Is this new spam?

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Hey all. I got a couple emails to my hotmail account, peaked at them but just ignored. I didn't click anywhere in the messages or email a reply or anything. I'm concerned about whether these are just spam attempts to get info from me or something more sinister. Here is the first I received about my PayPal account (which I don't have):

And the second from Ebay (which I don't use):

Both emails are identical in wording and how the document looks. And since the same countries are used in the ISP reports, I figured both were from the same person/people and attempts to get me to divulge account numbers, real name, etc. Are they really spam and can I put them in my trash folder, or should I keep them archived in case they're something else? My computer is running as its usual self. I have Spybot and checked for viruses and found nothing. TIA

 

That's spam, big time. I got the same paypal message, and I don't even have an account.

 

The purpose of that scam is beyond me, so it must be a higher level of idiocy. At any rate, it's scam. They can write whatever they want in a message and they can send you messages "from" whatever address they like. I could send you a message from your own address, for example.

 

Usually scams send you to a site that is not the company. If he was to login to paypal.com or ebay.com, the scammer wouldn't get information from him.

I agree that it's a scam, but it's clearly by a scammer that doesn't have a clue what s/he is doing.

 

@Rastor:
Haven't you heard of 'farming'? They hack into the place where the URL names are matched to the IP addresses and reroute it to their own site, which has a mock-up of the login area. All they have to do is capture the info when you attempt to login to their fake site, and then they use that info to log into your real account and do whatever the hell they feel like!

 

I would say that it goes beyond spam to attempted fraud but you get the idea.

I wouldn't say that the crook necessarily doesn't know what he/she is doing - given that it would be presumably relatively difficult to determine who actually has a paypal/e-bay account it makes sense to blindly flood as many e-mail accounts as possible in order to find a couple of saps who are gullible enough to log-in.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have been pretty active in trying to go after people operating such schemes but I have not been hearing them bragging about any significant arrests. The criminals are invariably located somewhere overseas and have proven just about impossible to track down and lay charges against.

 

Some of those have found their way to our exam-results listing (that is done via emails) and it's pretty funny, considering that about 5,000 students read that listing and probably none of them use PayPal. It's like screaming "SPAM! Do not fall to a trick like this!"

 

It's possible that the link wouldn't take you to the destination it suggests, and then requires you to enter various credit card details to "reactivate your account". That would make it phishing. I've had similar things claiming to be from various American banks, saying stuff about my mortgage, and requiring my bank details.

 

@All - thanks muchly. You can never be sure about what's going on online anymore. Why can't I get the sex spam anymore? I guess hubby gets mine, too.

 

I beleive the technical term for it is "Phishing" as they are "fishing" for legitimate accounts. I see quite a bit of these involving banks in which they want you to go to a mock-up site and access your on-line account.

I've always thought that the FBI or Interpol should give out to people fake information to enter into these schemes so they could trace them. Even better maybe the CIA for they could trace and then plant them

 

Right, it's phishing if they use e-mail to entice you, while pharming is if they do what I mentioned above and just wait for people to get routed to their fake site.

There are just too many new scams for me to keep 'em straight.

 

It is fraud, in the end, and it's very dangerous to those not used to the crap that goes around in the web.

An elderly friend of mine nearly had her account wiped clean because she received a mail, supposedly from her bank, asking her to check details. She was lucky enough to be using an extremely slow dial-up connection. When the site took too long to load, she phoned the bank and was informed of the scam.

Banks never contact people by e-mail, at least in Ireland. Not even if you use internet banking services.

 

It also helps that most scammers have terrible english.

 

Or that the message begins with words "ENLARGE YOUR PENIS TODAY!"

 

Yeah, and "give her the night she won't forget."

 

The best ones are those with the subject headings that get cut off by the edge of the screen, and show up as "Impress your girlfriend today with a hug..."

One thing hasn't been mentioned yet, though fairly well-known - all that clicking on "Unsubscribe from this mailing list" or similar will do, if it appears at the bottom of any spam, is let them know that the email address is in use.