Why does paypal want both social security number and date of birth

[lgoldnyxnet]

I received an email -- supposedly from paypal -- demanding that I "confirm my info". This led to a page that wanted both my social security number and my birthdate. This makes me nervous.

Those two pieces of info are all you need to steal somebody's identity. And the URL in the email didn't even point to paypal.com, but to some other domain that was similar to paypal but not identical.

Do I *really* need to provide both these pieces of information?

[Oregon11]

@lgoldnyxnet

Here is a PayPal link with details on why this information is asked for.

https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/paypal’s-customer-identification-program-(cip)-and-its-b...

[PayPal_Olivia]

Hi @lgoldnyxnet,

I'm sorry to hear that you've received what may be a spoof/phishing email. While PayPal does request that type of identifying information, you would be able to see that request in your PayPal account and we would not direct you to a non-PayPal URL to supply the information.

If you do see a request to supply information via messaging in your PayPal account, it can safely be supplied there.

If you do not see that type of message in your account and the domain in the URL was similar to PayPal.com but not identical, there is a strong likelihood that the email is a fake. Please do not supply any information to that site, and instead forward the email to spoof@paypal.com. 

If you have already supplied information to a spoof site, please take a look at this article for information about what to do.

I hope this helps!

Olivia

[Oregon11]

@lgoldnyxnet

I'm very sorry I didn't give a more detailed response to your question in my first reply.