Archive for the ‘Online Scams’ Category

This is one of the more convincing PayPal phishing scam emails we’ve seen for a while — but it’s still a scam! For a start, the recipient address isn’t associated with any PayPal accounts… a dead giveaway.

The usual tell-tale signs are all present, too. Here are the details.

As a matter of routine, you should NEVER click on a link like the one shown. PayPal doesn’t send them. It requires you to log-in to your PayPal account using your normal address, which you already know.

This scam is potentially very dangerous and, while it may be a phishing scam that tries to hijack your Adobe® account, it’s almost certainly going to load your hard drive with some form of malware. The file size of the attachment isn’t large enough to be a genuine Adobe® application, but it’s typical of a malicious script. Typical botnet script approach.

Same old same old, but still plenty of ignorant, gullible, inexperienced, careless or thoughtless suckers who’ll fall for it, even though it’s blindingly obvious.

Typical phishing scam email. All the usual tell-tale signs that rely on the recipient’s ignorance, inexperience, carelessness or gullibility.

Yep, it’s another really clumsy Facebook scam to steal your identity, bank account, etc. Lots of bad English, spelling errors and other obvious stuff — including no email address for the recipient (otherwise it might not match your Facebook email address, right?)

Don’t fall for these obvious scams

Three new versions of old identity-theft phishing scams are doing the rounds…

This latest round of phishing scams target Facebook, Twitter and a range of other membership accounts online claiming that your password or other access details have been changed from 1 November, so you need to either get hold of your new password, etc, or enter new ones.

Yeah… right!

Incredibly, thousands of dummies will fall for this scam, as they always do. Just take a look at this info graphic I received today. Not even addressed to one of my Facebook account-linked email addresses… and includes copies to several unrelated people.

The attachment is a standard phishing scam form asking for all your account info so they can hijack your account and steal your identity.

If you get scammed by this one, you deserve it.

How can you tell they’re both scams? Easy — I have over 160 sites, many with .au domain names because I live in Melbourne, Australia, the World’s Most Liveable City (yep… back in #1 spot again for 2011).

That means I get BOTH versions of this scam, to multiple addresses, NONE of which either the IRS (USA) or ATO (Australia) have on file. Plus one of the versions below actually posts multiple email addresses in the address field (a real bozo scammer).

If you receive any version of this email scam message, do NOT open the attachment.

This is the Australian version of the scam message

This is the US version.

More of the same, except this time is claims to be from YouTube.

Standard-issue phishing scam email claiming to be from Twitter.

Objective: to steal your identity and your Twitter account, and the IDs of your followers.

Clumsy and inept, but still people fall for these really easy-to-detect scams in droves.