I am embarressed to admit this as I fell for a phishing scam. While embedded in my work I recieved an email that was a phony paypal email. It looked exactly like the paypal page, every detail except one. I clicked on a link and logged in to modify something.

2 weeks later

This past weekend I started getting emails from paypay saying payments were made when I was not using the account. People were thanking me for a purchases I was not making. While this was happening I was being spammed by thousands and thousands of emails (I guess in an attempt to mask my paypal confirmations).
I was able to log into paypal change my password and security stuff and notify paypal of what happend. They are investigating it and they said i would be reimbursed for all the unauthorized payments in a few days. I have been sending them all the stuff that was sent to me. Most of the payments were cash transfers (from my checking account) to accounts in Germany and China with some purchases of what appears to be gold from Austrila. All I want to say at this time is it was a signifcant amount of money.
It all happened between 1:00am and 5:00am on Sunday Morning. I noticed it about 7:00am on Sunday Morning.

Normally, I am not fooled easily by this kind of thing and I am usually anal about security and I feel kind of stupid but let me say it looked really ligit.

This is a heads-up. It can happen to you. Keep an eye out.

I plan to go to my bank and open a separate checking account and only keep 50 bucks in there just for paypal and transfer fundxs toand from this account as needed so even if this happens again somehow I am protected somewhat.

That sucks Sandman. Thanks for the heads up and letting everybody know. Hang in there. Wouldn't you like to get your hands on these guys...:rocketem:

I plan to go to my bank and open a separate checking account and only keep 50 bucks in there just for paypal and transfer fundxs toand from this account as needed so even if this happens again somehow I am protected somewhat.

Don't keep any money in the account.Transfer money to it only ready make a payment with paypal.That's what I do. They can't steal what's not there.

when opening a new account...

thats the only time you can specify that under no
circumstances will you allow that account to be used for
999 calls (and other stuff)
...because they don't normally allow you to
make changes like that after the fact. so you might consider
making that your new account.... and making your origional account
the 50 dollar account after you transfer balances...

i have never used ebay or pay pal and never will. If i cant look you in the eye and shake your hand afterwards -> were not doing buisness......... period.
unless i already know you...that is... i'd not hesitate to call mikecc and do buisness....or do it online with a credit card that has
a low balance just enough to cover my purchases because even the ISP servers can get hacked.

anyways sorry to hear that ...

Jim for pay pal I do what you suggested. I always wait to confirm price then I add the funds into the account. That way there in no way to use it with out authorization.

That blows, sorry to hear, but thanks for the heads up.

Man that wicked sux.

FYI,

All the funds were re-paid (I got my $ back in a few days). After talking with an officer that was investigating it he said that internet purchases are still far safer for the consumer then face to face dealings. The most common rip off is when you give your cc or personal info to someone you think you know, (store clerk, waiter, etc) and he/she in turn sells that info to someone who actually steals from you. Also just groaping thru the trash for recipets with data on it is good enough most times. But in all cases the consumer is protected. If you get robbed face to face or your personal items are stolen, you are at a loss.

I would still rather deal with a machine and encryption to purchase my things, knowing that no matter what, even if someone impersonates me and moves or steals my $ I am protected.

Glad everything worked out.Getting robbed/burned sucks.

Just to give everyone a heads up, the PayPal fraud scam is apparently still going on. I opened a claim they are investigating. Here's what happened. I logged in at work, I only use my pc at work, not at home. In email I had one from PayPal saying that there had been a transaction for a DVD-VHS recorder on my account and listing the name and address is was being sent to. I had not used my PayPal account since the last S-B raffle. In the email there was a link you could click incase you did not agree and wanted to get a refund. I clicked it and fortunately, my work network prevented me from accessing the url.
I opened the claim with PayPal and they confirmed it was not them and fotrunately I had not been able to respond to the fraudulent site or I might have divulged the personal or financial info that site was looking for.
Be alert to this stuff, if for no other reason that when you first see you've been scammed it just about gives you a heart attack.

good heads up, I receive about 5~6 million dollar lottery wins a day ~ nigerian oil ministry saying I am owed 8,000,000 ~ some bank somewhere i never heard of says my info is going out of date... ....all try to phish ... there was a story on CNN about teenagers in Nigeria whos sole income is from stealing info online and buying gear by doing these scams....:cputin: :liquify:

i saw on TV that theres supposed to be a yellow padlock in the right hand corner...and if not it's a bogus site.