Very Clever Paypal Scam In Action.

This is just not on. I can't believe people would scam this badly. They could just drive their creativity in actually building a good business model.

Hello Richard

Long time no see.

They were pretty good weren't they? Had me scratching my head too trying to think up the name. Looked more closely at the email, something about it just not quite right so got on the phone to Paypal about it.

As suspected... a phishing email trying to get my personal details. Like you, there was no way I was clicking on any of the links in the email sent by this scammer. Certainly though it was one of the best one's out there which has been sent my way in the past year or two.

Warmest regards,


Mark Andrews

Excellent advice Will, I just bolded the always part as it's so important.

More splendid advice. Sadly setting up a legitimate business just doesn't occur to some people.

That's what I was thinking. I make quite a few payments but if I was making more this would have really stumped me. I can't imagine how many not so clued up people clicked on the transaction number to settle their curiosity.

That's what I was impressed with. It genuinely was a good attempt. Most scams I get are as see through as a window but this was the first I'd received where I actually had to think about it. I suspect whatever the link does, quite a few people have clicked it.

Yes indeedy. Have you headed off on your travels yet? We need to have a beer session I believe.

They were very good. I was a bit concerned before I posted it that it may have done the rounds and everyone knew about it. I'm glad I posted it now. It's very low either way you look at it and certainly way above the competence of nearly all of the amateur attempts to spam me in the past. On a positive note I'm so para now I can't see anyone actually managing it with me.

They may turn out to be famous last words though.

Hi Jim, how are you chap? How's your work schedule getting on? We should be due a "put the world to rights" chat again soon.

Sadly we do appear to be moving onto new scammers that actually think before they send out their filth.

Oh well, at least a few more people now know about it and will be careful.

As Will said and Mark did, always manually type in the Paypal url and login or in Marks case ring them. I told them about this when I got it so they should be onto it at least.

That's the point, it wasn't crap, it's was bloody good.

Same here. I get more spam than actual responses to my posts on CL.

Sorry for stealing the post but great heads up.

Sure but then again they didn't ask for that. They wanted me to click a link, it could have been a virus, it could have been anything.

I'm sure they couldn't trick you maestro but keep your gaurd up, I have read hundreds and hundreds of scam emails. Of all of them this stood head and shoulders above the rest. That was my point, this one was different.

I'm glad to see you're so switched on though, albeit self proclaimed.

Again this was from notify@paypal.com and looked identical to every other email I get from them when I send money, the only difference was I hovered my mouse over the transaction id link and noticed it wasn't a Paypal address, nor were the footer links.

There was nothing to the naked eye that suggested it was a scam. Nothing. It was also the first one like that I'd received out of many hundreds of other attempts.

My point was that if you send lots of payments a day, you may not take any notice of the names, or you may not remember them and thats what they want. They want you to look and say "I don't remember that one" and then click the transaction id to find out more info.

Precisely.

As soon as you see "Dear Customer" or "Dear User"

You know immediately that it is fake.

This pretty much goes for all banking sites.

I was scammed for the first time ever today. Something totally different.

I agree that if only these fools put half the effort into a legitimate business, they would make more money ~ and honestly Really, how do they sleep at night?

heck last week my email got hacked and sent an advert to all my contacts to a cnbc clone scam site. It isn't the first time I seen a site like this and expect the same people are behind it. The first time I seen it was through a (get this) an MSN ad.

Now what these people do is clone a actual news site, even set up the actual contact email. The lead story is what is bogus, a money making story with contact info, email, sign up , get something for a buck, then they sock it to you and take what they can. The Dark Side of IM

By spoofing aka FAKING THE REAL THING.

Nowadays scammers can spoof about everything including Caller IDs, SMS, referrer addresses and IP addresses. We can't do much about that but we can avoid email scammers by this basic need-to-know info.

1) When you received emails containing links, you have to hover the links to see whether they are faked. So if a link states " PayPal Dot Com " but when you hover the link, you see just IP ADDRESSES or a web address not related to PAYPAL, then that email is from a scammer. Delete it.

2) For email addresses, scammers can fake whatever they want. BUT they do not have the ACTUAL ACCOUNT. So when you check the Sender's Details, you'll see several SMTP servers not related to PAYPAL. And most of the time the last one would be this IP address - 127.0.0.1. This means, the email was sent from an application on their PC via SMTP servers they hijacked ( which is not PAYPAL's SMTP server ). Delete it.

The above are basic need-to-know info for new email users.

But there are more dangerous ones. Even advanced Internet users with updated ANTI-VIRUS and FIREWALLS are vulnerable. You'll noticed many complaints about EMAIL ACCOUNTS being hijacked.

3) Anyone in any unencrypted network ( wifi or wired ), who have malicious intend, can use 3 simple tools to hijack REAL EMAIL accounts. Grab all confidential data from those accounts or SEND SPAMS from the emails to contact addresses or simply deny the real owners access. I have some info on how to avoid this on a WF blog post.

I've had two more this morning with different payee details so I guess they're trying to merge these in with genuine Paypal payments in the hope the people receiving them are sending lots of payments.

Makes sense.

I've sent them all to Paypal though, no idea what they can do about it though, the links are different on each email.

What a bunch of imbeciles. :rolleyes:

Paypal will NEVER ask you to reset the password. Only if your account has been comprimised by someone else.

Correct.

Phishing basically means the art of baiting someone to release his confidential data to a party assumed as trustworthy.

And one of the main elements in phishing is email spoofing. Good copy is another. Then comes the rapid steps of wiping victims' accounts clean. Finally, covering their tracks ... ASAP.

From news I read, Scammers seemed to know weaknesses of their victims pretty well. I can't help in thinking that such scammers are among us, trawling forums to study people's soft-spots, concerns, interests and triggers.

I bet they also do SPLIT-TESTING, just like we all do in IM for PPC, CPM and CPA. .... lol.

Jokes aside, after a dreadful experience of having my PC hijacked, I have been keeping myself updated in online security matters, regularly.

Its anyway easy to spoof as some company or the other. I had once been almost caught off-guard recently - from an email that I had thought to be from Paypal. This was that thread: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ng-attack.html

So yes, attackers can and will go to any extent to make undesirable/illegal money.

It is easy to steal people hard-earn money rather than earning themselves.. No cost, no products, no traffics, just plain cheating.. hit and run...