The Best Online Scam I've Seen: Beware and Wise up PAYPAL

Today I wanted to make you all aware of a scam going on relating to PayPal. It got me, nearly. It got my girlfriend also. So take a look at the email I received below. 

Yes my name is not Mark Walker, but everything else on this email is perfect. (Perfect in terms of you getting scammed out of a lot of money). 

So let's unpick this. The email seems legitimate, it's come from PayPal itself. service@paypal.com. The contact links all check out, all the logos and everything match up. It's even being kind enough to inform you that someone else is trying to syphon money from your account. When really it is them. 

So I'm not overly adept with PayPal, and I couldn't get through to their customer services. (Out of hours, thanks PayPal for being a 9-5 in a time like this). So I called their out of hours emergency line that was listed in the note on the email. 

That's when you get through to someone, who wants to ask some security questions. Firstly they send you a text to your phone, you read it back to them, all good so far. 

Then they want your security question, (Father's Middle Name) all sounds reasonable. They then inform you your account has been compromised by several erroneous satellites, stationed in Germany and the US. They will need to disable the account for a few hours whilst they sort it all out. They want to also unlink your card, and need to know some bank details. 

Hey wait a minute? I say, what’s going on why do you need to know that? 

That's when my spider sense started tingling. 

'Hey you don't believe me?' the guy says, 'Look your last PayPal transaction was XXX, and your phone number is XXX.' Ok seems like they're legit. But my girlfriend in the background told me to pull the plug. 

I then twigged. They were in my PayPal account. I immediately changed all my passwords. I withdrew all my monies, I phoned my bank and made sure everything was ok. Then I unlinked my card from the account manually. 

TIP: Click on the 3 dots on the top right corner, scroll down to show original.

Have a look at the original message ID. If it looks phishy? Then it probably is.

PHEW! So was it a scam? I still questioned it. 

YES it was. How did they do it? Well let me unpick it for you. 

They send you an invoice from PayPal. Anyone can do that by the way. But in the note, they put a contact number in for you to call if you think someone is fraudulently trying to get into your account. There is a link to the invoice as well. So if you pay the invoice, you're scammed, if you give them your details over the phone so they can access your account, you're scammed. 

HOW TO KNOW IF YOU'RE BEING SCAMMED? 

Always GOOGLE the support telephone number. The internet should tell you if other people have fallen for it. 

HOW TO PREVENT ONLINE SCAMMING? 

Firstly, don't click on links, or use support numbers from within the emails. Go to the site, now PayPal don't have an out of office contact number on their site. You'd think these assholes might be kind enough to have one, or inform you that if you're trying to contact them out of hours, it will be a phoney number. PayPal how about a little help? Huh? 

So please spread the word. I'm not very tech savvy, but I'm also not that embarrassed. This was a very sophisticated scheme, and they got into my account after I conceded some personal details. Please tell your parents, or people you know that this is a thing, and these guys are good. It is a scam.