This is well done - WATCH OUT!

For many years I use PayPal; I just received this email:

Something made me more suspicious than I usually am so I moved the cursor to the "Verify Your Account" button. And YES, that button translates to a shortened link - as you can see in the second red square.

Why would a well reputed company like PayPal ever use a shortened link?

I admit, the email looks convincing and even sort of professional.

Before I hit the Delete button in my email program, I took above screen shot for this blog post.

Stay safe!

Old Scam - New Clothes

A scammer from India came up with a new twist of an old ruse.

 Look at this screen shot of the offending email as shown in my email program:

Btw. following references to the blue or red squares do in no way refer to BattleBots. 😉

In the blue square we have the sender's email address. I believe that NO administrator in the whole wide world would ever use an AOL email account for his official business. Some criticism of AOL can be found here.

In the first red square you see my cursor on the VERIFY NOW link and because of that you can see in the second red square the textual representation of what web page that link would actually send my browser to - if I were sufficiently un-attentive to click my mouse in that situation.

The target web page is on a server in India at "managershub"! You don't see that? Learn how to read URLs.

And I don't even use what the scammer refers to as a "Web-mail system".

To top it off there are three simple spelling errors or typos in the short text of the email; unprofessional to the hilt! 

Sum total: An old but time honored scam in a new dress - but not even a fancy dress.

Again it comes down to the first of my ten commandments for safe computing:

Thou shalt read and think(!) before you click.

Stay safe!