The Spam Report

Here’s another fake PayPal message claiming that my account was blocked because they had to upgrade their server due to fraud. Nice angle for scumbag fraudsters to use, huh?

Dear PayPal Customer,

This email is to inform you, that we had to block your PayPal Account access because we had to upgrade our servers in order to remove online fraud.

Our terms and conditions you agreed to state that your account must always be under your control or those you designate at all times. We have noticed some unusual activity related to our servers that indicates that other parties may have access and, or control of your informations in your account.
Please follow this link to confirm your account access information :

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?_cmd=login-run

Please be aware that until we can verify your identity no further access to your account will be allowed and we will have no other liability for your account or any transactions that may have occurred as a result of your failure to upgrade your account as instructed above.

    Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter .

        Sincerely,
    PayPal Account Departement.

© Copyright 2007, PayPal. All Rights Reserved.
e-mail id : 1211ppl1

This is just another lame PayPal Phishing scam message. These were coming in constantly for a while.

We recently noticed one or more attempts to log in to your PayPal account from a foreign IP address.
If you recently accessed your account while traveling, the unusual log in attempts may have been initiated by you. However if you are the rightful holder of the account,click on the link below to log into the account and follow the instructions.

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_login-run

If you choose not to complete the request, you give us no choice but to suspend  your account temporary.

It takes at least 72 hours for the investigation in this case and we strongly recommend you to verify your account at that time.

If you received this notice and you are not the authorized account holder, please be aware that it is in violation of PayPal policy to represent oneself as an other PayPal user.Such action may also be in violation of local, national, and/or international law. PayPal is committed to assist law enforcement with any inquires related attempts to missapropriate personal information with the intent to commit fraud or theft. Information will be provided at the request or law enforcement agencies to ensure that perpetrators are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Thanks for your patience as we work together to protect your account.

PayPal Account Review Department.

Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you will not receive a response.
For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and click the Help link located in the top right corner of any PayPal page.

PayPal Email ID PP00145

Copyright © Paypal 2007. All rights

This is actually a rather clever scam. The goal, of course, is to make you believe that someone had ordered some goods online and somehow, your PayPal account was charged for it.

This type of message is bound to fool a few people. It will most likely elicit a very immediate emotional response on the part of the unlucky recipient who does not recognize it as a scam.

The link at the bottom to “dispute” the charge would take the victim to a web page designed to look like PayPal and then capture the victim’s PayPal username and password to use for the scammer’s own evil purposes.

In addition, the domain they set up to use for this scam had the word “PayPal” in it and was cleverly set up to look like an genuine PayPal web site if you did not examine it closely. I have, of course, changed the link to point to a non-existent web site.

I love the way they include the word “Nigeria” in the PayPal ID of the user who supposedly received the payment. This will of course bring the word “SCAM” to mind to all those who have heard of the Nigerian 419 scams and make them all the more anxious to click that “Dispute” link to get this matter cleared up as soon as possible!

Clever PayPal Phishing Scam-Spam Follows:

Dear Customer,

 

This email confirms that you have paid CARO-NIGERIA ( sales@caron.com ) $239.95 USD using PayPal.

This credit card transaction will appear on your bill as ” PAYPAL CARO-NIGERIA* “.

 

*******************************************************

PayPal Shopping Cart Contents

ITEM NAME:	Brand new Motorola V3x ( Black Edition )Quad Band CellPhone unlocked
QUANTITY:	1
TOTAL:	$219.95 USD
CART SUBTOTAL:	$219.95 USD
SHIPPING CHARGE :	$20.00 USD
CART TOTAL:	$239.95 USD

 

 

 

********************************************************

Shipping Information

 

SHIPPING INFO:	Mehmet Hakan GOKMUHARREMOGLU124 Folly Brook Blvd. Apt:2 Wethersfield, CT 06109
Address Status:	Unconfirmed

 

********************************************************

If you haven’t authorised this charge, click the link bellow to cancel the payment and get a full refund.

 

 

Dispute Transaction

This one would have been pretty good if it were not for the poor use of English!

The e-mail is nicely laid out and uses all the official-looking logos and even throws in a nice photo. Looks like the real deal. Except…

“Your account bank is locked” is not very convincing language and is bound to have a few potential victims scratching their heads over it.

A little bit into the message they say: “we earnestly ask you to update your profile.” That’s pretty weird as well.

Nice touch adding the “official sponsor” stuff for the Olympics as the very bottom, but they blew it with the wording of this one.

The link provided in the e-mail, that they would really like people to click on, was pointing to a server in China. Last I knew, Bank of America is not located in China.

Come to think of it, the way things are going these days, perhaps Bank of America did relocate to China, or is “out-sourcing” some of their operations down there!

Bank of America Phishing Spam Follows:

This is another type of eBay phishing scam where the scammers try to convince potential victims that there is some kind of problem with their account and that they must visit the eBay sit eBay clicking on one of the provided links.

As you can see, one of the links displays the URL of the site and although it looks like it points to the eBay web site, it really doesn’t. It really links to the phony eBay site that the scammers set up to capture eBay usernames and passwords.

eBay Phishing Spam Follows:

This is your typical phishing spam-scam message. Not too elaborate, but it probably does not need to be to get the job done.

PayPal Phishing Spam-Scam Follows:

Dear PayPal Member,

Your account has been randomly flagged in our system as a part of our routine security measures. This is a must to ensure that only you have access and use of your Paypal account and to ensure a safe PayPal experience. We require all flagged accounts to verify their information on file with us. To verify your information at this time, please visit our secure server webform by clicking the hyperlink below:

Click here to verify your Information

If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choice but to temporarily suspend your account.
Thank you for your patience as we work together to protect your account.

Well, as you might suspect, that’s another crock of crap. Sure, there are legitimate web sites out there that let you send a cute electronic greeting card to someone, but unless you recognize the name of the person who sends you one of these, your best off to just delete it.

Although these are not phishing e-mails in the traditional way I usually think of them, I suppose they belong in that category since the sender is fishing to get you to a certain web site.

As I understand these e-mail messages, the goal for most of them is to infect your computer with some type of nasty program that would probably run in the background and never reveal it’s presence to you as it sends out spam or whatever other unscrupulous task it is assigned to perform by those that created it.

This particular message below tries to direct victims to a web site in France by making them think that someone has sent them a nice Hallmark Electronic Greeting Card.

Whatever this web site in France was set up to do, you can be sure it is something that isn’t going to do you a bit of good and will probably help some low-life spammer make more money as your expense.

Phony Hallmark Greeting Card message follows:

The first time I got one of these, I actually had a few minutes of uncertainty and wondered if it might be the real thing because I do have an eBay account and do occasionally buy or sell something.

As you can see, I was not able to do this one justice by just posting it due to formatting requirements, so you can just click on the image below to see the entire message.

You’ll notice how they cleverly try to involve the emotions of their potential victims by using inflammatory language while threatening to report you to eBay.

They hope you will react angrily and without thinking and click the link they provided which does not, as they want you to believe, link to the eBay site.

The links they provided for potential victims to click on actually lead to a web site that is hosted in Bangladesh. Lord knows what is actually on it or whether it would try to infect your PC with nasty programs or if it is a straight-forward attempt to capture eBay usernames and passwords.

eBay phishing spam message follows (click to enlarge):