Official Luthiers Forum!

Seems the unscruplous cowles are at it again. I have received a bogus Paypal update notice requesting I log onto a link and give them all my info or my account will remain "locked". Well I didn't fall for it and my account isn't "locked" so I must assume it's bogus! Watch out everyone!

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Dave Bland

remember...

"If it doesn't play in tune...it's just pretty wood"

Quite. There's a lot of this going on these days, I have to say. I never, ever, ever trust ANYTHING from anyone I get by email, unless it's an invoice for an order I just placed, or a PayPal payment I just processed, that kinda thing.

[QUOTE=Dave-SKG] Seems the unscruplous cowles are at it again. I have received a bogus Paypal update notice requesting I log onto a link and give them all my info or my account will remain "locked". Well I didn't fall for it and my account isn't "locked" so I must assume it's bogus! Watch out everyone! [/QUOTE]

Ebay and PayPal will always use your name in an email (ie Dear sfbrown etc...). The scammers do not.

I got a new one today telling me that my request to change my user ID was successful. It then went on to tell me my "new" name. Needless to say, I deleted the message. Once again, even with this level of sophistication, the message was addressed, "Dear Ebay customer."

You're right, the scammers are out in force. Just use the "sniff" test. If it smells, don't do it!

Regards, Steve Brown

I just fell for the paypal scam last week, but caught it very quickly. It was an email that stated that the following address was added to my paypal account. Well I knew it wasn't me, so I clicked on the link that stated "if you did not add this address, click here to remove it" When I clicked on the link, it was a paypal page with the normal paypal login info. I was in a hurry and didn't notice that the little gold lock was showing, but after submitting the transaction where I gave my credit card #, it was too late. I called and cancelled my credit card immediately, then changed my paypal password and secret questions. I sent to the spoof@paypal.com, and they confirmed it was a bad site. I'm ok for now, but it was scary since it looked just like you were logging into paypal. Watch out!
Tracy

Thats why I like Netscape or Mozilla. Move your cursor over the link and look at the site name at the bottom of the page. If I ever get one that looks real though I never act through an email message. Always log onto the site in question, not the email link, and check your information there and you can't go wrong.

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Don Atwood
Arlington, VA

Want to hear something REALLY scary?

Spyware and Phishing have made a marriage and their scams are burning people pretty bad. Imagine that you get an email, it opens in your preview pane, and with no other action on your part it infects you with a subtle spyware product that redirects your browser when you visit certain site.

Which sites, you ask?

Oh.... banking sites, brokerage sites, etc. They put up pages that look EXACTLY like the big banks home pages and when you try to log in .... BAM!!!! They have your Userid and Password.

These are sophisticated attacks and VERY hard to detect.

The only real solution is to be running a number of spyware smashers and up to the minute virus detection that informs you when these spyware products try to get in.

This is bad news stuff.Brock Poling38476.8792476852

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

On the View menu, click Layout.
In the Preview Pane area, uncheck the box that says "Show preview pane."

Then click OK.

It's a lot safer and you can view more message headers in the same space. That's an advantage when you're zipping through several hundered emails at a time. The header tells you everything you need to know about whether you need to open it anyway.

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D..

Tip of the week: even if the email from PayPal or whatnot LOOKS LEGIT, Don't EVER use ANY links sent to you in ANY email (or anywhere else you don't trust fully) to go somewhere to log in. Open a browser, type the URL, and go direct from there. Spoofing the browser and the page isn't difficult, after all.

There are a few fixes for Outlook Express, and turning off the preview pane's a good one. Me, I hate OE with a vengance (slow, annoying, confusing layout, IMO, and like most M$ net products, inferior), so I'm sticking with Thunderbird, Mozilla's mail and news client.

I deleted my bank account off of my paypal account after I found out that the spyware guys were specfically targeting paypal. My wife would kill me. I intend to set up another account so that the damage is limited, haven't done it yet.

I've heard of ebay screwing up your account if you report a phishing email. Didn't happen to me the time I reported one. I generally don't bother, get at least one a week if not more. Just deleted one today.

Ya know,

Even though this thread has very little to do with luthiery (the construction part anyway) it should probably be repeated on EVERY forum. Even though I consider myself pretty savvy about this stuff, I have so far learned a couple of tricks that hadn't occurred to me.

In other words, Thanks!

Warm Regards, Steve Brown