Spam email?

[Riverisland122]

Hi there,

I just received the following email from PayPal.

Dear (my email address), 

You requested that the following amount be withdrawn to your bank account :

Requested withdrawal amount: £85.35 GBP

Transaction ID: 10473081228
Date: 6 January 2018

Funds will take up to 2 hours to appear in your bank account, but may take longer, depending on your bank.

As set out in our  User Agreement , withdrawal requests may be subject to review by PayPal to help maintain your safe use of the PayPalservice. As a result, it may take longer than the estimated processing time for your withdrawal to reach your bank account.

If you did not made this transaction you can Cancel Transaction in 48 hours .

I haven't approved this payment and want to cancel it. When I go to to my PayPal account I'm not able to find this payment anywhere.

I clicked on "Cancel transaction" and automatically a warning sign came up on a new page.

This is a scam I assume?

Many thanks

[banff9]

You just need to be more careful.  Yes it's a spam or phishing email.

The top link for the User Agreement starts with www.paypal.com.  This is what you want.

The other one, to cancel the (fake) transaction, starts with another internet address.  This is NOT what you want.

You can tell because when you hover the cursor over the link, it tells you the address in the bottom left of your browser.

What I do is I have two email addresses.  One for my main email and one only for PayPal.  That way with all the spam that goes to my main email address, I know anything from PayPal is fake.

As long as you never use your PayPal login on any other site, you'll be fine.  If not, change your password (and maybe your email address).

[kernowlass]

@Riverisland122

If its a spoof, DO NOT USE ANY LINK.

Firstly if the email addressed you as ''Dear Member'' / ''Customer'' / ''Client'' OR your ''email address'' then that confirms its a spoof as paypal would address you by your full name eg Dear John Smith.

Secondly if there was a link OR attachment in that email to ''cancel'' the transaction or ''confirm'' any details then again it would be a spoof.

If there was a problem with your account paypal would not ask you to click on an unsafe link in an email or by downloading an attachment, they would direct you to log in normally and go to the resolution or the message centre for more information.

More info here >>
https://www.paypal.com/us/selfhelp/article/how-to-spot-fake-emails-faq2340/2