Email scams looking for bank and paypal info.

I am just wondering if I am the only one getting these by the dozen every day. The first one I got was from my own bank and I really had to look at it at first before I realized that it was not real. But now I am getting them from banks I have never heard of saying that I need to verify my account info and such.

Just now I got one from paypal. I am paisting it below. The funny part is, the sender must have coppied over everything in paypal to make this look legit. There is part of this that says that you should never give out your info to 3rd party sites and it even states that anything related to paypal will start with www.paypal.com...

But when you hower over the link they give you, it goes to skiplanet.com

Now, I am not going to fall for one of these things and have my identity stolen but it bothers me that there are a lot of people out there that will get scammed. I have seen several news stories about this lately and I can't help but wonder if there is anything that can be done.

Here is the email I got.








PayPal Verification System!

Dear PayPal Member

PayPal is committed to maintaining a safe environment for its community of buyers and sellers. To protect the security of your account, PayPal employssome of the most advanced security systems in the world and our anti-fraud teams regularly screen the PayPal system for unusual activity.

Recently, our Account Review Team identified some unusual activity in your account. In accordance with PayPal's User Agreement and to ensure that your account has not been compromised, access to your account was limited.
Youraccount access will remain limited until this issue has been resolved.
This is a fraud prevention measure meant to ensure that your account is not compromised.

In order to secure your account and quickly restore full access, we may require some specific information from you for the following reason:

We would like to ensure that your account was not accessed by an unauthorized third party. Because protecting the security of your account is our primary concern, we have limited access to sensitive PayPal accountfeatures.

We understand that this may be an inconvenience but please
understand that this temporary limitation is for your protection.

Should access to your account remain limited for an extended period of time, it may result in further limitations on the use of your account or may result in eventual account closure.


Click here to restore your paypal full access



[this is where the ski-planet link was]


Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. Please understand that this is a security measure meant to help protect you and your account.
We apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,
PayPal Account Review Department

PayPal Email ID PP522



Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and choose the "Help" link in the footer of any page.

To receive email notifications in plain text instead of HTML, update your preferences here.


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

A genuine PayPal link will always begin with https://www.paypal.com/.

Remember to check your browser's Address/URL Bar to be sure you are on the real PayPal site.

If the URL does not begin with https://www.paypal.com/, you are not on a PayPal page.
PayPal will never ask you to enter your password in an email.

For more information on protecting yourself from fraud, please see the Security Center.


Protect Your Password
You should never give your PayPal password to anyone, including PayPal employees.






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These "phishing" scams suck... unfortunately loads of people fall for them. AOL (LOL ) recently said that as much as 5% of recipients are clicking through on them (spammers paradise ) It's OK, I've had loads too, even from stupid banks I've never heard of... and they do *look* legit. The trick is in the anchor text looking like a genuine *whomsoever* URL - just hover over and see what appears in the status bar or check the headers/view source whatever.

Best thing to do is just bin them Or if you have time, report them. Though if you are gonna check 'em out Mozilla Thunderbird is a cracking little email client - good security features, easy to view source + headers etc. Don't know what I did without it all these years...

 

These have been going on for a long time. Ebay, PayPal, banks etc... The trick is if you even have an inkling that they might be genuine, access the site in question by typing the sites URL directly in your browser ie. paypal.com and check it out. Never click on any links from the email itself. Better safe than sorry. And it's also a good idea to report these by forwarding them to spoof at paypal dot com.

 

i always reply 'Fu A$$hole'

 

Thats funny, and a good idea.

 

It is though I don't know if you want to let the "phisher" know he has found a valid email address which could send many more junk emails your way.

 

TYeah, that is funny, but like teamshop says, if it gets back to some spammer and they take offence, they can quite easily bombard you with more... so take it easy

 

Crap, I've had those.