Pay Pal Problems when you dont have a Pay Pal Account

[leon]

Hi Guys,

It is amazing, and i just keeps on happening, well over the last couple of weeks at least.
I get this email message, which says there seems to be irregular activity with your "Pay Pal Account", the thing is I don't, and never have had a Pay Pal Account.

Funny That.

Leon

[alan meehan (Alan)]

Hi Leon ive been getting the same email as well ,damn scammers and I too don't have a paypal account ,also a commonwealth bank one of which I don't have a account and now a new one the Australian electoral commission they just don't stop
ALAN

[sil (Steve)]

Just make sure you NEVER click on anything in the email EVER not even just out of curiosity.

There are a surprisingly large number of intelligent people who will click on the links anyway, and I've then spent weeks recoverying their hard drives and rebuilding a clean OS for them. Sounds laughable but just dont.

Odds are when they send out bulk emails like this some of the recipients WILL use paypal or have a commonwealth bank account or whatever the email claims. So those people get worried and open up the links to check. If you are such a person JUST DONT touch the email, dont delete it either move it to a junk folder out of the way and go to the Paypal or bank website and look for a contact method and ASK them about your account directly. Some sites will have an area for people receiving spam to see examples of spam emails and explaining the organisation's process of how or if it contacts clients. Nobody will EVER contact you to confirm your password, they dont have access to see it themselves as its never stored in plain text its always encrypted. Its why you might have a PIN number (for ATMs), an Internet banking password and a phone banking password, so no one password. Because they get encrypted directly ito the appropriate system and compared against the store encrypted string for verification. Phone banking is the weak point as you are verbally giving your password to a person and they enter it at there end to validate your account but it won't get them access to your PIN or Internet banking passwords so theft is difficult for them get away with. They have their personal login inside the bank and when they access your account details weith your phone banking password that is all logged, so if they do steal its all traceable back to them. Your PIN and Internet banking are the vital private keys a thief wants which is why the emails send you to a page made to look like the bank site where YOU then freely give them the information to steal your money. So just don't ever do anything except follow your normal method to contact your bank or whatever, NEVER follow instructions in the email to contact or anything. May be a pain in the butt but better than the alternative if you clicked on anything in the email.

Safe practices include never having just one email, have free "throwaway" emails to use if you feel you must. I have an email with my ISP of course and only a few close friends know it, I never use it to register on a forum or online stores, I have a gmail account for general email usage and another gmail account I use for website registration and I rarely look at the inbox, I don't ever expect legit emails to that address (of course I never type my email in any form in forums or comments or anything). If that account gets flooded with spam I can just start another throwaway acount to use instead. Gmail is pretty good with spam isolation these days so its very rare any get through to my regular gmail account. My ISP email never gets any that isn't a brute force address (where a script has generated every combination of letters/numbers as possible names of addresses and added to a domain list to spam emais).

So, have email addresses for different purposes and at least one for one off uses that you can abandon. Be mindfull when you give out contact details and why. This post is for all those people who might read this thread but won't post to it.

[leon]

Excellent Sil, thank you, I do follow what you have said and never click on anything that I don't know/recognise.

Why are there so many people out there that just want to steal and ruin peoples lives.

Leon

[sil (Steve)]

I guess anything for a quick buck. Just like arguing with someone of a forum, theres a "wall of safety" . People will argue online at a safe distance but wouldn't behave the same way in person most of the time. Sending out malware is easy to someone with the skills, and people happily fill out names and addresses in an online form so enough malware gets out there to collect information. Just like we hear about an ISP or Sony being hacked and data stolen. Data itself is valueable and its why online ads always seem to be targetted to us, people have connected innocent data we've given to various sources and found ways to link them to build a picture of us. Its why a lot of people feel safe, they naturally assume malware is there to cause us direct damage when mostly its not.

Google scares me. The do some impressive stuff but still the data mining possible to them is scary, the more we depend on online for our day to day lives the more we are a prisoner to them when something goes wrong. If somebody takes control of your bank account its almost impossible to prove to the bank that its YOUR account or the actions are not from you.Gone are the days a signature was all the proof accepted, now its all digital information.

Sorry for another rant , its hometime for me, enjoy the weekend folks.

[Ric]

Latest scam for me is the ATO again, a person ring and say unless I pay them money there will be a warrant for my immediate arrest issued.

Well I'm still here.

One time I picked up the phone of the answering machine to give them an earful and it turned out to be a robot that just kept talking over the top of me.

Most disappointing, I was really looking forward to having some fun with them.

[multiweb (Marc)]

This one's a beauty! Not a bad turnover.

[leon]

That is just wrong.

Leon