Note: “Please do not follow the links on this article”
Today I got an email from Paypal that someone had tried to access my paypal account from a foreign location and I should login to verify that I was the original user of the account and all my resources were in tact. Here’s an excerpt from the mail:
From: “PayPal”
<accounts@paypal.us>
Subject: Notification from Billing Department
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2007 17:44:44 -0500“We recently noticed one or more attempts to log in to your PayPal account from a foreign IP address.
If you recently accessed your account while traveling, the unusual log in attempts may have been initiated by you. However if you are the rightful holder of the account,click on the link below to log into the account and follow the instructions.
https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_login-run
If you choose not to complete the request, you give us no choice but to suspend your account temporary.
It takes at least 72 hours for the investigation in this case and we strongly recommend you to verify your account at that time.”
I got suspected and immediately followed the link to see if there was a problem with my account. I was just about to login when I sensed something odd in the webpage. I investigated and saw that this site didn’t look like the original paypal site. To my surprise, it was one of those scam sites. It’s URL was not of paypal. The URL was like this:
http://www.submarine.ws/sitemap/cgi-bin/webscrcmd=_login-run/update.php
The favicon of the scam site was also different from the original paypal site.
See the red circling, it is the favicon of the scam site:
And here is the original paypal site favicon:
And another interesting thing is that all the links in that fake webpage just loops back to that page again. All the certificates at the end of the web page lead to no where but to that page again:
So they are not real. They are only there to deceive the user.
And the most important thing is that the scam site does not use HTTPS while the original paypal site always uses HTTPS for security.
Conclusion
Please be aware of these types of scams. They will only hurt you in ways you’ll never notice. Always be sure about the source of the website you’re opening. Always keep an eye on the URL and the inside links of the login page. And see the webpages deeply as scams have slightly different layouts than the original websites.
Comments
7 responses to “Someone Is Stealing Your Paypal Account, Beware!!”
Thanks for the heads up mate~ though i don’t have my Paypal verified:(
Khushal, is it necessary to verify the paypal account to get it to working state?
Well actually you have to verify in order to get all the limits lifted from your paypal account, if your account is not verified than there is a one time limit for the amount of money you can send/receive in transactions and once the given amount or limit is met, Paypal applies limits to your account~
It works even without verifying but you can only receive and you cannot withdraw to a bank account,~
Well, that’s not good because paypal isn’t working in Pakistan. So better luck for Pakistanis for some other service.
We always have MoneyBookers as an alternative and a better one but the problem is that Paypal has the old market captured and old and new ones prefer it.
Please discontinue any account I have with you. To my knowledge I have never been a paypal member and do not wish to be.
William Loomis (docjeanie@aol.com]
Hi Guys,
Thanks for your info on finding my “Folder Options”. As a lecturer of basic Computer skills, my students had to make folders in which to put their files. Due to a virus (Either Worm or Trojan horse) the folders were converted to “System folders” and therefore were not visible. You can imagine the horror when I thought I had lost their work. I ran a virus scan through my flash drive to discover it was reading the folders I thought I had lost. I then realised they were there but not visible. I discovered that some computers had the Folder options and some did not. All the computers in our lab where ghosted off one hard drive so how come they were different – obviously a virus. I chose 12 computers in our lab at random and discovered 50% had the options and 50% did not.
My office PC had the options but my Laptop did not so I could not mark the student’s work on the Laptop.
Now that I have my Folder options back I have dis-abled the “View System files and folders” and can now see the folders.
Thanks for the help