Paypal Phishing scams

[tmm99]

I use Hotmail more often than any other email accounts I have, and I have been getting soooo many fake Paypal emails the last few weeks - maybe 2 or 3 a week now. It is getting so very annoying. I report each one as a phishing scam, but it's not like MS will/can do anything.

Have you been experiencing the same thing, or maybe it's just me (who might have stepped on some Paypal scam landmine?) The most of the senders addresses have the "paypal" word in them, but they are all different email addresses. What I got today is from service@intl.paypaI.com

[ERD50]

I guess google must filter these out pretty well, I don't recall getting any, or at least many.

But OTOH, I don't really pay much attention. I would NEVER respond directly to anything that I wasn't 100% sure about (as in, they include some identifying info from the account, like my login name, rather than a generic "Dear email-address-person", and I expected the email). Even then, I rarely click on any links, I go right to my bookmarked address.

So just delete them, why let it annoy you?

-ERD50

[easysurfer]

How are you retrieving the emails? Through Hotmail's web portal or an email reader? I use an email reader that does a really good job of allowing me to mark what is spam and what is not. The reader learns pretty quickly then for ones that go through once then I mark as spam, next time around, the reader automatically places into the junk folder. A good reader takes a little setting up and learning (the email program has to learn what you consider junk or not by you marking email as such), but when done makes getting emails actually work without all the distracting junk .

If you are going through the Hotmail portal, that email may already allow you to mark as junk or not junk. If so, are you marking the emails appropriately?

[jazz4cash]

I use paypal 3-4 times a month and have not seen any suspicious emails on my aol account.

[audreyh1]

I'm frustrated with PayPal. They make things so difficult!

They removed my ability to notify them of my travel plans. Initially they let me only enter one country at a time, so following the CSRs recommendation, I entered the next country's data a few days before travel. But when I got to the third country - that option had disappeared from my online security options.

Why is PayPal important when traveling? Well quite a few businesses use PayPal in Europe, so when you are paying for ferry tickets, or renting this or that ahead of time, or paying deposits for scheduled day tours, PayPal may be the only online option.

I have sent requests for information but they never get back to me. At least you can call a CSR when things get desperate.

At least my phone is usable overseas and I get text messages with security codes from them. Maybe that's how a locked account can be reopened - who knows?

[tmm99]

I just log into hotmail.com on the browser. I used a reader before but I never liked it. I rarely use Paypal, but I do use it once in a while, so every time I see Paypal as a sender, I look. Nowadays just about every Paypal looking email is from a scammer (and I do get a lot of these in my inbox and that's what gets annoying. Why can't Hotmail/Outlook filter those while it seems to filter just about everything else? (It even filters some good ones!) but all Paypal looking fake emails come from different email addresses; never the same.

Anyway, from what I can tell from here, it sounds like it's just me who is having this issue. Maybe I should just switch over to gmail... Hotmail/Outlook has been so slow lately that I should really drop it...

[Nemo2]

We've only ever used Paypal two or three times total, but we regularly get the phishing scam e-mails, (which we report...for all the good that may do).........we also get e-mails (supposedly) pertaining to accounts at banks we don't deal with. Life in today's world, I guess.

[easysurfer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tmm99 I just log into hotmail.com on the browser. I used a reader before but I never liked it. I rarely use Paypal, but I do use it once in a while, so every time I see Paypal as a sender, I look. Nowadays just about every Paypal looking email is from a scammer (and I do get a lot of these in my inbox and that's what gets annoying. Why can't Hotmail/Outlook filter those while it seems to filter just about everything else? (It even filters some good ones!) but all Paypal looking fake emails come from different email addresses; never the same. Anyway, from what I can tell from here, it sounds like it's just me who is having this issue. Maybe I should just switch over to gmail... Hotmail/Outlook has been so slow lately that I should really drop it...

When logged into hotmail's email through the browser, do you have the option to mark emails as Spam or Not Spam? If so, then mark the fake Paypal email as spam. That would "teach" your email to regard that and future emails from that as Spam. I think even most web based browser email programs have Spam/No Spam marking ability.

