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possible paypal scam

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Barry Scott:
I hate these emails but you can usually spot a bad fake by just hovering your mouse over the link, if it says one thing but actualliy links to another, take care.  It is easy to do in a HTML email and would look just like this http://www.ebay.co.uk.  

I normally avoid even click the link as opening the page may send a referrer ID in the link to a database to confirm the page has been viewed and therefore the email address is valid.

Spooky:
I had one of those 'Your account will be frozen if you don't enter your details' e-mails from 'E-bay' yesterday ... Chucked it in the bin rather rapidly! :roll:

Ben:

--- Quote from: "Wanderer" ---I'm in total agreement Daz but Egg (usually) only contact you via email as to get their banking license they have to use email and t'internet.

At least that's what one of their operatives told me.

Maybe Ben can confirm or deny.

Ed
--- End quote ---


Egg do use email a heck of a lot for contacting their customers. I'm not certain of the link to the banking licence, so I can't confirm or deny that this is the case. There is a statement on their web site relating to email scams (phishing). If you go to http://www.egg.com and click on "Security and Privacy" on the top menu, it will tell you more.

One piece of advice I'd give to anyone is that if you are approached over email to review your account, don't click on the link in the email - open up a new browser window instead, and type the web address in manually - the one you know to be correct. So, when you get your statement notification email from egg each month, open up internet explorer, and type in www .egg .com (without the spaces :D ), sign on in the normal way, and then check your statement.

I got "got" by an eBay scammer about 6 months ago, and as soon as I realised I hadn't gone through to the eBay site went round and changed pretty much every password on every account anywhere. It was a right pain :(
So I follow the above procedure every time now.

It only takes a second of carelessness to give these scammers what they need - be vigilant.

Cheers

Ben

Ben:

--- Quote from: "Barry Scott" ---
I normally avoid even click the link as opening the page may send a referrer ID in the link to a database to confirm the page has been viewed and therefore the email address is valid.
--- End quote ---


Some companies / scammers embedd a link to a single pixel "blank" image for tracking. So you don't even have to click on the link for them to know that the email has been opened, and so therefore the account is active.

There's a lot to be said for text only email clients...

Cheers

Ben

datalas:
it is for that reason that thunderbird will disable images by default.

Note, if you're running outlook I would recommend you find a program which replaces the standard viewer with a text-only one (the name of it escapes me at present) which eliminates some of the problems with the html renderer and graphics retrieval etc.

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