Source: MSNBC
I’ve received several of these emails at my three different email accounts. I only use one of them when I am buying or selling on eBay.
When I received an email from PayPal at my other two email accounts, I knew it was a scam. Unfortunately many other folks don’t know it’s a scam. Take for instance the PayPal user quoted in an MSNBC article. What looked to her like PayPal’s web site actually wasn’t.
The e-mail looks like it’s from PayPal, the online payment service Lisa DiBello uses when she’s buying and selling online.
It alerts the user that, “A new e-mail address has been added to your account.” It also has a “protect your password” warning.
“I knew I hadn’t added any new e-mail addresses, but the part that really got me suspicious said, ‘If you did not authorize that email, click on this link,’” DiBello said.
The link went to a web site that looked like the real PayPal, but there were some hints it was phony.
“It was the exact same template as PayPal uses, and that’s what really scares me, because unless you had noticed it’s ‘https’ versus ‘http,’ everything else is the same,” DiBello said.
When she clicked on the various icons, DiBello said, “It redirects you to the page they want you to fill out. They want you to give your e-mail and they want you to give your password.”
The goal of this scam is to hijack PayPal accounts. The thieves can use the accounts to buy something from an online seller.