How I caught a Paypal phishing mail

Having written an article titled ‘10 cool ways to use Paypal‘ on Mashable, I expect myself to be a bit smart using the service Thankfully I managed to save face four times.

Recently I received four phishing mails with the subject ‘Critical Information Regarding Your Account’. The emails were designed to look like they were from Paypal. The contents read:
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Dear PayPal member

You have recently updated your PayPal account according to our standard security procedures. Unfortunately the update procedure failed because some of the information you provided was incorrect.

Please take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and update your personal records.

However, failure to update your records will result in account suspension.

To update your PayPal records click on the following link:
Some link….http://

Thank You.
PayPal Service Department
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The first time I received the email, I ignored it. But when I received a similar mail for the fourth time, I thought I should just check it out properly. Two odd things I observed while reading it:

1. Although the sender’s display name was Paypal, the email domain was ‘ipaypal’.

2. The link mentioned on the mail was http://www.paypal.com/………., but when I hover my mouse over the link, my Firefox’s status bar showed me the actual link, which starts with something like http://ogk-d………

I forwarded the mail to spoof@paypal.com and they confirmed it was a phishing mail (email attempts to steal your identity, password, or other financial information). You can visit Paypal’s Security Center to learn more.

Related post: Withdraw Paypal money in Indian bank account now

This entry was posted on November 06th, 2007 and is filed under paypal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.