Account Security Measures – Security Center: Identity Theft Fraud

Security Center – Account Security Measures writes to me on behalf of PayPal.  This is a fraudulent email intended to steal my identity.  If you have seen identity theft emails you know that this one is as bad as they come.

Account Security Measures – Security Center: Identity Theft Fraud

The Beginning
Notice the email’s owner is just “Security Center.”  First thing that comes to mind is what “Security Center” is this and what “Account Security Measures!” need be taken.  This email scam starts off very poorly in the presentation of the unknown security measure.  After years of receiving such emails I have learned that companies use the full address, such as: PayPal Security Center and they don’t use exclamation points in their subject lines.

Oh you are so observant. Who cares?

Well, for one if you learn to spot little discrepancies like this one you can help prevent identity theft at its tracks.  Secondly, emails like this one often have embedded malware, viruses, and trojans.  This is very dangerous for people who are not protected via anti virus & anti spyware programs.  In reality those programs don’t always catch all the viruses and harmful programs indented to mine for data about you such as:

• Personal information
• User names
• Passwords
• Credit card info
• Bank account info
• Your web browsing habits
• And nearly any information the program’s creator, scammer, or id thief wishes to obtain

Let’s go on with the email…
I finally find out that this email is for PayPal customers.  If you don’t have PayPal what are you doing reading it?  The content is poorly written anyway.

The identity thieves show that a 5th grade reading level still proves to be popular amongst majority.  Don’t kid yourself with your PhD…it is just easier to read at that level.  Kudos to the thieves.  Right?

PayPal doesn’t have a PayPal Update Team AccessOnline that is sent from the Pay Pal gods to suspend your account.  Please, deactivate my account.  This line, further proves how uninformed one would have to be to renew personal information.

The next line is even more of proof.  I have not received previous notifications and no one is assigned to the fake “AccessOnline” account.  If you have Pay Pal it is usually you that is responsible for your transactions, therefore you are the only contact.  Perhaps you would like to ask the id fraud scammers to show you all the prior notifications.

Help yourself, not the thieves
To avert identity theft and financial fraud go to PayPal.com and login using your user name and password.  Don’t use the link in the email.  Instead go to your web browser and type in the destination address yourself.  While you are in PayPal you can see if there is something wrong with the account.

Hint, usually a page after your login would ask you to update very important information, or you can go to manage your account and change personal data there.

Next line…
Because we had some problems — starting off a sentence with “because?”  This is literary suicide.  Why did you have problems with my accounts and why are you stressing that you need personal information.  I find this email improper for my identity’s safety.  Bad email!

As you have noticed the paragraph was awful, but don’t think that some people didn’t click the link; yes, even people who don’t own a Pay Pal account did, and that surely led to identity theft.

You must act fast, or better not
The expiration date of 28.02.2008 is actually February 28, 2008 and if you see this email again it should have a new date attached.  From the works of this email and based on the date I can tell that this email arrived from outside of the U.S.

Click on this link below to renew your service
Really, don’t.  I hope you read the rest of the information above and by now you should know that this email is a scam.  But for any future emails you will receive I will give you some great information pertaining the link you see in this email.  The tinyurl domain is apparently not a PayPal domain.  You can safely go to tinyurl.com to find out what they do.  No, they won’t steal your identity but you will learn that if you ever see a tinyurl domain followed by some letters and numbers in a seemingly official corporate email that it is a scam.  TinyUrl is a service for anyone that needs very long Internet addresses shortened.  Go to amazon.com, the premier book seller, and search for a specific book title.  You should notice in your address bar a very long URL.  For example, one could use tinyurl to shorten the URL address for a more esthetic look.  Identity thieves often use this site’s service in order to created URL addresses that will look more appealing to the potential victim of id fraud.

The Piercing Dagger
I hope you didn’t click the fake URL and that you got to the last paragraph.  In the whole email this is the most official sounding paragraph.  Knowing what you know now I hope even an official sounding statement won’t propel you towards divulging your personal information.

Check out the other email scams where you can learn plenty about tricks and identity theft prevention skills.  Just look at the sidebar for guidance.