“Notification of Limited Account Access” Scam

Damn, I was tricked. That was real close.

I received an email. It was an email from “PayPal” and the subject is “Notification of Limited Account Access”.

Out of frustration, I clicked a link in the email to solve this problem fast.

For those who are not aware of this problem: When your Paypal account is set to limited access, your transactions are limited to receiving payments only. That means you can’t withdraw from the account. You have to go through a verification process to restore your account to full access.

The bottom line is it’s a frustrating situation to be in. Just imagine you’re having a bank account but you can’t withdraw.

So back to the story. I clicked the link and entered my id and password (just like how I login to Paypal).

Only then did I realize that I was tricked. This is one of the phishing (fraudulent) emails that people use to “steal” your data, especially sensitive data.

How did I find out it a fake Paypal email? I looked closely the URL and it’s not paypal.com. Then I checked the email again for from address, it’s not paypal.com. Again, I checked again the link that I just clicked, it’s not paypal.com again (it’s a HTML email, so you have to right click and select “Properties” to see the actual link)

How careless! But it was too late, I already entered my details.

I immediately changed my password (of course by logging into the “real” Paypal account) to avoid my account being accessed by third party. To make it even safer, I withdrew money from the account to only have less than 100 bucks.

Phew! That was really close. It was my carelessness and that could have caused me a fortune if I didn’t realize that I made a mistake of logging into a website (especially banking or financial websites) from an unauthorized email.

Lesson learned here: Don’t ever fall victim to this kind of emails. The safest is to login to the said website by typing the URL at the web browser, don’t ever login from the link given in emails especially the doubtful ones.

This is the reply I received from Paypal when I forwarded the email to them:

“Thank you for taking the time to contact spoof@paypal.com. The email you reported was not sent by PayPal and is a phishing (fraudulent) email.

——————-
What to do Next
——————–
Delete the phishing email. If you’ve already responded to the email,
please log in to your PayPal account and perform some important safety measures.

1. Go to your Profile and change your password and security questions.

2. Review the payments listed on your Account Overview.

If you notice a payment that you don’t recognize, visit the PayPal
Security Center to file a claim. We’ll promptly investigate any
suspicious transactions and you won’t be held liable for unauthorized payments sent from your account…”

Stay alert,

Abel Cheng