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Paypal ‘Notification Refund’ Making Rounds In Email Inboxes Everywhere

By in Email, Internet Security


Keeping a clean Email inbox can be challenging - especially with the amount of scammy Emails being sent out to unsuspecting recipients everywhere.

While checking my own Email this morning I couldn’t help but notice a suspicious Email that purports to be sent on behalf of Paypal with the subject line ‘Notification Refund.’  

The message directs you to open an attachment to keep your Paypal account in good standing. If you fail to do so, the Email threatens account closure by June 6, 2012.

The full text of the message reads:

Paypal Refund Notification Email

Dear valued PayPal Customer,

Due to a policy update we need to verify your PayPal account.
Please download the attached file , open it using your browser,
fill in the required information and click update .
Should you decide you do not wish to accept the verification
process you can notify us before 6/06/2012 to close your account
immediately without incurring any additional charges.

We do hope, however, that you continue to use PayPal and enjoy
the following benefits:


It’s safer


When you pay with PayPal your financial details are never shared
with sellers or retailers, so you?e more protected against fraud.


It’s faster


You don? have to type in your card details each time you pay, so
you can check out faster online. You can also get eBay items delivered
more quickly, as you can pay the seller instantly.


It?’s easier


PayPal is the preferred web payment method in the world because it?
a smarter, savvier way to pay online in just a few clicks. All you need
is your email address and a password.

Copyright © 1999-2012 PayPal. All rights reserved.

If you examine the Email closely, you can see that many things are ‘amiss’ in this message. It doesn’t use a Paypal logo - or any images - for that matter. Instead of addressing the recipient by name they use ‘Valued Paypal Customer’ which is always a sign the message is a hoax. There are also a number of misspellings and strange uses of punctuation marks which is another telltale sign that this is indeed a malicious message.

If you get this, be sure not to click on the attachment and report it by forwarding the message to ‘[email protected]’ so they can investigate it and work to put a stop to it.

I hope that you found this post helpful and that you’ll share it with family and friends so they can avoid any computer complications that could arise from clicking on the attachment by accident. Thanks for stopping by and sharing - have a great Tuesday!

If you’re a small business owner or IT manager that would like to stop these types of messages from being delivered to your business inboxes, we’d be happy to help with a cloud based solution that filters incoming Email before it can become a problem on your local network. Please click here for a no-obligation quote on SaaS Email security services and a representative will contact you shortly.