Tonight I had an email " from Paypal" which would clearly have been dangerous if I had done what it asked me to do .

Where the word Société appears near the end, it had come out as
Sociйtй ,

I think this speaks for itself. These emails must originate in Russia (or Serbia, Bulgaria etc). I have seen this before.

So BEWARE !

Newt

Thanks for the warning and for posting this information.

This is certainly a great service to all members of the Delcampe community, especially those of us who regularly use Pay Pal. There are people all over the world who are just waiting for a lapse of vigilance so they can steal our vital information.

Yes... Another major problem is that I had an email from paypal addressed to me by my correct name but which did not seem quite right as the spelling of some words was incorrect . So I enquired with paypal whether or not this was a spoof in the usual way. For once they did not reply.

This indicates to me that there might be a security breach that paypal do not wish to admit to.

From now, therefore, all emails alleged to come from paypal are ignored until they sort themselves out. I access my account directly and daily to check receipts.

As Newt said in the original post that began this thread the email received, although fairly clever, was definitely from a "hacker."

But, I think your idea of checking the account daily is wise, regardless. It could be that Pay Pal itself (the real one) has a security problem, however, I would think to protect themselves they would announce it before it got out of control. They have too much to lose.

I don't know what happens at Paypal, but I don't know if you ever saw this thread:
Vinculo (http)

What I didn't mention in there was, that the automated reply was addressed to my OH, who does not even have a Paypal account.

I queried them about it, but never got a reply.

"did not seem quite right as the spelling of some words was incorrect "

This is often the case, even with material which has definitely come from Paypal or more especially Moneybookers. Frankly, they (especially Moneybookers) seem to employ people from Poland and similar countries quite extensively, as you can see from some of the names with which they sigh communications. And they use them to write important material with, apparently, no native English person checking on what is written. This has the unfortunate result of making the genuine article and the scam difficult to distinguish as a native English speaker otherwise could.

So in your case, it might merely have been embarrassment which prevented anybody from replying.

Newt

Yes that was a possibility.

However, I sent it to pp again last week & they confirmed that it was indeed a phishing mail but made no comment as to how the phishers got my name.

So great care still the order of the day.....

I have received phishing emails with my real name.

One can only assume that the culprits have managed to hack into the email account of someone who has my name and email address in their address book and I do indeed know several people who have had that misfortune.

The action of some viruses is specifically to send emails to the addresses in the address book of the person whose computer is infected.

Every responsible computer user should have an anti-virus programme.
Another important safeguard is that people sending emails to a large number of people who don't know each other,or scarcely know each other (for example, small internet sellers offering their wares, or the secretary of a local society of some kind ) should be careful to use bcc not cc. If they use cc, each recipient will automatically have his email address added to the address book of many people whom he does not know, making it difficult to trace and control the spread of any virus with which that unknown person's computer might become infected.

There must be many who can't really afford an anti-virus programme every year, but there is quite a reliable free one available
Vinculo (http)

Newt

Yes, I agree....there are many antivirus & spyware programs on the market at very cheap prices. Microsoft have a free one on some Windows systems.

i need to explain my original point. The username for paypal is not used for any purpose other than paypal. The email address that received the phishing email is ONLY used for paypal. So no addresses...... My av/spy systems are all online, up to date & full scanned regularly.

All my personal email goes via a completely different email account (different provider too).

Sorry......a paypal problem surely?

NB....thanks for advice on bcc. I had not thought of that. Very useful

Thank you. You have given us all good advice here.

1) To keep a separate identity for use on Paypal.
I might easily use Newt for Paypal too, but I don't. My Paypal ID is unique to Paypal, but I do use another ID identically for some other websites, including a bank. This needs to be looked at.

2) To keep a separate email address for Paypal. I almost do this but not rigidly (because it is related to my Paypal ID, but I sometimes find it convenient to use it for other things, and for conversations with sellers following a payment. I shouldn't ).
I think a lot of delcampe sellers do have a separate email address for their Paypal payments, but certainly not all, and it is possible to link in other addresses to Paypal as well as the principal one.

Whenever I get a routine email which reveals to me, cc, the email addresses of lots of people whose addresses I didn't know before, I complain to t he sender.

Newt.