[btdt22]

I have a PayPal account and use it frequently, but have never received a PayPal phishing email using gmail

[scrabbler1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by easysurfer When logged into hotmail's email through the browser, do you have the option to mark emails as Spam or Not Spam? If so, then mark the fake Paypal email as spam. That would "teach" your email to regard that and future emails from that as Spam. I think even most web based browser email programs have Spam/No Spam marking ability.

I have been getting a lot of spam in the last few months and blocking the email address or more generally, the domain name (not a generic one like Yahoo, for example) has not been very effective because the spammers alter every email's domain name slightly so they get through the filter. I have written my email provider to allow their filter to accept a wild card when specifying a domain name so the filter will be stronger. For example, I get emails from xxx.junkmail.com and yyy.junkmail.com. If I could add to the filter *.junkmail.com it would block both domain names and anything else which ends with junkmail.com.

[tmm99]

Quote:

Originally Posted by easysurfer When logged into hotmail's email through the browser, do you have the option to mark emails as Spam or Not Spam? If so, then mark the fake Paypal email as spam. That would "teach" your email to regard that and future emails from that as Spam. I think even most web based browser email programs have Spam/No Spam marking ability.

I just report it as a phishing scan, and the email goes to my junk/spam folder. Maybe that is not good enough to teach Hotmail. I am thinking some things are harder to be recognized as a Spam? Like scrabber said, they don't come from the same email address or same domain name. They are all different.

[easysurfer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tmm99 I just report it as a phishing scan, and the email goes to my junk/spam folder. Maybe that is not good enough to teach Hotmail. I am thinking some things are harder to be recognized as a Spam? Like scrabber said, they don't come from the same email address or same domain name. They are all different.

Did some looking at youtube about how to move to junk in hotmail. This may be similar as what you did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQ5MD5QRrU

From that video, I can't tell if the hotmail filtering is just filtering or also learning what is junk.

I know for me, I used to use Outlook as my email reader before spam filtering with a bayesian spam filter, and only filtering with my own defined keywords didn't do the trick. Now I have a reader (not Outlook) which has a bayesian spam filter built in and I wouldn't go without. I say the spam catching (automatically moves spam to my junk folder) ability after some "learning" is over 95%.

[tmm99]

Quote:

Originally Posted by easysurfer Did some looking at youtube about how to move to junk in hotmail. This may be similar as what you did. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQ5MD5QRrU From that video, I can't tell if the hotmail filtering is just filtering or also learning what is junk. I know for me, I used to use Outlook as my email reader before spam filtering with a bayesian spam filter, and only filtering with my own defined keywords didn't do the trick. Now I have a reader (not Outlook) which has a bayesian spam filter built in and I wouldn't go without. I say the spam catching (automatically moves spam to my junk folder) ability after some "learning" is over 95%.

Thank you, surfer. I was wondering about whether hotmail was learning anything. I will have to look into something else...

[easysurfer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tmm99 Thank you, surfer. I was wondering about whether hotmail was learning anything. I will have to look into something else...

IMO, the main thing is to get something with a Bayesian filter which uses
algorithms to calculate if an email is likely spam or not. The learning is from previous email you've marked. What I do is mark until the filter becomes smart enough to tell the difference, which really isn't that long.

Going back to your paypal example. If one of the fake paypal emails got marked as spam, then the next time a similar one (but different from address) tries, the filter software should be smart enough to flag that as spam.

Here is a good article about Bayesian filtering ( go back to page 1. Not sure why the link starts on page 2):

http://email.about.com/cs/bayesianfilters/a/bayesian_filter.htm

[tmm99]

Quote:

Originally Posted by easysurfer IMO, the main thing is to get something with a Bayesian filter which uses algorithms to calculate if an email is likely spam or not. The learning is from previous email you've marked. What I do is mark until the filter becomes smart enough to tell the difference, which really isn't that long. Going back to your paypal example. If one of the fake paypal emails got marked as spam, then the next time a similar one (but different from address) tries, the filter software should be smart enough to flag that as spam. Here is a good article about Bayesian filtering: http://email.about.com/cs/bayesianfilters/a/bayesian_filter.htm

Yeah, I often see something like "Your account is limited" "Your account has been limited" "Your account has been restricted" "Pay PaI" and PayPaI so if the filter is smart enough, it should catch on. Thanks.