A Fearful Attempt at Paypal Fraud...

[14 of spades]

hey all,

 

very aggressive attempt at stealing ID. just got this in my inbox. correct "letter head" of paypal present - as well as the seemingly authentic xxx@paypal.com address.

 

i "know" it's not real cause there's red flags just all over the place (there are blanks on the form where the cursor goes for you to put your information - no way paypal would need to reverify all that CC info etc.) - and notice the english error in the text - but geez - these attempts at fraud are really becoming more agressive. this LOOKS authentic. i also wonder how they got my real email address.

 

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

From : Paysecurity paysecurity@paypal.com address.

 

i "know" it's not real cause there's red flags just all over the place (there are blanks on the form where the cursor goes for you to put your information - no way paypal would need to reverify all that CC info etc.) - and notice the english error in the text - but geez - these attempts at fraud are really becoming more agressive. this LOOKS authentic. i also wonder how they got my real email address.

 

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

From : Paysecurity

 

Dear PayPal Customer

 

This e-mail is the notification of recent innovations taken by PayPal to detect inactive customers and non-functioning mailboxes.

 

The inactive customers are subject to restriction and removal in the next 3 months.

 

Please confirm your email address and and Credit Card info number by logging in to your PayPal account using the form below: (cursor-led blanks here for you to fill in your info)

 

Email Address:

Password:

Full Name #:

Credit Card #:

Exp.Date(mm/yyyy) #:

ATM PIN (For Bank Verification) #:

 

(button here saying submit)

 

This notification expires May 31, 2003

 

Thanks for using PayPal!

 

This PayPal notification was sent to your mailbox. Your PayPal account is set up to receive the PayPal Periodical newsletter and product updates when you create your account. To modify your notification preferences and unsubscribe, go to https://www.paypal.com/PREFS-NOTI and log in to your account. Changes to your preferences may take several days to be reflected in our mailings. Replies to this email will not be processed.

 

If you previously asked to be excluded from Providian product offerings and solicitations, they apologize for this e-mail. Every effort was made to ensure that you were excluded from this e-mail. If you do not wish to receive promotional e-mail from Providian, go to http://removeme.providian.com/.

 

Copyright© 2002 PayPal Inc. All rights reserved. Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners.

 

[PedigreeMan]

These fraud attempts are blatantly obvious if you know what to check:

 

Namely, examine the headers of the dubious email message for where it really originated from. The headers are that nasty looking text block found at the front of every email that most mail readers hide attempt to hide from you. To get at them depends on what software you use -- Mozilla (and I assume Netscape) is simply View->Headers->All under the mail/news reader window ... Microshaft Outlook appears to be some nasty combination of opening the email (danger danger) and then going to View->Options.

 

Look for the lines that begin with `Received: from'. This will tell you all the servers the email had to traverse before it got to your machine. Chances are if the message originated from some box in Russia (.ru) or Czechoslovakia (.cz), it's not an authentic Paypal one!

 

Al

[tb]

I received the same message today - unable to find any info at PayPal's security center. Scary.