Email links to epl.paypal-communication.com - is it legit or scam?

[Labsy]

Hi,

I received (not once) an e-mail for some PayPal Policy update, which contains all links and images (in email) to URL's, which begin with https://epl.paypal-communication.com/ ....blah blah blah

I checked domain paypal-communication.com WHOIS and it looks like it belongs to Paypal.

I also checked SSL certificate for https://epl.paypal-communication.com and it says PayPal.

I googled it, and found a lot of controversal information, some says it is scam, some it is legit.

If you ask me, I would say it is LEGIT.

BUT... Why would PayPal go with another domain epl.paypal-communication.com instead of, for example, epl.paypal.com, which is easy to recongize by every amateur? Why would PayPal open an possible scamming window by using domain paypal-communication.com, which can easily be scammed into, for example paypal-comunication.com or paypal-communications.com , which look a lot like original, but can be very, very scam?

Is PayPal really so relaxed on security to make such a mistakes in todays scamming world?

So puting it all together, I ask myself again - is epl.paypal-communication.com really LEGIT?

[Jeremy-88]

It says to follow their link and receive $10, so I think it's a hoax. I doubt PayPal is that generous.

[aliasgarikh97]

Same here. Maybe they are checking the behaviour of their clients based on the action they take. If the client just clicks at once, maybe they will be concerned about the knowledge of their clients regarding phishing and scam.

[AngusCS]

Can we get a response from PayPal on this question.  I have sent their emails in to the phishing email address and had no response.  It just seems odd to me and I like the OP do not know if I can trust them especially when my mail client puts them into my spam folder every time they arrive

[OjosCalientes]

Yeah, I would think that in this age of constant Phishing scams...that PayPal would just answer that question !

Fast, easy, and to the point!  I suppose there could be legal reasons why they don't assess for a particular email, if or if not, it is legit because the source IP addresses and intermediary chain of sites the email passes through are easily 'masked'.  

PayPal would need to analyze each email header to formally decide ? 

PayPal could reveal if epl.paypal-communication.com is a valid "DOMAIN NAME" either registered to and owned by PayPal or is held by a legitimate vendor or business affiliate.  That said... where is PayPal in this paypal community forum ?

[w-sky]

„Thunderbird thinks this message is Junk mail.“ A big yellow warning banner appears every time Paypal has sent this awkward policy update mails with "paypal-communication.com" links in it. They could do it better!

It almost seems as if they don't want people to see these mails and don't mind when they get auto-deleted as spam, or if someone thinks it is spam when he has opened the mail. 😞

[JBell99]

I'm unable to get to the site, however the email had tls security that was for paypal.com

I'm not loving that they are using a site other than paypal.com for communication.

[tex775]

I'd say scam.

The WhoIs record for the root domain -- https://www.whois.com/whois/paypal-communication.com -- shows "PayPal Inc" as the owner, but that's easily faked too. 

Checking DNS records for paypal-communication.com on MX Toolbox (https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx) ..

DNS lookup shows NO records.. so there's no website for paypal-communication.com.

MX (email routing) lookup shows mx1.paypalcorp.com  .. and that domain (paypalcorp.com) also has NO DNS records or website. 

MX lookup for "epl.paypal-communication.com" shows "Epsilon Interactive LLC". Google that, not much found, but their Linkedin page  (https://www.linkedin.com/company/epsilon-interactive/about/) looks totally shady, no way PayPal is using this.  

[MidwestMatthew]

So this thread is a year old, but it came up when I searched "paypal-communication.com fake" so I wanted to provide what reassurance I can that it is actually quite legit and I just used my $10.00 credit on a $10.33 order at Walmart.com. (I logged into my PayPal account from an incognito browser window to confirm the credit was there first, without clicking the email links, and the promotion and rules were there.)

Here's the Walmart order page, with relevant information highlighted and potentially sensitive information obfuscated:

And here's the transaction from the PayPal side:

I don't know why PayPal is giving away this money (especially with no minimum order requirements) but the credit was real (and, therefore, presumably so were the email and the links it contained.)

As the previous posters have explained, the email "View Online" link pointed to paypal-communication.com. Not sure why they do that, but it's apparently not a scam.

[JaydenL]

It is legit. My email was sent by [removed], and has many links to both paypal.com and braintreepayments.com  - who PayPal own.

It's a bizarre decision to send links to that domain, but I suspect it has something to do with the customer base that PayPal now own that were once part of companies they acquired, like Braintree.  Eg. Braintree may not have full access to use "paypal.com" for a lot of things, so they've given them this pseudo domain, which is still official, but gives them more freedom.