Received an email from paypal today saying how they have kindly taken £45.99 from my account for skype, and if I'd like it back to click on the link.

First give away is paypal always use your full name.

Second give away is ((https://)) note the s at the end.

_________________
If you feel you have benefited from the Free advice given on the Forum, Please consider making a donation to UHM's Nominated charity, read all about it and donate here :

donnas-dream-house-charity-t52110.html

I would agree that a genuine pay-pal email will always be addressed to you in your name as registered with them, the *s* at the end of https however is one way of designating a *secure* site.

_________________
One day it will all be firewood.

My e-mails from PP always come from service@paypal.co.uk
And in them references to their web only starts with www.
but logging onto this produces an https:
But thanks for warning, I don't have a skype account but my Son had money taken out of his illegally, a couple of months back.

All sites on the the World Wide Web will start with http (Hypertext Transfer Protocol). So for example Paypal's actual website would be http://195..0.35.36 but when you type in http://www.paypal.co.uk the magic man behind the screen will look up where that is meant to go and then take you to http://195..0.35.36. In the olden days of really small speed modems you would bookmark http://195..0.35.36 rather than http://www.paypal.co.uk because you would avoid the dns lookup therefore speeding things up drastically.

http is just to denote that it is on the web rather than somewhere else on the internet such as nntp (Network News Transfer Protocol) etc

But a good head up from Scruff - emailed my mum (she is bound to fall for it)

_________________
Mike
http://rebuildingatimberbungalow.blogspot.com/
any advice welcome

Paypal confirmed it was Phishing or something like that. trying to trick you into giving details away so they can empty your account.

_________________
If you feel you have benefited from the Free advice given on the Forum, Please consider making a donation to UHM's Nominated charity, read all about it and donate here :

donnas-dream-house-charity-t52110.html

fair play to my mum she is a bit dubious about emails but she will bug me a lot. In the evenings I will go on Facebook and she will say she has had a few emails she isnt sure about and ask me to look at her emails. This really annoys me because I have to go out of my email to check hers and her password is two words that rhyme (one is orange - only joking) and a number - I so it takes me a couple of times to log in because I can never remember which order the words are in.

I'm sure she reads some sort of scaremongers website because when she calls at the weekend she will bring a load of stuff for me to put on my bonfire pile including argos catalogues, newspapers, receipts (where she has paid cash) etc because she is worried about identity theft

_________________
Mike
http://rebuildingatimberbungalow.blogspot.com/
any advice welcome

You can see how a not so frequent user could get caught out by something like this.

_________________
If you feel you have benefited from the Free advice given on the Forum, Please consider making a donation to UHM's Nominated charity, read all about it and donate here :

donnas-dream-house-charity-t52110.html

Nortwales,
Paypal is https:// not http:// as you said, for the log on page and the account pages.

Thanks for the heads up, John.
dave

_________________
You can always tell a Yorkshireman,
But you cannot tell him much.

My dad (now 81) isn't very internet savvy whatsoever. If a window pop's up and says you have to click here, he'll bloody well click it. A few months ago he phoned up saying his computer had a virus and how did he download the anti virus software to get rid of it. As his computer already has an antivirus program, I was aware that he'd probably downloaded a malware program, so told him not to use the computer till I could get over to have a shufti.
Yep he'd downloaded a malware program , then almost got to the bit where you have to pay for the software to put it right.
He'd thought he'd start downloading the software (you have to pay for) to fix his computer.
Took about an hour and a half to sort out and I left him with strict instructions, not to download anything that's suspect. He did ask me what sort of stuff was suspect, so I told him everything is suspect so don't download without asking me or my brothers first.

That sounds like xpantivirus John a real pain to get rid off.

_________________
If you feel you have benefited from the Free advice given on the Forum, Please consider making a donation to UHM's Nominated charity, read all about it and donate here :

donnas-dream-house-charity-t52110.html

Frankly I don't believe anything I get in email these days - it's not worth the hassle. If it IS genuine then the people behind the email will send another, asking why you haven't repsonded etc.

_________________
This post may contain nuts

just as I said - it will begin with http

_________________
Mike
http://rebuildingatimberbungalow.blogspot.com/
any advice welcome

You are missing what I said.
The http has a 's' after it to indicate that it is secure by being encrypted.

So paypal is not http://paypal
it is https://paypal

If you click on either of the links it will open as:
https://www.paypal.com
If a link to paypal opens as just http then it is a scam email.

dave

_________________
You can always tell a Yorkshireman,
But you cannot tell him much.

yeah they promised me a bigger willie, that never happened

_________________
i love being married
it's great to find that one special person that you want to annoy for the rest of your life

your missing what I am saying - all sites on the web start with http (put your finger on the screen over the s and have a peek at the 4 letters before it

_________________
Mike
http://rebuildingatimberbungalow.blogspot.com/
any advice welcome