Don’t Fall For This Paypal Phishing Scam!

Hope everyone is having a great weekend! Just wanted to write a quick post warning you about this Paypal email scam/spam that I received yesterday.

DON’T FALL FOR THIS PAYPAL PHISHING SCAM

If you have a Paypal account, and many of us do, please don’t fall for this phishing scam. Phishing is when bad people try to fool victims into thinking they are going to a legitimate site where the victims unknowingly hand over sensitive information to phishers.

On the surface, the email seems legit – the subject sounds legitimate and scary, it sounds all official, and there are no glaring grammatical errors.

Reading the email alarmed me for the first 5 seconds until common sense took over and I realized that the email was a scam.

1. Taking a deeper look, I realized the email address was wrong. It says:  [email protected] but it’s actually, ([email protected]). Whenever you get emails like this, double check the email address by looking at the Header details. Even if it looks legit (email addresses can be spoofed), continue to be skeptical.
2. The email address where this email was sent is the wrong email address (my PayPal account uses a different email address).
3. Companies don’t usually ask you to fill up a form online via email link for these kinds of issues. They usually ask you to go to their website, log in to your account, and make the changes there; or call their customer service.
4. The .htm attachment is very suspicious. I did not even open it. Companies like these don’t usually send attachments, and if they do, it’s usually in PDF format.

Kudos to Outlook.com for catching this and putting it in the Junk folder. I only saw this because I always check my Junk folder, because Outlook.com has sometimes mistakenly classified legitimate emails as Junk.

Here’s the text of the phishing email:

Identity Issue PP-658-119-347
Secure Transaction
Please complete the attached form to verify your Profile information and restore your account access.

Personal Information Profile

Make sure you enter the information accurately, and according to the formats required.
Fill in all the required fields.

Dear customer ,

As part of our efforts to provide a safe and secure environment for the online community, we regularly screen account activity. Our review of your account has identified an issue regarding its safe use. We have placed a restriction on your account as a precaution.

To lift the restriction we will require some further information from you.

If, once we review your further information and we’re confident that the use of your account does not present a safety risk to our service and customers, we’ll be happy to reinstate your account.

We have sent you an attachment which contains all the necessary steps in order to restore your account access. Download and open it in your browser. After we have gathered the necessary information, you will regain full access to your account.
We thank you for your prompt attention

Very sincerely,
PayPal Review Department