Tale of Two PayPal Emails

Published on 24 July 2005 in , , , ,

I seem to be on the list for attempts to con me out of cash using ebay and Paypal. I get a substantial amount of them per day, whilst Catherine (oddly) gets none.

Anyway, I normally put them in my spam folder, noting that not one of them has actually been sent to the email address I actually use for ebay and Paypal (not that I’ve used either for about nine months).

Last night one appeared from Paypal telling me my credit card was about to expire. Which was funny cos my credit card is about to expire. It took me a few moments to realise that the email in this case, was actually genuine.

And then I noticed another thing. There was not a single URL in the email. Not one. Later one came through from ebay. Same thing. Not a single URL. After all, we all know the URL for Paypal and ebay – or at least we do if we use it! Why would we actually need it in an email?

With so many phishing attempts being made to try and steal people’s money, it’s worth remembering that. You’ll know the URL. You don’t need reminding…