Advertisement: Free Ad
Recent Notes and Tags
|
paypal phishing - Phishing
| paypal phishingI get so many bogus messages from "paypal" that when I actually get a real one it's hard to tell.What can be done to help stop the bogus messages? |
|  What kind of bogus messages do you get from paypal? I have been using paypal for a long while now and never got any strange messages so that makes me curious that you get some. Could you give me some more details and I will look into it. |
| All kinds of messages that look like they are from paypal, they use paypals graphics and everything. The only difference is if you click the link you will not go to paypal.com. You go to a different website that again looks exactly like paypal. The catch is when you login, you are not logging into paypal, you are sending the criminals your login and password. It is extremely important that for paypal, your banks, etc, you bookmark their sites and NEVER click any link from any email, no matter how legit it looks. ALWAYS you use your bookmarks. Always check the address line to make sure it has the exact web address, ie: www.paypal.com of the site you are using. The funny thing about the bogus paypal messages is I get most of them at email addresses I don't use for paypal. Or messages from banks that I am not a customer of. The emails always make it sound like there is a dire emergency and if you don't follow their instructions you'll lose all your money. Of course if you do go for these emails you WILL lose all your money! |
| I have heard that this is happening to some people signing up for new accounts. I have had my account for at least five years and have personally never had a problem. I heard from one girl that within 5 to 10 minutes of creating her paypal setup she started getting these emails. |
| Wow that is terrifying! I recently started up my paypal account only like... a month ago? No trouble so far, but now i'll make sure to never click on any links and just go to paypal itself to log in, instead of clicking a paypal link via email. Thanks guys! |
| I haven't ever had a problem with my paypal account either. It is a scary thought though if they are getting into our paypal information because I have 2 checking accounts tied to my paypal account. I hope this stops happening. |
#6A highly secure location | I don't think there is anything that you can do. My advice is to never ever log in to an account by clicking on a link in the e-mail. Take note of which organization it's from and log in using your standard technique, i.e. tyhpe in the full URL in the browser and log in via the front page. I never trust a link in an e-mail. |
| It has got to the point where I suspect even legitimate emails from Paypal and ebay and prefer to open a browser and type the URL in rather than click on the link in the email. Takes a bit longer, but at least I know where I am going! Be careful when typing in URL's though. There is a massive business in domain names with URL mis-spellings and you can easily end up on a phishing site like that too! |
| I've had my paypal acct for over 5 years now and have never (knock on wood) had a problem. I have seen a couple emails here and there where obvioulsy I knew it was a scam email but none that I had to do a double take to. |
| Problem is that the real 'professional' phishers are getting cleverer and are dishing up stuff that is hard to tell from the original. Used to be that when one got an email saying 'We are including your username to show that this email is from us' one could trust it. No longer the case. I agree one should always open a fresh browser window and type in the URL if one wants to go to one's account. |
| What about looking at the headers in the email - a detailed analysis will almost always reveal if there is any hanky-panky going on. Admittedly a bit time consuming, but not impossible in cases where there is really the need. |
| Talking about analyzing email headers, this is something I'd like to learn more about. Are there any decent online tutorials or articles that are authoritative and up to date on the subject? I recall reading one last year in PC Magazine, but I can't locate it anymore. |
| The best way to learn is to view the options on an e-mail in Outlook and then you will see the headers. You can scan what IP it came from, etc. Extremely useful for detective work. |
| Right, the options is where I look. I have heard though that certain of the information in the headers can be forged. I actually read the article on this in PC Magazine too, and they mentioned that it is possible to determine the validity of the sender from certain portions of the header information. Unfortunately I can't remember exactly which it was though :) |
| I recently signed onto my PAYPAL account using Explorer 6 which I always use and got a PAYPAL form asking me for my name, address, social security and credit card information. The address line is www.paypal.com. It didn't come from an email but popped up when I logged onto my account saying that my account will be locked until I submit the info. I went to another browser and I was able to log into my account like usual. This is very scary. Anyone who has similar situations? |
| I hate pop-ups and scammers it's so messed up that people do this sort of stuff. I'm always afraid to by anything off the internet, it's such a shame. |
#16anonymous of course ;) | ok, @comments no. 10, 11, 12 and 13 > looking at the header of the email will only give u the ip address of the sender of the email which most of the time is a proxy(fake) ip address, professional spammers/phishers use fake emailing services (generally by hosting a php script)so that the senders' email address, ip address, name, subject can be altered to meet the spammer's requirements. A proxy(fake) address will lead u to nowhere..... i have made phishing pages and used spamming services to understand them (but never used them for bad intentions). A basic spamming tool used is a page like this, hxxp:// spam2eer.sp. ohost.de/ spammer.php (replace xx with tt and remove the spaces) take a look here if u don't understand the language, hxxp:// i42.tinypic. com/ckkfq.png Sadly it is very easy to make phishing pages and spam them, hotmail, gmail, yahoomail, aolmail, etc. have powerful anti spam services but are pretty useless when "fresh" spamming tools are used and thus the "fake" email enters into the inbox instead of the junk folder of you email. I would advice u people to never trust almost any email, as some of the above comments said log in into your account only from the home page of the site. Don't click on any email links and even if u do please do check the address bar for the link to which u have been directed. I hope this comment has proved to be useful to everybody... |
Reply Options Share your opinions, advice, questions or comments on this post. | You must a registered user and logged in to use this feature: It is quick easy and offers many advantages when using our site. |
Social NetworkingShare this with your friends on facebook, twitter and Google+ | | Social sharing because it feels good:
| |
|
Tags and TaggingTags help organize related posts and resources by topic. | |
|
• Privacy RSS Feeds
