I dont know what is happening recently, but the last few scams that have been brought to my attention have been SMS scams, not the usual email scams. And the last two have been sent to me!
This PayPal Scam is 100% going to catch some folk out. I’m quite impressed by the fact they managed to get a domain with PayPal in it, and also get an SSL certificate issued as that should have been flagged up due to the URL containing a copyrighted word.
I got a text from +441252560473 (which strangely isnt a mobile number here in the UK – Google says its the area code for Aldershot) and it read;
I visited the site on an unused browser and the homepage is harmless – convincing, fully responsive and links out to the PayPal website, but harmless;
I thought I would have some fun and typed in a dodgy email and a made up password – here is me thinking that would be the scam (as if I had put my real info in, they could log in and buy stuff with my PayPal) but oh no – how wrong was I! That was just stage 1!
The next page scared the crap out of me as it has been done so well, so convincing, as you type the card details in they appear on the card, and when you click in the security code box, the picture of the card spins round using some jQuery or something. This is possibly the most professionally made scam Ive ever seen.
I thought I would have more fun by putting a load more fake info in telling the people on the other end I thought they were assholes – pressed submit and it came back saying that my card was invalid, and I needed to try again!!
What that basically means, is this PayPal Scam is trying to either confirm my details are correct by authorising them like an online shop would – or right there and then they were trying to charge my card for “an amount” of money.
Wow.
Sophisticated, well designed…. This IS going to earn some scammy a-hole a load of cash!
I visited it on Edge and it didnt say anything about it, but when I visited in Chrome and Firefox they both flagged it up as a dangerous site, which is good;
If anyone visits it on a Mac let me know what Safari says about it.
Please share this article to the people in your life that you feel may fall for this type of PayPal scam – these scumbags disappear into the night with your money if they get it so lets try and stop it happening in he first place.