Paypal compromised.

patman99 · 14 October 2011 at 4:22PM

Just in case anyone receives a spam invoice purporting to be from 'YesAsia.com', be aware, your Paypal account has been compromised.

There are various reports on the web about people receiving an invoice for a few hundred £'s for items they have alledgidly purchased. The emails contain the correct details for the recipient including full name and shipping address.
It now looks increasingly likely that the spammers have gained access to Paypal's users accounts as several people who have email addresses used ONLY for Paypal and for no other purpose have received the invoices.

In the case of a few UK users, they have received the invoice in at least 2 accounts linked-to, and used soley for, Paypal.

soolin · 14 October 2011 at 4:24PM

I doubt whether it is a paypal hack- I receive emails like that even on accounts that are not linked to paypal at all.

freddysmith · 14 October 2011 at 4:29PM

Same thing happened ref. Play.com
http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/yesasiacom-fake-order-scam/

theonlywayisup · 14 October 2011 at 4:31PM

Op it is never wasted time to remind us all of scam emails etc. But this one has been 'round the block'.

patman99 · 14 October 2011 at 4:48PM

The ref to 'people who have email accounts they only use for Paypal', refers to people I work with and ones I know personnaly. They have all received emails containing exactly the same info. As I use spam filters turned to 'paranoid' I have yet to see the email myself.

I always advise people to ignore any email asking for money or bank details as these are not from who they claim to be.

soolin · 14 October 2011 at 4:51PM

patman99 wrote: »

The ref to 'people who have email accounts they only use for Paypal', refers to people I work with and ones I know personnaly. They have all received emails containing exactly the same info. As I use spam filters turned to 'paranoid' I have yet to see the email myself.

I always advise people to ignore any email asking for money or bank details as these are not from who they claim to be.

These scum bags send out tens of millions of these scam messages at a time, they are bound to hit accounts that are only registered to paypal- and also to hit accounts like mine that have never been associated with paypal at all.

They don't care if several millions scam messages hit defunct accounts- the fact they hit some paypal enabled accounts is good enough.

POPPYOSCAR · 14 October 2011 at 4:52PM

What have Paypal said about this?

soolin · 14 October 2011 at 5:00PM

POPPYOSCAR wrote: »

What have Paypal said about this?

What can they say? Tens of millions of fake emails are sent out daily from just about every financial institute- plus some made up ones. They don't come from paypal and the email addresses are just either guessed by the million or harvested by spam bots.

Looking at my spam filter today I have some from banks that I've never even heard of.

patman99 · 14 October 2011 at 5:08PM

Nothing yet. I'm sure that like most people, they had no idea where the spam list had come from. In fact, even I would have just assumed it was just another 'lucky guess' by the scammers. But then, I do not have an email account specifically for Paypal, so would not have made the link.

My guess is that either someone inside Paypal emailed-out a random list of name/address/email addies to be sold-on, or, a group of people have been buying/selling on ebay and adding the buyer/sellers details into one large database and have now decided they have enough people on there to start making money from selling the list to spammers, scammers and less dubious businesses.
At least one person with two email accounts set-up for use exclusively with Paypal even went as far as checking their sales on both Paypal accounts for the last year to see if one individual had bought from both, but with no luck.

POPPYOSCAR · 14 October 2011 at 5:08PM

soolin wrote: »

What can they say? Tens of millions of fake emails are sent out daily from just about every financial institute- plus some made up ones. They don't come from paypal and the email addresses are just either guessed by the million or harvested by spam bots.

Looking at my spam filter today I have some from banks that I've never even heard of.

Yes but the OP has stated that Paypal accounts have been compromised, so going on this basis, the holders of the'compromised accounts' must have contacted Paypal surely.

(I do realize they more than likely have not been compromised)

DaveF327 · 14 October 2011 at 5:54PM

Just to add my two cents to how I feel they have harvested real names and paypal email addresses:

I have today received this yesasia.com email. By the way, the links all point to a different domain - yesasia-payment-service.com - which is the giveaway that the email is bogus.

Recently, I made a voluntary donation to a firefox add-on developer (one of the useful people that make legit add-on functions to the firefox browser, such as adblocker) via paypal. Paying anyone by paypal allows the recipient to see your real name and your main registered paypal email address. I'm not suggesting that the recipient of my token $5 was the perpetrator of this crime; but someone connected to him or someone who has infected his PC may be.

Also, did you know that anyone can harvest someone's real name from just an email address if that email is registered to a paypal account? All you do is send a money request via paypal to an email address, then in your "transaction history" list next to "invoice to".. hey presto.. a name appears for all to see.

Paypal compromised.

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