

 

[merlinkv]

Not PayPal, but the same thing happened to me the last month with Ubisoft, EAB & Steam accounts...

I Logged in manually and, as expected, everything is OK. Anyway and to be forewarned, I changed all my passwords and I sent a warning to their support departments.

There are too many "fishers" in Internet......

 

[Merlin]

They rely on the fact that some people are stupid or are not savvy when it comes to e-mails. Their version looks plausible, but it doesn't give your name in the greeting, as they don't know your name; however, genuine Paypal e-mails will always greet you by name, instead of "Dear Customer".

The links take you to a genuine-looking Paypal login screen, where they expect you to try and log in to see what the problem is. Once they have your login details, they change the password and empty your Paypal account of any funds in there. As the password has changed, you won't find out until it's too late and you can't log in.

It's a variation of the old 'Bait and switch' scam.

Decent filtering software will check the message headers and warn you, but even if you don't have filtering software, if you aren't sure about a mail, check the header, as scammers can change the links to trick you into thinking a link is genuine when in fact it's a redirect, but they can't change the details in the message header, as this is all server-side information.

I can't speak for the Linux or Mac camps, but as Microsoft gives away their Security Essentials software for free, is there any excuse not to have some protection against this sort of thing?

 

[merlinkv]

That's true but some "phisers" are really good ones and we must be very careful....

I have decent hardware & software protection on my systems but few ones get into my inbox. Anyway, and after three or four strange e-mails. I've redefined all my protection rules and the new ones are much stronger.

For now, no more strange e-mails (crossing fingers)

 

[George Agdgdgwngo]

Again? I didn't realise they had ever stopped.

Bryce.

They are like commercial breaks, in amongst the mails from all of these poor Nigerian princes and high-ranking executives, that need some help from me to access their inheritances, following the death of a loved relative...

Hello. I can confirm that those emails are totally legitimate. Nigerian bank accounts contain lots of monies which needs to be cleaned on a regular basis. This is due to pigeons entering the vaults and leaving their mess on the monies. It is necessary to seek out assistance from the good people of other countries to assist us in this cleaning process.