I've had a couple of emails from paypal. They think my accounts been hacked into and want me to renew all my details etc. How do I know it's from paypal and it's not a scam ?

[pinksmarties]

Also, I don't think I've got a pay pal account as such as when I buy off ebay the money comes straight out of my bank account.

Thanks

It's a scam! They would never do this. Delete it now or try to report if you can be arsed.

If it's asking you to enter any personal info it's more than likely a scam. Forward the email to paypal for investigation.

It almost certainly will be a scam. If you have a PayPal account, then go into that (via the normal route) and check if any money has gone from it that is unauthorised.

If it has, then get in touch with PayPal. If not, then you don't need to do anything. But whatever you do do not respond through the link you have had in the e-mail.

Log directly into Paypal and don't go via an links from the emails.

If the money comes straight out of your bank account, then I would assume that you do have a paypal account though? Or are you doing bank transfers each time (with the sellers giving you their bank details?

A genuine paypal e-mail would ask you to go to Paypal and log in from there - they would never provide a link in the e-mail which leads you to a page for you to put your details in. It's probably a scam.

You should forward the entire e-mail (leaving the subject as it is) to

[email protected]

They will send you an automated reply to let you know that they have recieved it, then a few days later they will let you know if it is a scam or not. They do reply to every e-mail, I have used it a lot in the past.

do not click any links in that email. if you think you might have a paypal account then go to the paypal website yourself and request your login info is sent to your email address. you will then be able to compare the emails. the fake one most likely didn't use your full name, whereas paypal always do. and at the bottom of genuine paypal email you will find paypal's address and info. on teh fale there will be very little info at the bottom.

It will be a scam,
I have had my paypal hacked but it was dealt with differently, so check on the paypal website if you can as others have advised

Just go to the Paypal site directly (type the URL into your browser) and see what it says there. Paypal do go through phases of deciding your account may have been compromised and wanting you to update details, but never ever do anything like that from a link in an email. If the real Paypal want you to do it it will be clear when you log on to the site.

Blimey thanks. I sort of thought it was real because the scam ones automatically get put into 'junk' for me to delete but these ones came into my in box.

Do they ask you to follow a link or to log in to your account?

I had 'random security checks' a couple of days ago then had to change password and confirm other information. Then the next day my account was hacked. Even though it sounds dodgy, the 2 weren't related.

It's really awful that it's so hard to tell what's genuine and what's a scam. A lady from PP called me to say that they thought there had been unauthorised transactions and I didn't know whether to believe her or not! She didn't ask for any personal details and told me to log on to my account to sort it out.

Scammers are getting very very cunning, even DH who works in Internet security has almost been taken in by a few things! You have to view any email you get, from any source, as potentially suspect (sadly).

Also watch for websites with any hints of dogdiness, some of them have links that are also nasty downloads without you realising.

I recently received an email from a distant cousin saying he'd been mugged in London and desperately needed money to help get him home.

There were several red flags in the email, but how could it be a fake since it was using his real email addy for replies?

Scammer had hacked into cousin's email server + account, and reconfigured his server to forward cousin's emails to them. All cousin might have noticed was little email traffic for a few days before he might twig something was wrong, maybe long enough for a gullible person to send money.