Paypal Phisher

[Bob Williams]

“Your paypal account has been withdrawn. Please click this link to… blah blah and blah.”

 

I get one or two of these a year, this one is from    k l i e n t @ p a y p a l . c o . u k    (without the spaces) Yes: “klient”! Forwarded it to spoof@paypal.co.uk. Received a PP reply within 5 minutes.

Let’s be careful out there …

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[tadka]

When an email looks dodgy I normally check who the email is from by hovering the mouse cursor over the sender’s name and that shows me the sender email address. If it is scam mail it’s usually some weird looking email. And I thought I was safe. But lately there were a couple that were clearly a scam but had the addresses of the actual websites they are pretending to be. One of them was from Steam telling me my account was blocked and asking to change the password but when I went to Steam directly there was nothing wrong with it. And I think the other was maybe from the bank, can’t remember, it was a while ago but was rather worrying.

[Bob Williams]

Tadka, my No.2 gson uses Steam (a lot!) and he gets those scams. Fortunately he forwarded the first one to me with a warning and I showed him what to do with them. I don’t know if there is a Steam facility for forwarding to them, but there ought to be. Paypal have sent me a big thanks for forwarding the one I got, they say that they use Microsoft to find and prosecute any of these scambags. I think M$ would definitely want to help Paypal with that.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[The Duke]

the issue is bob, most of the emails are sent from zombie pcs, so you cant find them. if it can be traced it will be to some xp machine that has been sat under someones tv for a decade doing media duties. the owner will have no idea.

this is just one random example, but the majority of spam comes from compromised pcs

this is the reason ms was trying to get the world on 10 for free.

[Bob Williams]

I understand that Steve, but Paypal told me after another phishing attempt some time ago that they work with M$ to trace as many as they can. They thanked me after that one and said that M$ had traced the scambags and PP were going to prosecute them. Might be a limited success, but if it’s only one, it’s still scambags off the net. I am careful nowadays, which is really the best defence: using commonsense and not clicking before inspecting what is in front of me. If I’m not sure, it doesn’t get in.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Ed P]

Interesting. Paypal have a very different attitude from BT!

BT basically say its all too hard if the original origin is overseas.,

The UK customers who normally propagate this end of the phishing are just innocent tech ignorant zombies, and the originating scumbags are residents in countries where prosecution is difficult, and it is hard to prove that they are not just innocent cut-outs in the chain.

[JayCeeDee]

I thought I’d just got one from “Barclays” – it turns out it’s actually from them and is giving advance notice of their websites being “off-the-air” for extended times over various weekends in the next few months, except over Christmas, they wouldn’t risk being out over that period.

 

Apparently it’s all to do with the UK Ring-Fencing for banks. Expect some from your bank soon.

[Bob Williams]

Yes jaycee, I had a similar message from TSB a couple of days ago. Having also been taken over by Spanish bank Sabadell, they in the last throes of getting shot of remaining traces of Lloyds BG. Their messsage directed me to my online account and gave me a 20-page PDF, which combines all the account changes caused by ringfencing and the takeover.

TSB are saying that they want to return to the principles of the original Trustee Savings Bank, to become a “High Street Bank.” They don’t want Business Accounts, just local people. I hope it’s true: certainly my local branch is very people-focussed and helpful. Even to th extent of a branch manager who actually meets and greets customers at the door on some days. I shall keep my eye on it though, it’s easy to switch nowadays, although 3% on a current account and 3% on the Monthly Saver, is a good deal.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

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