Phishing Scam Alert: PayPal Email with Suspicious Links

[jtbell]

Today my wife received an e-mail, apparently from PayPal, notifying her that a payment was being made from her PayPal account for a purchase of about $30, and with a link to click if she wanted to dispute it. But... she's never opened a PayPal account.

She was using iOS Mail on her iPad. As far as I can tell (I use iOS Mail on my iPhone, too), there's no option to view the source of a message so as to inspect the links. I had her forward the message to me, so I could open it in Gmail's web interface on my desktop Mac. As soon as I did so, I burst out laughing.

The "From" header, which on iOS mail showed only "From: PayPal", in Gmail read "From: PayPal <receipt@palepal.com>".

Choosing "view original" showed that the link to the "Resolution Center" pointed to employeeportal.net-login.com. Uh... I don't think so.

 

[Bystander]

Cash and carry. Cash and carry. Cash and carry.

You can't carry enough cash? You don't need it.

 

[jedishrfu]

I love how they carefully mangle the PayPal name to palepal. That’s classic. Sometimes they write PayPal.com.xx where who knows where it really is.

 

[anorlunda]

Paypal probably has a fraud department. They would appreciate it if you forward the email to them.