Saturday, October 29, 2011

Your PayPal account has been limited

Recently, I have received two emails from PayPal.  I will include them below but basically they both say that I need to follow their link to "update" my account.  One claims there has been some strange activity on a credit card tied to my PayPal account, while the other just needs me to verify some of my account information.

Here are the two emails, I will show what is wrong with them below:
**********************************************************************************

Warning Notification
Dear PayPal Costumer,
It has come to our attention that your PayPal® account information needs to be updated as part of our continuing commitment to protect your account and to reduce the instance of fraud on our website. If you could please take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and update your personal records you will not run into any future problems with the online service.


However, failure to update your records will result in account suspension. Please update your records before oct 30 , 2011.
Once you have updated your account records, your PayPal® account activity will not be interrupted and will continue as normal.

Click here to update your PayPal account  (I removed the link)

**********************************************************************************

Dear PayPal Member:

Attention! Your PayPal account has been limited!

As part of our security measures, we regularly screen activity in the PayPal system.We recently contacted you after noticing an issue on your account.We requested information from you for the following reason:

Our system detected unusual charges to a credit card linked to your PayPal account.

Reference Number: PP-259-187-991

This is the Last reminder to log in to PayPal as soon as possible. Once you log in, you will be provided with steps to restore your account access.

Once you log in, you will be provided with steps to restore your account access. We appreciate your understanding as we work to ensure account safety.
Click here to activate your account (I removed the link)

We thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. Please understand that this is a security measure intended to help protect you and your account. We apologise for any inconvenience..

Sincerely,
PayPal Account Review Department

Copyright ? 1999-2011 PayPal. All rights reserved. PayPal Ltd. PayPal FSA 
 Register Number: 226056.
Right-click here to download pictures. To help protect your privacy, Outlook prevented automatic download of this picture from the Internet. PayPal Email ID PP059

Protect Your Account Info
Make sure you never provide your password to fraudulent websites.

To safely and securely access the PayPal website or your account, open a new web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer or Netscape) and type in the PayPal login page (http://paypal.com/) to be sure you are on the real PayPal site.

For more information on protecting yourself from fraud, please review our Security Tips at https://www.paypal.com/us/securitytips
Protect Your Password
You should never give your PayPal password to anyone.

*********************************************************************************

First of all, I don't have a PayPal account so I know these are fake.  Here are the problems with these emails.
  1. Both emails did not have any names listed in the "to:" field.  Financial institutions will not send out blanket emails to their customers.
  2. The links in both emails went to other locations.  One to scattertones and the other to hayesauto.  (Always mouse over a link before you click it to see where you are really going.)
  3. There were miss spelled words in both emails, Costumers instead of Customers in the first and apologise instead of apologize in the second.
  4. Valid companies will not send unsolicited links to their customers.  If you did not initiate this action don't follow a link.  (Sometimes a company will send you a link to reset your password if you tell them that you forgot it.  This is initiated by you.)
  5. The second email even tried to act like the real thing by putting a fraud warning on it.  Take their advice and go to the real website, don't follow the link.
The people who make these emails send out hundreds or even thousands at a time hoping for even one credit card account to steal from.
If you have received something like this and followed a link, contact PayPal and freeze your account.  Also find an Anti-Spyware program and clean up your computer.  If you need help with this please contact me: www.DuanesReliableComputerServices.com





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