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The PayPal Scam Explained
Ever since I became a Powerseller on eBay I receive dozens of PayPal phishing emails a week, sometimes dozens of them a day. I also frequent the discussion boards on eBay, as I find it satisfying to help other new eBay sellers with various difficulties surrounding setting up shop on eBay. The PayPal scam is one that comes up in discussion so often that I finally wrote a new seller guide for eBay that includes sections on becoming a bigger phishing target when you decide to sell items on eBay.
Becoming a bigger target doesn't make you more susceptible to becoming a phishing victim. In order for the PayPal scam or other phishing scams to work the target must click on links to a bogus site, and most importantly, he or she must input sensitive information before anything bad can happen. As long as you spot these emails and do not access your personal accounts through email, you'll be fine.
There are several ways to spot a PayPal scam email. First of all, any email from PayPal will not have spelling or grammar mistakes. Many times phishing scam emails will be written in very bad English. Second, an IP address in the links is also a clue that the email is likely to be a scam.
PayPal will always
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include a personalized greeting in their emails to you, and never a generic greeting such as “Dear PayPal User,”. This is a dead giveaway that the email did not originate from PayPal.
More elaborate PayPal phishing emails will contain PayPal logos and other official images called directly from the actual PayPal website. While this adds some level of credibility to some targets, it's easy to understand how easily images can be faked in this way.
I've seen some really good PayPal scam emails where there is personalized information in the greeting, the wording is exactly as PayPal would say things and even the visible text in the hyperlinks seems legitimate. So how can you possibly spot a PayPal scam email like this? It's really easy, and performing this check will always reveal the illegitimacy of a phishing email. Simply right lick on the hyperlink and view its properties. If the link points to anywhere other than Paypal.com it's a fake and should be forwarded to spoof@paypal.com. Don't be fooled by sub domains, such as paypal.scam.com. Make sure that the URL has the company name right before the .com or .net. Better yet, don't ever access your PayPal account via an email link. Just go there and log in.
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