I received the following email from PayPal last night (click on the picture to enlarge). It was labeled “PayPal Notification: Your account has been flagged”. What seems to be the problem, I thought. I was deeply concerned since this is the first such notice I received from them after my enrollment last year. But upon careful inspection, my concern gradually turned into suspicion. What immediately caught my eye was the highlighted link in the middle of the email. Then I remembered reports I read on the internet and saw in the news about email scams asking its recipients to click on a link to confirm the email account! Fearing that it was such, I immediately opened the PayPal website on another tab and read through their security tips. It said there that PayPal always addresses its members by their complete registered names and not as “Dear PayPal User” or “Dear PayPal Member”. My suspicion was right, it was a bogus notice!

Following instructions from the security page, I forwarded the bogus email to spoof@paypal.com and left it untouched afterwards. About an hour later, I received this reply:

Thank you for writing to PayPal regarding the email message you received that appeared to be from eBay.

As you may have already suspected, this email was not sent by eBay. These emails, commonly referred to as spoofs, are sent by fraudulent sources posing as eBay in an attempt to collect sensitive financial information or passwords.

Please know that PayPal and eBay are committed to the security of our sites and our members. We review every report we receive and forward all vital information on to the appropriate authorities for further action and tracking. We work actively and aggressively in partnership with many agencies, ISP's, and law enforcement groups to support their investigation of these fraudulent entities. As a public company, we rely on the same agencies you do to pursue these fraudulent activities. You may also wish to contact your ISP or email service provider for further information or instructions.

Now that you have received a spoofed email, your email address has been collected by a fraudulent source. As a result, you may continue to receive spoofed emails for some time as these groups move from ISP to web hosting sites setting up fraudulent email addresses, fake sites, and sending spoofed emails. PayPal and eBay have enacted several preventative measures and have provided increased information that is available on both sites help pages to help educate our members in spotting fake emails.

In the future, we advise you to be very cautious of any email appearing to be from eBay or PayPal that asks you to submit financial information such as your credit card number or any type of password. As for eBay, they will never ask you for certain financial information such as passwords, bank account or credit card numbers, Personal Identification Numbers (PINs), or Social Security numbers in an email. All sensitive information should be submitted on a secure page located on the eBay or PayPal site.

If you have any doubt about whether an email message is from PayPal, please forward it immediately to spoof@paypal.com. For eBay spoofed emails, please forward those to spoof@ebay.com. Please do not respond to it or click on any of the links in the email message. Please do not change the subject line or edit the email in any way.

If you have already entered sensitive information as mentioned above, you should take immediate action to protect your identity and online accounts. If you only clicked on a link inside of a spoofed email, you may also want to run a security scan on your computer. eBay has a help page with valuable information regarding the steps you should take to protect yourself. Below is a link to this page:

http://pages.ebay.com/securitycenter/index.html

Once again, thank you for alerting us to the spoofed email you received. Your vigilance helps us ensure that PayPal and eBay remain a safe and vibrant online marketplace.

Sincerely,
PayPal Account Review Department
PayPal, an eBay Company

If you have been victimized by fake email or any similar notices from PayPal, eBay or your bank or credit card, report it at once so that proper remedial measures can be done. Even if you have clicked the link provided, it may not be too late. And if you receive such notices in the future, don’t click on any link provided. Immediately contact PayPal or your bank to confirm the validity of the notice.

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