PayPal Scams

When you're just about the biggest payment processor in the world, at least as far as online payment processing, you have to figure that people are going to try like the devil to scam your members. Well, the PayPal scams are rampant on the Internet. There are probably more PayPal scams than Carter has liver pills. And the scammers are getting very good at this. Some of these emails look darn legit and it's scary as all hell. Well, it is the hopes of this author that after reading this article, you will be able to recognize a PayPal scam quickly and easily and thus not fall pray to one of them. If I've managed to succeed in doing this, then I have done my job.

For those who don't know what PayPal is, it's a payment processor that handles online payments for merchants and people who deal with Ebay. It is without a doubt the most popular payment processor on the Internet. Quite honestly, in spite of complaints by several people that PayPal is just another corporate giant, they really do provide a great service. I would be lost without them. But they are not the problem. The people who run these scams are.

The typical PayPal scam is an email that says something like "we regret to inform you but we suspect illegal activity with your account. Please login below and..." What they do is give you a link to their server. This link will most likely harvest your information that you plug into their system. Like I said, some of these emails are so authentic looking that you are tempted to do this. Once you do, you can kiss your PayPal account goodbye, or at least the money that's in it.

One way to spot these scams is to look at the link in the email itself. If you check it out closely, you will see that it doesn't lead to PayPal's web site. It is disguised with a PayPal sub domain but the whole link will start with something like www.someothersite.com/paypal/someotherstuff.html. This is an easy way to see that it's not really from PayPal even though the email address says it is. Email addresses can be faked. To tell where the email actually originated from, you have to check the email headers.

Of course, if you're unsure of the email in question, simply forward it to spoof@paypal.com. They will reply to you and let you know if the email came from them. If it did, then you can respond to the email and take care of the matter. In almost all cases, the email will be a scam. PayPal will even tell you that they will never ask for your login information in an email. So if you get anything like that, you can pretty well believe that it's a scam.

PayPal scams are all over in many different forms. However, if you follow the simple tips above, you should be able to avoid all of them without a problem. Remember, if in doubt, just notify PayPal.

They're really pretty much on the ball.

To YOUR Success