Spam/Fraud Messages from service number 72972 touted as if they're from Paypal

[nitin143]

Hello all,

Today, 30 Apr2018, I have ordered a HP laptop for 777.00 EUR from Saturn Online shop over Ebay Germany and paid for it through PayPal. I received confirmation emails from Ebay, PayPal and Saturn saying that my payment was successful and my order is currently in process. After few minutes, I received a text message from 72972 to my old phone number (which means this number has been replaced with another new long days ago). The message reads ''[Paypal] A payment of -777,00 EUR to Ihr SATURN (Zahlung über Media-Saturn Deutschland GmbH) on 30 April 2018 was flagged as suspicious. Please reply "1" if you authorized it or "2" if you did not". Seemed to be genuine, I replied with 1 and within no short time, I received another message reading "PayPal: Go online to https://www.paypal.de/mobile for help". This is when I came to conscious and started searching Google for potential fraudulent messages sent by fraudsters from different service number but in vain, I found no one reported 72972 as spam. But with the same text and different numbers were reported as spam. I didn't click on the link in the 2nd message and saved myself from authorizing PayPal to pay them 777.00 EUR. So, I thought of writing this in the community to help others and save them from potential frauds. PayPal should really work a bit hard to tackle these kind of scams. Hope they will. Thanks.

[wong33]

Just so happened to me today for the first time ever. I replied 1 and then got a link. I did not click on it. Later they sent it again, this time I replied 1 immediately and it said: "Thanks for your reply. We will mark this payment as "authorized".

I hope this is you @paypal.

[kooling]

Same here: [PayPal] Did you pay -30,00 EUR to ... on 19 September 2019? Reply 1 if yes or 2 if no. [Reply Needed] --- I have not replied of course, not knowing when the this is legitimate. I'm left with the questions: if it is not PayPal, how do they know my number and how do they know I have paid 30 Euros to...? Also, I have made 3 different payments to different companies within five minutes and I've only received this text message for one of these payments.