Phony e-mails

[heritagevicci]

Every now and then I receive an e-mail from Pay-Pal stating the following: 

DearyPayPalyCostumer,

We are currently performing regular maintenance of our security measures.

It has come to our attention that your PayPal billing information are out of date and your account was temporary locked.
 

Click hereyand complete the renewyform with your current
information.

If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choice but to temporaly suspend your account.

Thank you for using PayPal!
The PayPal Team

---

Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you will not receive a response.

Is this legit?  I won't respond because I understand to transmit this kind of info over an e-mail address is financially dangerous.  Does anyone else have this problem?  I've never been locked out of my account and I've gone in off and on to check it with no problem. 

[naldymay]

I received email today asking me to download and fill out a form..... did any one respond to you re: phony emails?

Dear PayPal Customer,
 
 
During our regularly scheduled account maintenance and verification procedure we have detected a
slight error in your PayPal online account.
 
This might be due to the following reasons:
 
 
1. A recent change in your personal information (ie. change of address, email address)
 
2. An inability to accurately verify your selected option of payment due to an internal 
error within our systems.
 
 
Please fill in all the details that are required to complete this verification process.
 
 
To do this we have attached a form to this email. Please download the form and follow the 
instructions on your screen. NOTE: The form needs to be opened in a modern browser which has 
javascript enabled (ex: Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3, Safari 3, Opera 9)
 
 
Please understand that this is a security measure intended to 
help protect you and your account. We apologize for any inconvenience. 
 
 
If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choice but 
to temporary suspend your account. 
 
Sincerely, 
PayPal Account Review Department.
 
 
Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered. 
For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and choose the "Help" link in the footer of any page.

--Forwarded Message Attachment--

[surplusdealdude · Accepted solution]

Both of these emails are scams designed to steal your Paypal passwords.

NEVER sign in to your Paypal account from an email link.


And, to make your Paypal account bullet-proof, visit the security center in your Paypal account and buy one of their security keys for $5.  It puts a separate, randomly-generated numerical password on your account that changes every 30 seconds and cannot be hijacked, even if the scammer has your password.

[xamsx]

Got this e-mail today and actually logged in with my PayPal e-mail and password and filled out about half of the form asking for my debit card information before I looked up at the address bar and realized I was not on a sub-page of Paypal.com and that I couldn't click on any other links on the page. Promptly x'ed out of the window and went to Paypal.com, signed in (sure enough, there was no maintenance going on), and changed my password.

I should be okay, right?

EDIT: Also, just noticed that the e-mail address I received this from is- lnuhls[at]accounts[dot]net and the "To" read- dkgktui[at]aol[dot]com - Even though that isn't my e-mail address... Hmm, copy and paste to mass e-mail, possibly?

[surplusdealdude]

Yes, it'll be a mass mailing - these guys send millions of these out at a time.

As far as safe, you may be okay.  But, as a precaution, I would run several anti-spyware programs, just in case you picked up a keylogger program, and then change your passwords again.

I suggest one of the programs be Malware anti-spyware ( the free one).  It's pretty good - Google it for the download site.

[naldymay]

I am kind of (I am) a lost cause at these things.  Can the malware be run with Avast and Windows Defender?  I have actually heard quite a bit of good about Malware Product