PayPal-targetted Phishing Spam Email Morphs

Posted on February 23, 2007
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 68 views |

Without question the most popular post on my blog has been PayPal Phishing Scams Getting Better and Better in which I describe how a Paypal-targetted phishing email, seemingly sent by Wayne Bakewell, scams unwary recipients into revealing their Paypal login info.

It’s unfortunate that’s the most popular post because most people who read it seem to do so only after they’ve been taken by the scam.

So in that light I am annoyed to inform that the scam email has morphed. The scam is exactly the same but after being Wayne Bakewell for almost a year, it is now titled “Receipt for Your Payment to Debbie’s RC World, Inc” and contains:

This email confirms that you have paid Debbie’s RC World, Inc., (eric@debbiesrcworld.com) $124.99 USD using PayPal.

This credit card transaction will appear on your bill as “PAYPAL DICK’s Sporting*”.

The purported address the product is being shipped to (and thus the person they would have the email recipient believe is trying to rip them off) is:

William Rusaw
11 Raritan Avenue
Highland Park, NJ 08904
United States

The link in the email now goes to a page hosted on: http://www.ba-tek.com. Undoubtedly their server has been compromised and, as with the Bakewell email, will change as the scammer needs new servers to host his fake Paypal site.

If you’ve received this email and found this post I hope it’s before you clicked the link in the email. For a complete description of how this scam works, and why niether Paypal, nor William Rusaw, nor BA-TEK, Inc. are likely to blame, please read my original post and associated comments: PayPal Phishing Scams Getting Better and Better.

If you clicked the link and entered your Paypal info and then found this post, in the comments are some suggestions for measures you can take to mitigate any potential damage.

And one final thought: email lies. As we wouldn’t believe an unsolicited email that showed up telling us we’ve won $100 000, so too should we not believe any email about impending disaster.

When in doubt, email lies.

Comments

3 Responses to “PayPal-targetted Phishing Spam Email Morphs”

  1. csorb on February 25th, 2007 6:24 pm

    Thanks dude. You saved my skin with that info

  2. John Q. Netizen on September 18th, 2007 8:42 am

    Is this PayPal logon page a fake ????

    http://login3.paypalglobaldatabase.com/cgi-bin/webscr.php?cmd=_login-run

    The link was sent in e-mail

    This page:

    http://paypalglobaldatabase.com/

    Shows:

    paypalglobaldatabase.com
    This page is parked free, courtesy of GoDaddy.com

  3. MrHappy on September 18th, 2007 9:30 am

    Yes of course it’s fake. Paypal has a long-standing, well-known domain name in paypal.com, what would they do with as lousy-sounding domain name as that?

    As a basic rule of internet survival if something makes you wonder “is this real?” then safety dictates you act as though it isn’t.

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