~Old Phishing Scam – but worth repeating
Posted by John Kendrick on January 5, 2008
I hope that most people reading this post will already know a phishing scam when they see it, and what to do with it. Delete immediately, and whatever else you do, DO NOT RESPOND in anyway to the message. But I just received another venerable PayPal Phishing attempt, so I thought I should use the opportunity to point out a few things about the message for those that don’t already know how to spot a phishing attempt in an email message.
If you don’t know exactly what phishing is, here is a great definition at Wikipedia.
First, for those that are new to email, a bank or other financial institution will never request financial or login information in an email message. And they should not include a link to their site when asking that you login or change account information, though some still do. If you receive an email message like the one shown here, do not click on the link provided in the message. If you think it is an authentic communication from your financial institution, then use links other than those in the email to reach their website, e.g. your browser’s bookmarks, shortcuts you have on your desktop, etc. or better yet, call them on the phone.
If you look closely at the message, you can probably spot a few clues that this message is not authentic and did not originate from PayPal. Click on the image below to enlarge it and note the clues to this message’s criminal intent.
