Don't fall victim to information thieves
By zandi458
@zandi458 (28102)
Malaysia
February 19, 2011 2:42pm CST
I nearly become a victim of paypal hijackers. I have just logged out of my paypal account after doing some transactions there. While I was in another site, suddenly a pop out message from nowhere appeared on my screen requesting for my email used for my paypal account. I suddenly remember a discussion I read last week about losing money in paypal. The message appeared fishy as it was trying to trap me into giving out my email address. The message stated that they just wanted to confirm my email and not the password. My quick thinking mind sensed that something was not right with the message. As paypal will only communicate through our registered email with them. Moreover it is not logical to want to get confirmation of my email as I've just got an email from paypal with regard to my just concluded transactions with them.
Now my question, Is there any possibility that these online thieves can enter our paypal account just by knowing our email address used for paypal?
5 people like this
12 responses
@katland05 (136)
• Guam
20 Feb 11
Hi, yes I do the same too & transfer my balance to my bank.. Thieves out there don't like to work for their own money they take the easy way out & steal from people... So don't wait to build your balance just transfer the money right away... Great idea beamer & have a great day mylot friends..
1 person likes this
@rameshchow (4426)
• India
20 Feb 11
You are so so so lucky.
and be alert from them...
Really i am learning many new things from like these awareness discussions which are started by our friends of mylot.
This is a good example for newbies like me.
Definitely it was a good experience.
And there is no chance to enter into our paypal account for hijackers, because it is safe and secure.
1 person likes this
@puccagirl (7294)
• Israel
19 Feb 11
I am not sure, but I think they can't. They probably use it to mail you very real looking mails from Paypal though...
1 person likes this
@puccagirl (7294)
• Israel
19 Feb 11
To ask you for your password and other details I mean. So if you reply then, they have both your email and your password, you see?
@zandi458 (28102)
• Malaysia
20 Feb 11
It could be. They try to manipulate me by sending me emails purportedly from paypal. But I am surprise how they are able to crawl to my computer and knew I have logged in to my paypal. When I copied the messages to this discussion the screen suddenly went blank as I was typing the discussion and reverted to starting page. I have to start retyping the whole discussion but the messages I copied from the spammers went missing. So I could not show the text from the messages in this discussion.
@aghiuta (525)
• Canada
21 Feb 11
I do not know if thieves can get into PayPal accounts(these days they get into every thing,but one thing is sure,Never,ever go to your account through a link they send you.They tried to send me e-mails looking very authentic,saying that something is wrong with my account or that they are missing some info.Always go to Pay pal official site and log in there,and you will see that nothing is wrong.
1 person likes this
@KrauseHome (36448)
• United States
27 Feb 11
Personally I have seen this more and more happening with a lot of the sites I am a member of. Have seen and heard about hackers now in Facebook and other sites as well. To me it just seems like could they not think of a better thing to do with their time instead of taking other people's money and chance getting caught in the future as well. I honestly think that sometimes we can never be too cautious with things for sure.
@GardenGerty (160665)
• United States
19 Feb 11
They can go to PayPal and claim to have forgotten their password and manage to reset your password. I could not do it, but many tech savvy people can do that, they may have harvested other information about your from other sites or public records that would at least give them a chance to do that.
@djmarion (4898)
• Philippines
20 Feb 11
paypal send info every now and then and tells us that they will not need to obtain our email address so we have to be careful, a lot of hackers are really great in obtaining information and it will be no wonder if the hacker can access your paypal account with just your email address, sometimes after you give out your email address to them the next question will be some of your informations so they can use it to access your account without asking directly about your password.
@maygodblessu44 (7336)
• India
22 Feb 11
Hello my friend zandi458 Ji,
Anything and everything is possible these days . Your sixth srense must hav esaved you from any problem. By the way I too did some ytransaction yesterday, but I quoted wrong IFSC code. What would hapen now. I think I may loose all money. Thanks.
May God bless You and have a great time.
@maygodblessu44 (7336)
• India
28 Feb 11
Hello my friend zandi458 Ji,
Thanks . But i have alraedy paid my price for not utilising my sixth sernse unlike yoiu and lost considerable amount during reversion of transaction. But I have learnty to cross-check in future.
May God bless You and have a great time.
@alicia812 (646)
• Australia
26 Feb 11
Hi Zandi. I was told by a friend before (he's
a computer/web geek) that when you press your
keyboard manually through your own keyboard,
hackers can tell which letters/numbers you
press. Thus they can steal your password. I
think that at that time you logged in to your
Paypal account there's a hacker watching you
(I don't know how they can do that though but
everything is possible nowadays) and got your
password. So all the hacker needed at that time
was your email address to have complete access to
your account. It is better to change your Paypal
password just to make sure your account is safe.
My Paypal was accessed once, luckily I just with-
drew all the money. I changed my password then.
Hackers are everywhere.
@RawBill1 (8531)
• Gold Coast, Australia
25 Feb 11
That is a bit freaky. I would say that they cannot use your email to get into Paypal, but they may have then followed up with a secondary popup that asked for further details such as a password. It is best to err on the side of caution instead of believing anything strange.
I had a similar incident last week when I received a strange phone call on my mobile phone. I answered it and then a recorded message started claiming that it was my bank. It then asked for personal details in order for me to find out what the urgent message was that they wanted to tell me. I decided to hang up on them instead. I then went onto the website and logged into my internet banking and sure enough, my account had gone unpaid the last month. So, it was genuine, but as it was strange, I chose to err on the side of caution.
