<p>Dear PayPal Member,
This email confirms that you have paid blahblah.com $189.95 USD using PayPal.
This credit card transaction will appear on your bill as “PAYPAL *blahblah”.</p>
<p>Receipt Number: xxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx
Note:
If you haven’t authorized this charge ,click the link below to dispute transaction
and get full refund
Dispute transaction (Encrypted Link )
*SSL connection:
PayPal automatically encrypts your confidential information
in transit from your computer to ours using the Secure
Sockets Layer protocol (SSL) with an encryption key length
of 128-bits (the highest level commercially available)</p>
<p>Keep your Receipt Number (shown above) for future reference. You will need to refer to this number if you need customer service from ResearchAnyone.com or from PayPal.</p>
<p>If you have questions about your purchase, such as shipping and tracking, we encourage you to contact the seller, blahblah.com at <a href="mailto:sales@blahblah.com">sales@blahblah.com</a>.</p>
<p>If you have been unable to resolve your questions with the merchant, PayPal offers a free buyer complaint resolution service that offers a quick, easy resolution to your concerns. It covers physical goods purchases made through PayPal, and is offered at no charge when you register for a free PayPal account. To sign up for an account, click on the ‘Save My Info’ link above.</p>
<p>Thank you for using PayPal!
The PayPal Team</p>
<p>Please do not reply to this email. Email sent to this address cannot be answered.</p>
<p>I get annoying paypal email also. Paypal is used by spamers. I would not open any of those links. I would suggest that you actually go to the paypal website and sign in as you normally do and look for any activity that has transpired on your account, if not then you don’t have anything to worry about. If there is a charge than dispute it in the normal way on the paypal website. BUT definitely DO NOT open the link in your email.</p>
<p>Seconding: DO NOT open any links from that email. Go to PayPal yourself by typing paypal.com in the address bar and check your account for any activity. If there is any unauthorized activity, deal with it THROUGH THE PAYPAL SITE. If not, feel free to delete the message you received as spam, or report it to your email service as phishing.</p>
<p>Don’t click the link. You can forward the email to Paypal and ask them if it’s legit. It likely isn’t.</p>
<p>I actually chased one of these Paypal lookalike scams down a bit when a colleague got one. It essentially was ‘phishing’ for his personal info and the seeming ‘Paypal’ link was really going to someplace in Russia or eastern Europe. He forwarded it to Paypal and they told him it was bogus.</p>
<p>Paypal’s customer service email address is on their website.</p>
<p>DON’T CLICK THE LINK. As others have suggested, log into <a href=“http://www.paypal.com%5B/url%5D”>www.paypal.com</a> and check your History. </p>
<p>I get five or six of these a year, every one a scammer. (I also get legitimate payment notifications from paypal, but these invariably arrive soon after my purchases so there’s no confusion about the charge – and still NO REASON to click on any link in the email.)</p>
<p>so, I checked my paypal account and my bank account and all’s well (so far)</p>
<p>Out of curiousity, what would happen if someone did click on these links? I mean, what kind of information can they get from you clicking, your I.P. address? Unless you actually filled out forms/gave out info. ?</p>
<p>You can get viruses, adware, spyware. The spammers are hoping that one thinks it is legit and you type and supply them with personal info such as bank accounts, credit card info, social security numbers, passwords, etc.</p>
<p>It is probably what is called a ‘phishing scam’ where they are trying to get you to respond and give your account information. Never respond in any way. You can forward the email to <a href="mailto:spoof@paypal.com">spoof@paypal.com</a> where paypal keep track of and try to disable the scams. </p>
<p>The last few weeks I get at least one paypal phishing scam a day.</p>
<p>Spammers are getting very sophisticated…The good ones make very realistic-looking emails, complete with company logos, etc. You should NEVER go to a link you receive in an email, unless it is from some person you know. There are also several bank phishing scams like this…I’ve received several of these paypal scams. We also sold something on ebay, and I made the mistake of clicking on a link from an email the supposed buyer sent, instead of logging in to ebay and looking at messages there. The email was sent from a spammer, and I had to immediately change my ebay password (and hear lectures over and over from H on how I shouldn’t have done that).</p>
<p>As mentioned above, don’t respond in any way…in some cases, mass spam is sent out to a bunch of email accounts, and the way they can verify that yours is a “live” email account is that you responded. Then your email address can be passed along to lots of other spammers.</p>
<p>Forward the email to <a href="mailto:spoof@paypal.com">spoof@paypal.com</a>. Hopefully you did not open any links! If you did you need to run antivirus software on your computer.</p>
<p>I believe authentic PayPal communications to members are always addressed by name, i.e, Dear John Doe. I would forward the entire email to the fraud department at PayPal.</p>
<p>Paypal will ALWAYS use your full name in any e-mail they send you.</p>
<p>For example: Dear Mary K. Smith
NOT: Dear PayPal Member</p>
<p>Whomever it is is “phishing” (the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as user names, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.)</p>
<p>Disregard it. Entirely. The “charge” never happened.</p>
<p>If you click the link, it will take you to a site asking you to log in with your user name and password. That’s all the phishers need to hijack your account. They can even change your password once they have that!</p>
<p>Definitely a scam. I get them from time to time, even though I don’t have a Paypal account. Do not, under any circumstances, respond. Either send it to Paypal or just blast it to hell and gone.</p>
<p>You’ve gotten great advice here. Do NOT open any of the links, and if you did-- IMMEDIATELY change your passwords to your Paypal and credit card accounts. Send the emai you got to the <a href="mailto:spoof@paypal.com">spoof@paypal.com</a> address and they will look at the details of the email. For that matter, you can click the “details” yourself and see where this email originated from.</p>
<p>As the economy gets worse and worse, these scams get more and more brazen.</p>
<p>I hadn’t gotten any “phishing” e-mails for quite awhile, but in the last couple of weeks my accounts are getting filled with them.</p>
<p>One that I loved was from “Mary Dennis” and inside the e-mail it said it was from “Mary Dennas”…poor spammer couldn’t even spell the name right two times in a row!</p>
<p>Good advice here. I would add that these “phishers” often send very convincing looking emails that purport to be from your bank, asking you to update your account information. If in doubt, always type the URL that you KNOW belongs to your financial institution directly into the browser; do not follow email links.</p>
<p>I’ve seen some that claim to be from Amazon also, and I know somebody who got one that even displayed part of their Amazon wish list. Since Amazon wish lists can be viewed by other people, it’s possible for clever scam artists to set up automated programs to “mine” for that information and make their fraudulent emails look very legitimate.</p>
<p>Another offline scam I heard about recently is elderly people getting a phone call saying, “Grandma, it’s So-and-So and I’m in jail in Canada. I’m scared to tell Mom and Dad. Can you wire me bail money?” In this case, the scam artist has gotten some accurate info about a grandchild’s name–possibly from an obituary for Grandpa that listed who he was survived by. It’s appalling how low people will stoop to steal money.</p>