By Sandor Panton, Contributor
THROUGH PAYPAL.COM, anyone in Jamaica or elsewhere in the world with a US$-denominated credit card and an email address can instantly send and receive payments online.
Also, if you have a bank account in the United States or Canada, you can directly link this account, and your US$ credit card account, to your PayPal account for it to be a source of funds for payments made to another Paypal account or receiver of funds transferred from your PayPal account.
From as far back as early 2002, and especially in recent times, numerous fraudulent e-mails that are purportedly from PayPal have been arriving in the mailboxes of some PayPal customers. For the PayPal scammers behind these fraudulent emails, the aim is usually to extract information from legitimate PayPal customers, information that could then be used in identity theft of some sort or for credit card fraud.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
There are a number of PayPal scam techniques that have become popular, but usually the first step in the process is that a legitimate PayPal customer will get an email that 'seems' to come from PayPal itself. In most cases, the scammer will never even know that the owner of a particular email address is actually a PayPal customer; they may have simply bought a list of email addresses from someone, and sent the email to this list in the hope that at least a few of the recipients would be PayPal users.
The details found in these scam emails are usually crafted to pry information from the potential victim using one of the methods detailed below:
The email claims that PayPal recently had 'system problems' and that the user needs to re-enter their PayPal and credit card details in the form which is actually built into the e-mail itself
The email claims that PayPal is re-confirming the accounts of active users or that PayPal recently had 'system problems' and hence the user needs to click a link to visit a web site to update their PayPal and credit card details. Once the link is clicked, the user is taken to a site that is an exact replica of the 'look' of PayPal.Com with the same graphics, but with the main and most important visible difference being that the domain name is not actually PayPal.Com
It is important to note that in both cases above it is the scammer, not PayPal who will be the sole recipient of whatever details the victim may type into the form in the scam email or fake web site. If successful, the scammer can then use the victim's PayPal login and credit card information for, among other things, fraudulent online transactions.
HOW CAN PAYPAL USERS PROTECT THEMSELVES?
Use common sense. If the email claims to be from 'PayPal' but yet when you click the link, the address displayed in the browser's address bar is actually www.paypalscousin.com, it's 100 per cent guaranteed that this email did not come from PayPal. If the address displayed after you click is not www.paypal.com then you're not at the real PayPal site.
PayPal will never send an email asking that you open/download an attachment or complete a form that is built into the email itself. If the email form asks for personal information such as your PayPal password and your credit card number and expiry date, you should be instantly suspicious
When PayPal does actually communicate with its users, it addresses them by First & Last Name or by Business name. The emails from scammers on the other hand usually begin with "Dear PayPal User" or "Dear PayPal Member".
By being on the lookout for the signs detailed above, and setting yourself a unique alphanumeric password every one or two months, you should be well on the way to protecting yourself from becoming a PayPal scam victim.
Sandor Panton is an Internet specialist and consultant. If you have any comments, contact him at feedback@jamaica-gleaner.com. This series is brought to you by www.go-jamaica.com, the portal web site of The Gleaner.
