Paypal Scam

[Firefly]

Be aware that there is a Paypal scam out there, an email is sent to your email address, purporting to be from Paypal, telling you that you have sent an amount to a company for the sum of £....., in my case £55.00. It has all the appearance of being genuine, so of course you will query it knowing you have not made the transaction. This is a scam, delete it.

Jackie

[trevnhil]

Whilst recognising it as a no genuine message, how do they get money from that message ? Do they ask for your bank details (Which they have) to refund your money?

[Dominic]

Normally the scam works by getting your paypal details. A good scam would work like this:

1. You get an email referring to a transaction. There is a link in the email which you can click to take you to Paypal.

2. You click the link, and get taken to a site that looks like Paypal. You enter your username and password.

3. Nothing happens, or if they are really good, you get a form asking for your information. It matters not, the key thing is, they have got your username and password.

4. They log on to Paypal using your credentials, and send money from your account to somebody else.

Most people receiving the email will just bin it. However, every so often it will be sent to somebody who has had an issue with their paypal account. They will be more likely to respond, because they will be expecting or fearing a message like that anyway.

[J B]

Most people receiving the email will just bin it..

Nah!

I always fill them in with spurious info, just to annoy the scammers!!

[PaphosAL]

ALL genuine emails from PayPal are addressed to YOU, by username. If the incoming mail pretending to be from PayPal does not carry your name, then it's a Russian, Nigerian or Chinese scam and fraud!

Report it to PayPal fraud (right click and copy message source) then delete it. Do NOT open it, and on no account click on any links in it !!!

AL

[PhotoLady]

PayPal write to you using your Registered name as you provided it - ie: First, Middle and Surname.
Your Username is usually something completely different (a nickname or email address).

[Dominic]

Most people receiving the email will just bin it..

Nah!

I always fill them in with spurious info, just to annoy the scammers!!

You shouldn't do that. You may well be identifying your email address as "live", and you will be more likely to get targetted in the future.

[trevnhil]

PayPal write to you using your Registered name as you provided it - ie: First, Middle and Surname.
Your Username is usually something completely different (a nickname or email address).

I agree, Emails I have had from them are to my personal name, Not a user name.

[PhotoLady]

Exactly, Trev..... the real name you have registered on their system - NOT your "Username"

[trevnhil]

Yes, my personal name..
Here is part of their recent email to me

" How do I know this is not a fake email?

An email really coming from PayPal will address you by your first and last names or your business name. It will not ask you for sensitive information like your password, bank account or credit card details. Most fake emails threaten that your account will be in jeopardy if you do not take action immediately. An email that urgently requests you to supply sensitive personal information is usually an attempt at fraud. Also, fake emails often contain misspellings and grammatical errors or are written in a language which you did not set as preferred for your PayPal account. Remember not to click any links in suspicious looking emails. "

[JimX]

I stopped using PayPal (Ebay) after my card details found their way into crooks hand in the US, they took several hundreds of £'s out of my UK bank, fortunately Lloyds paid back the cash into my account in minutes, I had to have a new Visa card and destroy the one I used for PayPal, I can only say give PayPay a wide birth, sad because it is or was very convenient.

[darrow]

I stopped using PayPal (Ebay) after my card details found their way into crooks hand in the US, they took several hundreds of £'s out of my UK bank, fortunately Lloyds paid back the cash into my account in minutes, I had to have a new Visa card and destroy the one I used for PayPal, I can only say give PayPay a wide birth, sad because it is or was very convenient.

i had a similar experience. 3 lots of €40 taken in the middle of the night from 3 different countries, so i assume they were working together. i was too late to stop 2 transactions but got the last stopped. the bank stopped my card and issued a new one. it took about 5 weeks to get the money back and i closed the paypal account as soon as it was! i was annoyed it didn't seem to flag any unusual activity, because i only used it for sterling purchases. not as safe as they make it out to be.

[PhotoLady]

Been using PayPal for buying and selling both on eBay and our business website with UK accounts and Cyprus accounts since 2003. Never had a problem with funds, scamming or theft.

It's by far the simplest method for cross border payments for our business. We have a few customers who buy from us in Turkey but PayPal can no longer be used there. We receive funds via bank transfer from those. It takes longer though....

[Uncle D]

A few months ago I had an email supposedly from Paypal stating that I needed to change my password and click on the link. I ignored it and went in through my normal procedure, there was no message on the site stating the same, so I suspect that it was a scam.

[JimX]

Your very lucky Jules many of us have problems, and why I will never use PayPal again personally. One now to avoid and I will.

[Dominic]

You probably do still use Paypal Jim, without realising it. Lots of online transactions use a payment gateway called Braintree. This is run by Paypal, though the customer will never know.

To be honest, most of the security breaches occur because the customer's PC is infected with something dodgy. I am not suggesting that happened to anybody here, but in such instances, there isn't a lot the companies can do to prevent it, other than be vigilant.

Nat West were excellent at this. Twice I got targetted by fraudsters. Both times, the first thing I knew about it was that my card had stopped working. Going online revealed that Natwest had stopped it because they had detected unusual activity. In both cases, the money was refunded with zero hassle. I was actually impressed with how their online team handled everything. Banks get a lot of stick these days, but on this issue they were really on the ball.

[JimX]

I have had no problems with PayPal Dom since deciding to ditch the service, and have no intentions of rejoining PayPal again, my bank Lloyds said they were the problem as far as they could tell. I have had two new PCs and new software so I do not think it is infected in any way, with my particular PCs, OK with Amazon either UK or indeed DE, I will continue to use my debit card with this company who I trust, unlike PayPal that I don't!.

[Firefly]

It seems to me that we never can tell if email are genuine, the scammers are becoming more and more clever, we will be going back to cash in the hand payments soon, seems you can't trust anyone, sign of the times I suppose.

Jackie

[Galini]

Whenever I get an email from any financial institution I always access my account by going in through my browser in the normal way. If a message is genuine they will either have put a duplicate of the message in my personal inbox , where this facility is present, OR there should be a public notice or announcement on the website. Failing that, I send THEM a message from within their own official website asking if the email is genuine.
I NEVER, EVER use any link included in an email

[cyprusmax47]

I got a email this morning from Yahoo (perhaps) saying: : Important security information for Yahoo users, starting with: "Dear Max, we are writing to update you about a data security...."
I wonder if I should open it, as I can see also that there is a attachment to it ?

Max