Text message from <removed>

[Rutro]

I received a txt from <removed> asking the following is this from paypal?

Msg from PayPal: Transaction of -$**.00 USD with The **** **** on May 9, 2017 has been marked as suspicious. Reply "Yes" if authorized or "No" if not authorized.

I did make the transaction but have never received this before and in todays world, one never knows.

THX

[DPCreations]

It might be valid.  You need to do what you can to verify the authenticity of the message.  Do the details exactl y match those of your known transaction?  How did you make your transaction?  What website?  From your computer and your own wifi?  From a device on public wifi?  From a phone or tablet device?

Ultimately, check your PayPal account from your home computer and look for messages and the transaction details.  Was it completed?  If so, then the message might not have been from PayPal as PayPal would lkely have held the purchase until approved.

[LMDarr]

From <removed>

"PayPal: Did you recently attempt to make a payment f $50.00 USD? Reply "1" if yes and you will need to reattempt your mayment, reply "2" if no, and the payment will remain declined. Msg and Data rates apply."

I hit 1. Their response came right back:

"Paypal: Payment not completed. Invalid  phone number or email. Include area code and please try again. Example: send 50.00 to 415-000-1234."

I did NOT do that. I went to paypal.com. My payment went through fine. My contact info is fine. I received my notification of purchase just fine.

This is SHADY!

[billfry]

I just had the same thing happen, with the exact same message (different purchase amount). The reply to phone number was the same... very suspicious. I've checked paypal acct. and the transaction seems okay (completed)... So where is this coming from, and how did they get the combination of phone and exact transaction amount?  Is my PayPal compromized?

[Bugaboney]

Same here, but I haven't seen anyone confirm that it's from PayPal. Does PayPal sent these messages it and if not, how is someone getting such specific information like that?

[mclifford82]

It's insane to me that no one can verify if this number is from Paypal or not. I'm removing my phone number from Paypal's options, and if these are legit they will contact me via email when this stuff happens again. Somehow I suspect that email will never come, because this seems shady AF.

I woke up to TWO messages from this number, neither one of which are even close to anything I purchase with Paypal. One for $655.99 and the other for $575.00.

Someone from Paypal really needs to weigh in here on whether or not these communications are official. When I log into my account, I see not one mention of any attempt at either of those purchases. There's simply no way that the website wouldn't be ringing alarm bells at me if this were legit.

So until someone say otherwise, this is just a scam to me.

[Bugaboney]

The text I got had the exact information of a purchase I made (amount and store name), so I'm hoping it was Paypal. If it wasn't, then something was already breeched and I need to know where/what/how. This is the PayPal number I get my confirmation texts from so I was not initially skeptical and the link was a PayPal link (m.paypal.com). I wonder if there are legit texts and scammers are utilizing the template?

[TXGRunner]

Exactly...I had the same message for a transaction I made. Given they had the mobile number attached to the account and the exact amount, I reasoned they couldn't get much, if anything out of answering with a '1'. I did check my PayPal account: no notices, no messages, and the transaction appeared to be finalized.

I wasn't falling for the second message. There was no way. First, how did they send the first text or respond to my text if the number was incomplete? 

I changed my password, but question (as mentioned elsewhere) is how did they get this specific information?

Even if they skimmed the PayPal payment receipt confirmation email, that would not give them the mobile number attached to my phone. As accounts are obscurred in eBay, they can't go off of transaction information from an auction and couldn't tie it back to a phone anyway.

Even if they are skimming email, wouldn't PayPal at least investigate how that is happening between their servers and Google servers (in my case) that are logically very close? Why hasn't PayPal put out a notice to users cautioning them about the scam? Twenty-seven people took the time to write about this on this community forum, so the number affected is probably 10 or 100 times more than that.

[sparkie5571]

PayPal: Did you recently attempt to make a payment for $408.40 USD? Reply "1" if yes and you will need to reattempt your payment, reply "2" if no, and the payment will remain declined. Msg and Data rates apply Got this from the same number, nothing shows up in PayPal transactions and I've not ordered anything in a few weeks Def shady

[Bugaboney]

Got a reply email from paypal-they confirmed it was something they sent.