Urgent: don't get caught by this hoax
publication date: Feb 26, 2007
Hello,
I rarely take chance to email you between weekly eLetters
(Wednesday, of course) but there is something you need to
know which I won't rest until I get this message to you.
There is a hoax doing the rounds which is very plausible,
very easy to fall prey to. I know how easy it is to fall into the
particular trap contained in an email currently doing the
rounds because both myself and my PowerSeller daughter
got caught up in the problem only this morning.
In short, I don't want you to do the same.
You will probably already have received an email,
purportedly from PayPal, with this heading:
'Account Limited (Followed by your PayPal email address)'
Inside the email it reads:
----------------------
'It has come to our attention that your PayPal Billing
Information records are out of date. That requires you to
update the Billing Information.
Once you have updated your account records, your PayPal
session will not be interrupted and will continue as normal.
Failure to update will result in cancellation of service, Terms
of Service (TOS) violations or future billing
problems.
Please update your billing records
(then a link follows)
---------------------------
More than two things tell me this is a hoax, but the most
important indicators are:
1) PayPal would never address you as 'Dear (Your Paypal
email address)', they always address you by name, in my
case 'Dear Avril Harper'.
2) Bottom of your computer screen you will see the LOCK
symbol associated with a secure site such as PayPal is
missing when the email is opened.
Here's the best advice: Delete the email right away and do
not, DO NOT, click on any links inside the email, or in any
email supposedly from paypal, or ebay, that does not
address you by name and which does not contain the lock
symbol bottom right of your computer screen.
DO NOT EVER click on links inside any email that takes you
through to another page to provide your sign in details for
eBay or Paypal, same goes for any site to which you are
asked to provide secret passwords such as often happens in
bogus emails supposedly coming from your bank or credit
card provider.
ALWAYS, ALWAYS, enter any online account of any type by
going direct to the main site by keying the url into your
browser.
ANOTHER WARNING: always key the site url - domain
name - afresh into your browser, do not use domain names
stored on your browser to access a site as these could be
the fake urls used by the scam company.
Thank you for your time reading this email.
I'll be in touch with my regular email on Wednesday.
Until then,
Avril
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