fraudulent PayPal email

[Guest]

[kbmum]

A couple of days ago, I received an email purporting to be from PayPal.  The subject is " Notice of Pendency of Class Action and Proposed Settlement."  It goes on to decribe a class action lawsuit against PayPal with a $9.25 million settlement that will be paid to class members who file a claim.  The email has a link that appears to be a PayPal address (www.paypal.com/settlement), but it redirects to another website where you have to fill out a form online and also mail in a copy.  It's written in the same language as other notices for class actions suits, like you'd see in newspapers and magazines.

I sent it to PayPal to verify, and sure enough, it's fake.  Here's the response from PayPal:

"Thank you for bringing this suspicious email to our attention. We can confirm that the email you received was not sent to you by PayPal. The website linked to this email is not a registered URL authorized or used by PayPal. We are currently investigating this incident fully. Please do not enter any personal or financial information into this website."

I can't be the only person to receive the fake email, so I thought I'd let everyone know to watch out for it.

[savage727]

I received the same email today!  This really stinks.  There are some sick people/criminals out there just waiting to get their nasty paws on peoples financial/personal info.  I must have had 10 spoof emails from eBay and PayPal and even my Internet Provider - Earthlink for crying out loud!  Can't they track these jerks down and catch them with today's technology?

Thanks for your post and alerting everyone!  

[kbmum]

The thing is, there really is a class action lawsuit against PayPal, which has agreed to a settlement.  All of the details will be made public next month, but you can get the info by emailing PayPal.  So, someone took that info, set up a fraudulent site, and is trying to take advantage of the situation.

It's amazing how much fraud is committed over the internet.

[mcgonagall]

you won't believe this but even I have a copy of that email and I am in australia.
But then I didn't believe it after what happened with ebay

[ferdinand_the_yak]

Just checked my email and I got the same email Thanks for the heads up here, I deleted it straight away

[dayhiker]

hi! i think that class action suit is legit! the site to download the forms are legit! there are forms to print and to download at your convenience from the site.

ed

[kbmum]

Yes, the class action suit is legit.  But as you can see from the post that started this thread, PayPal says that they did not send the email, the URL link is not authorized by them, and they are investigating it.  

I kept the original email.  It has the PayPal logo and purports to be from PayPal.  If PayPal tells me that they didn't send it and it's suspicious, then there is something wrong with this email and I'm not about to trust any links it contains.

I searched for more info, and found that details of the suit and how to participate as a class member will be available directly on the PayPal site sometime in August.  It seems to me that it would be safer to go to the PayPal site and download the forms from there, than to click on a link in an email that appears to be PayPal, but actually redirects elsewhere AND you have to submit the claim form online (that is what it says in the fraudulent email I received).

Dayhiker, if you found claim forms from a legitimate source, I'd appreciate the URL.  I've been burned once by a fraudulent eBay email, so I'm going to very caution about this sort of thing now.

[Roz]

what  is the lawsuit against paypal about?

[kbmum]

Two people filed suit against PayPal about the company's business practices, and this turned into a class action suit.  Part of the settlement was to change those practices, particularly pertaining to sellers.  PayPal account holders can file a claim if there was unauthorized or incorrect transfers to or from an account, if an account was somehow restricted, or if there was an unsatisfactory result from a dispute.

When I did a Google search a few minutes ago, I found links to message boards where people said that the website in question was legitimate.  The website www.paypalsucks.com says the same.  But, I still go back to the email I received from PayPal stating that the email was not legit.  Maybe PayPal is playing games, I don't know.  I think that claimants have until October to file, so there's time to get this sorted out.