How to detect, prevent and report PayPal Phishing Scam?

Nowadays, fake emails are getting more and more complicated rendering them even more difficult to detect. Further, they come from such reliable and recognized sources, which leads the user to believe the emails and one such name is PayPal. If you are a PayPal account holder, then it is important for you to spot a PayPal phishing scam, or else you will be on the losing side. The scam email from PayPal generally comes with a link telling the user to click it and then redirect the user to a site asking for private and sensitive information.

Ways to detect a PayPal phishing scam

Secret of detecting a PayPal phishing scam is to identify specific characteristics such as:

  • Email address: check the email address of the sender and make sure it is from PayPal.com. Check the email header for verifying the address that has sent you the suspicious email.
  • Names used: Phishing scams like this make use of greetings by your own name, but this does not prove the email to be genuine.
  • Spelling and grammar mistakes: This is another common characteristic of online frauds and hoaxes.
  • Your email: Make one exclusive email address for online banking and if you receive any email in any of your other email inboxes, then put it under the monitor.

Ways to prevent a PayPal phishing scam

Prevention is always the best way to keep away from phishing attacks like the PayPal Scam. Here are some of the preventive measures that you should take.

  • Find out legitimacy of the email: If you receive an email from PayPal, and you are not able to make out whether it is false or not, then forward it to PayPal for verification.
  • Upgrading the browser: Once you upgrade your browser, you can get anti-phishing features, which can protect you against such scams.
  • Get latest software: This can help you to stay away from phishing attacks with anti-spyware along with firewall settings.

Report the scam immediately

Keep one thing in mind that emails that ask for personal information, like bank details, credit card details and other personal information are not genuine. You should never supply any of such information to anyone through email, as this can result into identity theft and can bring you big losses. If you come across a PayPal phishing scam, then you should immediately report it, so that you can get behind the scene and verify whether the email is authentic or fake. For reporting a PayPal phishing scam, you can forward the email that you received to spood@paypal.com and then wait for the reply. You should report suspicious emails directly to PayPal as soon as possible, so that a possible danger can be prevented. PayPal never sends any such emails asking for personal information to the account holders, so you should run such email under the scanner. PayPal offers you account monitoring round the clock, so that you can check your account and can find out about such swindles. PayPal security center helps in identifying and preventing such frauds. Next time, when you get an email from PayPal asking for personal information simply report it and then delete it.

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