Very good PayPal scam. Please read so you don't get caught out. I almost gave away £750...

[Hungrycaterpillarsmummy]

Was almost scammed to the tune of £750. This is a good one and I was sooooo close to falling for it. Was on the phone to the scammers! Woke up to an email from PayPal saying there's been what looked like fraudulent activity on my account. I checked the email address by clicking on it and it did look legit. I then decided I'd go to PayPal from Google rather than clicking any links in the email. Logged in and saw a pending transaction for £750. Not one I recognised and definitely wasn't me. So I clicked on the transaction and there is a note saying "this is fraudulent activity" and call this number. So I call the number, go through security, get sent a security code, I am then transferred to someone senior, they tell me my bank card number, confirm all my name and address etc. Then they ask for the 3 digits on the back of my card. I pause, with alarm bells ringing. This is the absolute crème de la crème of information you can give someone because once they have that they can make purchases. I said no, this sounds like a scam. Then all of a sudden the guy is like "well you called us with the number from PayPal. You've called us because you got an email saying fraudulent activity detected and you can see on your account there has been". Whilst I was on the phone I decided to check my PayPal account and I had been logged out and couldn't get back in. He told me that was an added security measure. Anyway, I said no it's a scam and he ended with "ok then you will lose all your money". I said ok and hung up. Changed my password immediately, found the £750 transaction and this is where I had gone wrong. The phone number to call "PayPal" was on a NOTE on the transaction but this note is from the scammers! So they put their number in there and then act as PayPal. Honestly I was sooo close to saying those three digits but that's the only thing that hasn't allowed this scam to be successful. All I had to do was click "cancel" against the money request!

Financially illiterate people need to start learning.

I'm interested to know what you think old people who are struggling, people who do not have full literacy or learning disabled people should do? Not have bank accounts?

@WeepingSomnambulist Just wondering if you saw my question above?

What about people who for one reason or another have temporary or permanent limited capacity do, like someone without full literacy (there's a surprising number), or an old person who's sliding into dementia or someone with learning disabilities, or someone who is in the process of learning English? Not have bank accounts?

How many of the women in THIS thread who’ve nearly fallen for scams are functionally illiterate and learning disabled? Aside them, nice straw man. ✅

Not at all. It's a genuine and very valid question

Bit of a deflection though, your question.

Still hoping @WeepingSomnambulist will give a reasonable answer.

I had this a while ago, it gave me a shock when the notification popped up because the text of the request showed on my Home Screen and it looked as if was PayPal sending me the notification not the scammer.

It nearly had me for a second, I was wondering how they’d managed to bypass my two step authentication. Annoyingly, PayPal wouldn’t let me report the request as a scam after I cancelled it.

You're aware that a significant number of people struggle with literacy?

The National Literacy Trust has a statement which says; ‘1 in 6 (16.4% / 7.1 million people) adults in England have very poor literacy skills.’ literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/adult-literacy/

www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/building-skills-for-all-review-of-england.pdf

These do not, as far as I'm aware, include figures for people who are learning English on coming here or people who are losing literacy due to age.

I read this thread a couple of days ago and have literally just had the scam email

I wouldnt have rung the number but am pleased that I know simply to cancel the request

I rarely use PayPal so they must have got my email address via ebay somehow

Maybe eBay is dodgy actually.

Glad you knew it was a scam :)

They get the email addresses from publicly available sources or from lists of emails that have come from previous data breaches. Not normally from individually hacking your eBay account or wherever else.

You can check whether your email address has been included in previous data breaches by checking on websites like haveibeenpwned.com

I don't think anyone has hacked my ebay account but I do think that ebay or PayPal aren't as secure with users email addresses as they might be

I can't remember the details exactly but a few years ago I had an issue with fake ebay listings and it could only have happened if somehow someone had access to the email address that I use for ebay and Paypal and very little else

Wish I saw this. My aunt has just informed she got scammed exactly in the same way and has lost £1500

I got this today too, something about Argos vouchers for £869. I called PayPal and they advised me to cancel it. They said if I had accidentally approved the invoice they would have helped me get my money back, but if I had called the number the scammers would potentially have cleared my bank out.

PayPal told me it’s because email addresses are in the public domain, you can buy lists. There are literally offices full of people firing off scam invoices to PayPal accounts.

I had this the other day!! At first I assumed it was just a scam email pretending to be from PayPal but when I saw there was an actual request on my account it made me really nervous for some reason even though the obvious thing was to just cancel the request, not pay it and ignore it like you would with ‘just’ your classic scam email. When I googled I couldn’t really find anything about this specific type of thing though which made me even more worried that I was missing something and they’d be able to get into my account somehow…. I don’t know how!!! I did consider calling the number but then decided I’d just wait and see what happened…. OBVIOUSLY now in hindsight the scam part is that you assume it’s an invoice of some sort and just pay it, or call the number and end up giving your details. Bit of a ramble sorry but had to get it off my chest I’ve been feeling silly for being so worried about it but at least it wasn’t just me who almost fell for it!!!

Oh nooo :(
Sorry to hear this.
Are her bank helping her? There was a previous poster who said they did get the money back so fingers crossed.
It's bloody awful

Yes I felt bloody stupid because the cancel button is just right there and I did consider it but the note just threw me and I fell for it.

I had this, I could see it was a scam put PayPal doesn’t let you report it. There are options to report everything by else but not a scam. It would also have liked the option of cancelling without making the scammer aware that I had as I didn’t want to alert them the account was active, but that didn’t seem to be an option.

If you get one of these don’t panic. It doesn’t mean your PayPal account has been compromised. Anyone can send a request over PayPal. Just cancel the request. OP’s account was comprised because she gave them the details to log into the account.

Yup. We've been through that on here already ;)

Sorry I didn’t bother to read all 9 pages, I just read your posts. If it’s not helpful you can just ignore it :)

And you were calling other people rude? They’re trying to help other people 😂

Mine was a Waterstones voucher, knew that was a scam nobody likes £698 worth of books!

I had this happen too....cheeky scammer put 10 requests through for £750 a go! Thankfully didn't call the number and just cancelled every request but frustrating that you can't report as a scam

@Hungrycaterpillarsmummy Its just awful. The bank said there going to try their best but she won't know for few weeks or even months.
They even tried to get into her actual main bank account to take her savings about 10 grand but the bank stopped it and they scammeres did that thing like you said where she had to accept a £1:transaction and she said yes to it then they changed it to 3500 via another bank account or credit card I cant remember now. Her transaction said soemthing liken freiga murata on her paypal account i think it was

Yeah I know.

Haha!