[TriLUG] OT: phishing on PayPal

[Mike Fieschko]

On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 15:07:49 -0500
Joseph Mack <mack.joseph at epa.gov> wrote:

[snip]

> I've e-mailed PayPal cc:'ing the mail, and asking how someone else
> might know I've been travelling (they may not, and are just sending
> the same e-mail to everyone), but have not heard back from them. I'm
> also wondering how anyone knows I have a paypal account.

[snip]

A later email of yours says you didn't get a reply.

I got a phishing attempt (at a yahoo email account I do not use for
paypal) today.

I went to the legitimate paypal site and submitted the phishing email to
them, and got back a form email reply acknowledging the submission
today.

Used Firefox on Debian for reading the yahoo mail and to submit the
report to paypal.

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/email-security

Tipoffs that it was a phishing attempt were:

URL showing in email was to http:// not https:// site.

Cursor over the displayed URL in the yahoo email showed an IP address in
the whatever-it's-called bar at the bottom of the Firefox window frame.

Mike Fieschko
Raleigh, NC