Advise on Paypal & Yahoo spam e-mails circulating at the moment

Dear Readers, I thought I’d safely copy some examples of the spams I have been noticing at the moment. Just so that you (if you get anything like this) don’t fall for it.

What to look out for:

The e-mail asks you to change your account contact details, bank details, etc
It may notify that a new e-mail has been added so you need to confirm that. ..or verify an existing e-mail as a regular maintenance procedure.
It may ask that your limit of e-mails or spending has been reached and by clicking a link and verifying (you still exist) it can be sorted etc.

Why it’s a spam:

If you have a Paypal account, then they will always contact you and address you by your full paypal registered name (ie if your paypal name is under Mr John Smith, the e-mail will start with, `Dear Mr John Smith’. It will never start with, `Dear Pay pal user’
If Paypal is genuinely contacting you with a security precaution, they will always ask you to log in to your own account and correct changes or check changes. They will never put a link in an e-mail and say `just click here’ (even if that link looks long and complex and `real’
Yahoo e-mail accounts are ongoing, and don;t have any sort of limits. They never state that when you sign up! So you don’t reach any sort of e-mail limits! In the modern days of cloud computing, storage and when an ordinary person can buy a mass storage of say 750 Gbytes or even 1 Tera Bytes for under £50, giants like Yahoo, Google, hotmail providers have huge storage power..

——Examples of spams I received recently————————————————

example 1: Yahoo related spam.

Dear Customer

Your E-mail account has exceeded its limit and needs to be verified, if not verified within 24hours, we shall suspend your account. Click Here to verify your email account now

Thanks,

Yahoo Team.

Thank You for Being A Loyal Yahoo! Mail User.

example 2(a) Paypal related spam:

You’ve sent a payment
Transaction ID:5WR54413KR350193D
Dear customer,

You’ve sent a payment for 53.00 GBP to Carol A Irving.

Please note that it may take a little while for this payment to appear in the Recent Activity list on your Account Overview.

View the details of this transaction online

Note: If you haven’t authorized this transaction ,click the link below to remove limitations to your account and get full refund.
Go to the Help Center and remove you limitations at: https://xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Note: This looks like a very real paypal website..But it’s usually hyperlinked to a different or false page..So don’t click anything like this..)

Amount: 53.00 GBP
Currency conversion: 53.00 GBP = $81.65 AUD
Exchange rate: 1 GBP = 1.54 AUD
Sent on: Wednesday, 09 January 2013
Yours sincerely,
PayPal

Help Center | Resolution Center | Please do not reply to this email because we are not monitoring this inbox. To get in touch with us, log in to your account and click “Contact Us” at the bottom of any page.

Consumer advisory: PayPal Pte Ltd, the Holder of the PayPal™ payment service stored value facility, does not require the approval of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Consumers (users) are advised to read the terms and conditions carefully.

PayPal Email ID PP118

example 2(b): Paypal related spam

Dear PayPal Customer,
You have added david.wilson001@hotmail.co.uk as a new email address for your Paypal account.

If you did not authorize this change, check with family members and others who may have access to your account first.
If you still feel that an unauthorized person has changed your email, click on restore account PayPal and follow the next steps.
Restore your Paypal Account

NOTE: For security reasons, we will record your ip-address, the date and time, Deliberate wrong inputs are criminally pursued and indicated.
Please understand that this is a security measure intended to help protect you and your account.
We apologize for any inconvenience.
If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choice but to temporary suspend your account.

————————————–

Remember, the above are but a few examples of the spam e-mails that are circulating. These all play on the panic & worry instincts of general internet users. Don’t click on any links.. If you really are worried about anything, log in to that service or account separately (by typing the full url code in address bar.. ie http://www.Yahoo.co.uk or http://www.Paypal.com and then login to your account using your own username and password, and check that all is well. If not, contact those service providers. If in doubt, contact the relevant service provider independently!

-Mani Navasothy