Beware Clever New Phishing Scam
This morning when I opened my email at the place where I work I nearly had a heart attack. I had received an email from PayPal about a computer I had just ordered from Dell. PayPal had deducted $700 from my account to pay for it. I knew I had not bought a computer, so my first thought was, "Oh My God, someone has accessed my account information at PayPal and has hit my bank account for $700!!" After I picked myself off the floor I started composing an angry email to PayPal, but before I finished it I thought, "Maybe this is a scam."
I went to my online bank and checked to make sure the $700 had not been deducted from my account. I went to PayPal and verified that the money had not been charged to my account. I looked at the email again. One thing that seemed strange was that the computer was being shipped to a man- someone I had never heard of - in Pennsylvania. I went to Google and searched for his name. The web site that opened contained a list of phishing scams people had submitted to it. Near the bottom of the email, below the "list of purchases," was a huge button that read: "Click here to Cancel Transaction." I right-clicked on the button and looked at its properties. It said: "blocked:http://vanguardngr.com//www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/login.html.
I copied the first URL into the browser and was taken to a website in guess where-- NIGERIA!!! If I had clicked on the Cancel Transaction button I would have been sent to a phony website that looked like the PayPay home page, where I would have been asked to login with my user name and password. That information would have been sent to the website in Nigeria, the world capital of Internet Scams!! Uh Oh!! Am I glad I knew how to check all this out. Would a 75-year-old person who barely knows enough about computers to type an email known this was a scam. Maybe, if he or she was a retired professor of computer science. I have to admit this was a clever scam. One thing that should have made my suspicious was that the email was addressed to "Member." If it was legit, it should have been addressed to me. Also, there was a four-cent difference in the total amount of the "purchase" in the two places where it was listed.
You can read an interesting article on phishing at Wikipedia. Click here.
I went to my online bank and checked to make sure the $700 had not been deducted from my account. I went to PayPal and verified that the money had not been charged to my account. I looked at the email again. One thing that seemed strange was that the computer was being shipped to a man- someone I had never heard of - in Pennsylvania. I went to Google and searched for his name. The web site that opened contained a list of phishing scams people had submitted to it. Near the bottom of the email, below the "list of purchases," was a huge button that read: "Click here to Cancel Transaction." I right-clicked on the button and looked at its properties. It said: "blocked:http://vanguardngr.com//www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/login.html.
I copied the first URL into the browser and was taken to a website in guess where-- NIGERIA!!! If I had clicked on the Cancel Transaction button I would have been sent to a phony website that looked like the PayPay home page, where I would have been asked to login with my user name and password. That information would have been sent to the website in Nigeria, the world capital of Internet Scams!! Uh Oh!! Am I glad I knew how to check all this out. Would a 75-year-old person who barely knows enough about computers to type an email known this was a scam. Maybe, if he or she was a retired professor of computer science. I have to admit this was a clever scam. One thing that should have made my suspicious was that the email was addressed to "Member." If it was legit, it should have been addressed to me. Also, there was a four-cent difference in the total amount of the "purchase" in the two places where it was listed.
You can read an interesting article on phishing at Wikipedia. Click here.
posted by Jimmy in the Hills | Wednesday, October 11, 2006
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