Here is another good example of a phishing email that is presently being circulated. It was sent to me by a Scamicide reader who received it. It makes for compelling reading, but it is a scam. Phishing emails, by which scammers and identity thieves attempt to lure you into either clicking on links contained within the email which will download malware or providing personal information that will be used to make you a victim of identity theft, are nothing new. They are a staple of identity thieves and scammers and with good reason because they work. As always, they lure you by making it appear that there is an emergency that requires your immediate attention or else dire consequences will occur. Copied below is a new phishing email presently being sent to unsuspecting people that appears to come from PayPal. It contains a PayPal logo, but that is easy to counterfeit. A telltale sign that this is a phishing email is that the email address of the sender was one that has nothing to do with PayPal and was most likely part of a botnet of computers infected by scammers and then used to send out the phishing email in a way that is not readily traceable back to the scammer. If you hovered over the link where it says “Sign Up Now” you would have seen that it would not take you to PayPal, but rather to a scammer who will ask for a credit card. I disabled the link.
You sent a payment of $799.99 USD to Nova Armory Inc.
October 16 2020
Receipt No:0158-6987-1468-2896Hello,This charge will appear on your bank statement as payment to PAYPAL *Nova Armory Inc.
Save time with a PayPal accountCreate a PayPal account and save your payment information. You won’t need to enter your payment information every time you shop online.
Sign Up Now Shop with confidenceWe keep your financial information secure.
Transactions monitored 24/7Our fraud specialists help protect your account.
You’re protectedZero fraud liability for eligible unauthorized purchases.
Merchant information:
Nova Armory Inc.Instructions to merchant:
None provided
Shipping information: Shipping method:
Not specified
Description Unit price Qty Amount Online Order $799.99 1 $799.99
Total: $799.99 USD Receipt No: 0158-6987-1468-2896
Please keep this receipt number for future reference. You’ll need it if you contact customer service at PayPal.You have 24 hours from the date of the transaction to open a dispute.For assistance Call +1 801 753 9482
Please don’t reply to this email. It’ll just confuse the computer that sent it and you won’t get a response.
Copyright © 2020 PayPal, Inc. All rights reserved. PayPal is located at 5630 N. First St., San Jose, CA 92563.
TIPS
Legitimate emails from a company with which you do business would include the last four digits of your account and include your name rather than a salutation that merely says, “hello.” This email had neither. Obviously, if you are not a PayPal customer, you will recognize immediately that this is a scam. As with most phishing emails, they lure you into clicking on a link by attempting to trick you into believing there is an emergency that you must deal with.
As with all phishing emails, two things can happen if you click on the link provided or call the number provided to dispute the charge. Either you will be sent to a legitimate looking, but phony webpage where you will be prompted to input personal information that will be used to make you a victim of identity theft or, even worse, merely by clicking on the link, you will download malware such as keystroke logging malware that will steal all of your personal information from your computer and use it to make you a victim of identity theft. If you receive an email like this and think it may possibly be legitimate, merely call PayPal, your bank or other institution from which the email purports to originate at a telephone number that you know is accurate and you will be able to confirm that it is a scam.
For those of you receiving the Scam of the day through an email, I just want to remind you that if you want to see the ever increasing list of Coronavirus scams go to the first page of the http://www.scamicide.com website and click on the tab at the top of the page that indicates “Coronavirus Scams.” Scamicide was recently cited by the New York Times as one of three top sources for information about Coronavirus related scams.
If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is to go to the bottom of the initial page of http://www.scamicide.com and click on the tab that states “Sign up for this blog.”
