Got an email from Paypal saying an account has been made when I have one already

[HunterVeritas]

So as it says above. I got an email from the real source, [Removed], and it says an account has been made under a name I don't recognize. I didn't think this sort of thing was possible to do under an existing account, but I received it anyway.

I'm not seeing any fraudulent activity so far, none of my info seems to have changed and no charges are racking up, but I changed my login info anyway and I already have multi-factor authenticators. But understandably, I think, this has me sort of freaked out and worrying about my money. I gut tells me I can't have gotten an email intended for someone else by accident, account creation emails are all automated with info you put in yourself. Its a robot doing copy-paste, so I don't know why else I could have gotten this.

Has anyone encountered this before or knows how to advise me further?

[Grimreepr]

I have seen this many many many times.  The original email is a scam.  The links contained in said email will take you to a site that looks identical to the PayPal site BUT IS NOT PAYPAL!  The link in any paypal email will take you to a site that always ends in paypal.com.  Be careful of sites that add to that by adding a period and more text those are 100% scam phishing emails, ignore and delete them and NEVER click any links in those emails.  Please don't do that!

[HunterVeritas]

It actually doesn't contain any fake URLs. When I hover over them, they display the correct address. And the email sender is the actual paypal, to the extent that when I hover over it, it shows me what emails I have legitimately received from the same address.

I haven't clicked on any links, but this doesn't explain what's happening, either. There's nothing I can see that would indicate this email was forwarded to me, either.

[HunterVeritas]

I just got another email like this, featuring the exact same name (Lesley [removed] and the email that supposedly belongs to them), and once again its an account creation email. I don't understand what's happening and Paypal support assured me they were handling this.

[PayPal_Bindu]

Hello @HunterVeritas 

Congratulations for your first post in the PayPal Help Community!

I can see how receiving that emails would be concerning to you! You may receive emails from PayPal because someone registered a PayPal account with your email address or they may have mistakenly typed the email address during sign-up. Here's the article with the information on how you can report such cases to PayPal. Also, please refer this article on how to report fake communications to PayPal. 

Thanks for the help @Grimreepr!

Have a great day!

Bindu

[HunterVeritas]

Okay. Listen.

I don't mean to be rude, but you need to thoroughly read posts before you attempt to help people. I ALREADY HAVE a Paypal account under the email address that I received this email from, and I have now received the email TWICE about account creation using said email.

This, from everything I have read, is supposed to be IMPOSSIBLE to happen once, let alone twice, as the email address is the thing that makes each account a unique login. So if they created an account with my email, what is SUPPOSED to happen is the system tells them an account already exists under it and that person will realize they typed in the wrong one. Paypal would not then notify me that the account was successfully CREATED.

This is originating from YOUR service, it has not been forwarded to me as some kind of scam. I wouldn't be posting here if I FOUND a solution in all your Help pages and FAQs. I'm not an 80 year old using the internet once every 11 months, I understand how this is supposed to work, so I am coming for help when it DOESN'T make sense.

Do not reply unless you have an idea as to why this is happening, please.

[PayPal_Meghan]

Hello @HunterVeritas, 

Thanks for reaching back out! 

I apologize for the frustration caused by our previous response. I understand you've received two emails that stated someone else created a PayPal account with your email address, even though you already have a PayPal account with that email. I'm sorry this keeps happening. As long as your email address is confirmed on your PayPal account, it cannot be used on another account. If it's not confirmed, it could be added to another account. You can double-check that your email is confirmed by following these steps. If it wasn't previously confirmed, after you confirm your email, I would follow the steps @PayPal_Bindu provided to ensure the email is removed from the other account. 

If it was already confirmed, I have two other ideas of what might have happened. The first one that comes to mind is a little different, and I only think of it because it's happened to me personally. There's a chance that the person who created an account has a similar email to you, but it's different by just a dot/period. Some email providers, such as Google, don't recognize an email with a dot as two different emails. For example, mickey.mouse and mickeymouse at the beginning of an email are the same email to them. In my personal experience, once someone created an email that was the same as mine but without the dot, I started receiving all of their emails because I had the original email address. This could be why you're receiving their confirmation emails. 

The other idea that comes to mind is potentially unauthorized activity. In some situations of unauthorized access, the fraudulent person removes a customer's email, adds their own, and creates a new account with the customer's email. However, since you didn't receive an email stating your email was removed, and you mentioned that when you reviewed the account, everything looked normal, I doubt this is what happened. If you later review the account again and determine that things do look different, such as missing financial information or past transactions, please reach out to Customer Support to report the unauthorized activity. 

I also recommend reaching back out to Customer Support if you receive any additional emails related to the other account. It sounds like a ticket might have already been filed when you reached out to Customer Support last to investigate if it was an internal error, but just in case, adding additional details may help escalate it. 

I hope this information helps explain what might have happened. 

- Meghan