We have hit issues similar to this in the past; however, from some of the emails and my recent personal experience, I feel the need to reiterate.  I made a couple of changes to my PayPal account.  I set up a new bank account to use with PayPal and changed my password.

First WARNING; any accounts that have anything to do with your money need regular password changes.  For instance PayPal, EBay, iTunes and the like should be taken care of.  You absolutely need to change you online banking accounts several times a year.  If it fell into “enemy” hands it could cost you a lot!  Enough said about that – you have been warned.

Now, back to my story which I hope will serve as another word of warning.  It was the day after I executed my changes.  I received a very normal looking email from PayPal telling me that my charge of 145.50 UK Pounds had been charged and if I had any questions to click on the PayPal link to get it fixed.

I must have been in a daze because I didn’t think correctly.  I thought, “Oh no, I didn’t buy anything online in the last month or so, but I changed my PayPal stuff and someone must have gotten my password and made a false charge!”

I then jumped online to see if $232.37 (converted using Google’s online financial converter) had been taken out of my banking account.  Thankfully it had not.  So then I knew I had been scammed.  It was just a random scam that coincided with my changes.

Being the geek that I am I decided to have some fun so I clicked on the link supplied in the email.  It took me to an exact duplicate of PayPal’s login page.  At this phishing site their goal is to get me to login using may true PayPal credentials.  Then they can spend the little bit of money I have in my account.

I made up an email address and password and then I was sent to a screen that said thank you and that PayPal was down right now but I could come back later and check it out.  That means they now had all they needed to take my money.  However, they won’t get much from the data that I made up.  The second fake PayPal page looked absolutely real too.  They even had links to actual PayPal sites.

Do not be fooled and DO NOT EVER use links in an email to get to a financial site.  This is the last warning this week:  Only go to sites that concern your finances by typing in the actual link in your web browser and pressing Enter.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 7:22 am and is filed under Columns. 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.