Beware!

If you use Paypal, beware of the latest attempt at Phishing! This morning I received an email, supposedly from Paypal, saying someone had attempted to access my account, but had 3 failed attempts at the password. (most secure websites will lock your account if this happens.) and that my account was now suspended until I contacted paypal. I'm very familiar with phishing, and was immediately suspicious. I followed the link which brought me to what appeared to be Paypal's login page. It had the same type of ad, and really was identical. There was something *ever so slightly* different about the font though.

I opened a new window and put in paypal.com and pulled up a nearly identical page. All the links were there, everything, but the font was...again...just a tiny bit different. Then, at the very bottom where the "fine print" links were, there was one tiny link missing.

So, what's the point? How does this help someone? Well, if I had logged into the fake page, I would have been giving them my username and password, which would have then given them access to my paypal account and all my money.

Had I been someone unfamiliar with phishing, and paypal's security system, I would have logged onto the fake page. Had I not been suspicious in the first place, there is no way I would have noticed anything different between the pages. It was just one, tiny, four letter link in about 6 pt font that was missing.

I think about Dean's parents. They would have gone to the link right away, and logged into it. I remember a couple of years ago his dad called and said something to the effect of, "Yeah, I had to change our bank information. They sent me an email and they had everything wrong." NOOOOOOOOOO!!! We said, "Please tell us you didn't do it!" He said he hadn't yet, he was going to do it later that day. THANK GOD they hadn't done anything yet.

Anyway, beware. Paypal (or any other secure site) will never ask you to do something like send you an email asking you to change your password. The email I received looked legit. They weren't asking me for information, it was asking me to check my account activity.