BBB Cautions about Phishing Scam using Name of PayPal

Cyber-criminals have been distributing e-mails making false confirmations from PayPal about payments. These e-mails have web-links, which on clicking install malware.

The scams are typically phishing e-mail campaigns and they appear as genuine e-mails. These are becoming increasingly refined day by day. The scammers actually target people's financial and banking details even if that results in destruction of the users' PCs.

The latest scam involves an e-mail supposedly from PayPal. It notifies the recipient that the payment processing firm has lately received a payment from him via his PayPal account. But as the recipient mayn't know anything about the said payment the e-mail craftily provides an option allowing him to annul the order. However, upon opting that by clicking the relevant button, the scammer actually gains entire hold over the victim's computer and thereby total information and files saved on it. Better Business Bureau posted this, November 29, 2017.

According to spokesperson Paula Fleming for BBB (Better Business Bureau) Serving Eastern VT, RI, ME & MA, letting a scammer gain admission into an end-user's PC can risk the person with identity theft. This way scammers can install malicious programs which read passwords else search to get personal information like credit card or bank account details from the infected PC, says Fleming.

The BBB suggests adopting certain preventive measures for protecting systems against phishing scams. These are:

Incase an e-mail sounds suspicious, user should call the organization to confirm the message alternatively go through that organization's online site by typing the website name straight into the browser or do one search on the Web. Importantly, no web-links must be clicked inside unsolicited e-mails.

Within suspicious e-mails asserting as arriving from renowned organizations, users should see if there are any grammatical or spelling errors. Besides, an examination of the copyright on the electronic mail is necessary for, incase it appears even a bit odd then the message quite likely is fraudulent.

Scammers usually don't mention any specific information about the recipient in their scam e-mails, like the recipient's name, any personal information or his account number's end digits. Their e-mails are generic.

» SPAMfighter News - 12/5/2017