Ok so I’m a little embarrassed to admit I actually fell for this one, even though I’m usually WAY better and seeing through these scams…but it happened to me so I’m gonna spread this around. I just finished changing my entire bank VISA numbers and passwords, and nothing was stolen from my account because I acted SO FAST once I noticed some red flags when looking back at the email shortly after.
Since I use paypal to get payed for my commission work, when I got this fake alert; I shrugged and went through with it like any other “UPDATED INFORMATION” sort of deal because I was distracted and only half paying attention at the time. Like a lot of people, I use paypal a lot and so much of it comes second nature. This warning is for anyone who sometimes half-pays attention to things or just misses things sometimes, even if 99% of the time they can tell what’s fake or isn’t. People make mistakes, shit happens. So anyways, here’s what it looks like when opened:
Obviously, there are a few give aways that spell out F-A-K-E here, but me being Dyslexic, the few spelling errors literally didn’t jump out to me AT ALL (thanks a lot neurodiversity + dyslexia) so to me it sounded legitimate enough to trust even for only one stupid second. It takes you to what looks PERFECTLY like the actual Paypal log in, like I literally saw NO difference. They looked the EXACT SAME!!!
I saw no difference from the unusual…until I saw the URL just a little too late. (this is the fake one:)
Ok, now I was feeling REALLY STUPID for not checking the URL first, but shit happens. I was distracted, and like I said it DOES sadly look pretty legit if you’re paying little attention or are going on auto pilot.
Compare that URL to the ACTUAL LEGIT paypal one:
Another thing that got me at first was that this was in my actual inbox, not a junk/spam folder. This thing is fooling filters somehow so once again, if you’re only paying half attention, it’s easy to be like “oh ok whatever this won’t take long.” So now let’s look at the emails senders.
Legitimate/Official:
FAKE/SCAM:
If you fall/fell for this one, don’t panic. (I FREAKED OUT when I first realized I fell for a fake email that just got all my VISA numbers, and that didn’t help at all.)
What you need to do is change ALL of your passwords ASAP, and cancel/change your card number ASAP. DON’T just change your passwords! There should be a phone number on the back of your card, call that number and explain that you need all numbers changed. As soon as all that’s taken care of, you should be fine. So this whole thing might not’ve been one of my brighter moments, but I had NO idea this was going around, so I figured I’d spread it around as much as possible! Be extra aware! Look out for anything that jumps out as unusual, especially if you actively use paypal.
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