PayPal: Beware of attempted fraud - a new scam can cost a lot of money

Created: 06/23/2022, 14:54

By: Patrick Freiwah

The internet is full of dangers.

Anyone who often processes their payments with PayPal should at least be vigilant.

This is especially true when conspicuous e-mails arrive.

Munich - When arrears are settled in 2022, PayPal is a popular means of choice.

The corona pandemic also ensured that the American service finally became the most popular payment method in Germany.

However, the supposedly simple processing of open invoices harbors a risk that should not be underestimated: scammers use perfidious methods to get users to hand over access data.

This is done with the intention of transferring sums of money to unknown accounts and thus causing financial damage to those affected.

PayPal: Emails asking for login - users targeted by scammers

Several attempts at fraud are circulating online, but they all have the same goal: using personal e-mails to get users to log on to the supposedly real PayPal portal.

The consumer advice center recently drew attention to messages in which "unusual activities" are mentioned.

A safety-related blocking of the PayPal account is the result, according to the note in the fraudulent email.

The genuine-looking fakes apparently reach potential victims in the form of different variants: E-mails that claim to come from PayPal are not easily recognizable as such.

This is proven by a screenshot that is available to our editors:

E-mail phishing: Scammers try to get sensitive data using notifications that look real.

© FKN

There is a request to click on a button and enter the personal Paypal access data there.

You will be prompted to take action to continue using the offer.

However, users should not follow the call:

PayPal: Attempting to scam can cost a lot of money

Anyone who does this is thereby sharing their login and allowing the scammers to log into the affected account.

The perfidy: A look at the e-mail address suggests that the message is from the sender "support@paypal.de".

A closer look, however, makes it clear that the real e-mail contains a different, cryptic composition of letters.

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Paypal is a popular payment method.

But be careful on the web (icon image).

© Thiago Prudencio/Imago

The second possibility of interpreting the PayPal fraud attempt is the website that appears behind the button with the request "Log in to PayPal": This name is also a confused string of letters and numbers that alert Internet users makes suspicious.

Compared to the past, the phishing attempts are undoubtedly more difficult to detect - spelling mistakes in the actual message are (often) searched for in vain in the current cases.

Most recently, the consumer advice center also warned against fake e-mails on behalf of the Sparkasse.