This Convincing PayPal Email Is Actually a Scam

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The crooks are once again usurped by Paypal and try to encourage users to give access to their accounts and their money. The latest email campaign alerts the recipients of a new (false) transaction and payment profile and urges them to take measures to create their account.

I have personally been targeted by this scam, which has convincing elements and several red flags.

Paypal account profile scam

At first glance, this email really seems to come from Paypal: the sender’s address is the service[at]paypal[dot]com, a legitimate paypal area, and PayPal.com is listed in the signed field. However, the crooks are able to browse the email in the “From” field to make it legitimate when it is not the case. The layout is relatively like other Paypal emails, including the brand’s brand and footer. If you fly over the links, including the action button to “configure your profile”, they seem to go to a real Paypal site.

Credit: Emily Long

After that, however, there are almost only red flags. The message is not sent to me – instead of my name and my email, it was sent to an address [at]truestate.org and with the greeting “Hello, receives34532.” As Malwarebytes Labs points out, the crooks will establish distribution lists to send bulk phishing emails, the messages are therefore not addressed to individual targets. Also note that legitimate companies, including Paypal, will solve you with your real name, not an alias or a generic greeting.

The rest of the content of the message does not really make sense, and it does not line up with the action that you are invited to take. He also uses common scam tactics such as emergency (the link should expire in 24 hours) and catchy details (a large sum of money and a vague reference to cryptocurrency). The phone number was also reported at the Better Business Office as a Paypal skill.

Obviously, you should not engage with this, but if you have done so, you would probably be invited to add a secondary user to your PayPal account, which gives them access to emission payments using your information.

How to keep your paypal account secure

At this stage, it is difficult to trust any communication concerning account security or financial transactions. Schools are able to browse or identify increasingly convincing people and organizations, often supported by AI, so you should not believe an email (or a telephone call) simply because the sender looks legitimate.

You must continue to be wary of messages that seem urgent or invoke strong emotions. Instead of engaging with these emails, texts, messages on social networks and calls, delete them-and go directly to the website or application and connect to your account to display all relevant alerts, or contact the company using information listed on official channels.

You can also search for the phone number or an email in the BBB sword tracker to see if someone reported it as fraudulent. And if possible, activate multi-factory authentication on your accounts as an additional safety layer.