Image: alexdov / shutterstock.com

1,364 euros gone—without clicking, without buying, without knowing?

Imagine you receive an email that appears to be from "service@paypal.com." It says: "Automatic payment deactivated – purchase of €1,364 confirmed." Panic? Understandable. And that's exactly what the senders of this message are counting on.

What looks like a genuine notification from PayPal is actually part of a particularly clever scam. The aim is to get you to call the phone number provided, thereby falling straight into the criminals' trap.

The insidious thing about it is that the emails look completely genuine—and even come from real PayPal mail servers. The trick lies in the details.

The new wave of fraud: sender genuine, content fake

According to the IT platform Bleeping Computer, fraudsters have found a way to abuse PayPal's subscription system. They use a field called "customer service URL" and enter their own phone numbers and fake purchase data there.

To the untrained eye, this looks like an official notification. You might think your account has been hacked. But that's not the case. Security experts confirm that PayPal accounts remain unaffected—it only looks like a purchase has been made.

In addition, attackers use strange characters, unusual fonts, and hidden symbols to circumvent spam filters. This means that the fake messages often end up directly in the inbox—and that's what makes them so dangerous.

How to protect yourself—and others

PayPal has now publicly confirmed the problem and is working on technical solutions. Nevertheless, if you receive such an email, you should not reply, call, or click on any links.

Instead:

• Log in directly to your own PayPal account—but never via the link in the email.
• Delete the email and report it to PayPal.
• Never call the phone numbers in the email—they lead straight to the fraud center.

Attackers in the digital space – how we see it

When even emails come from real servers, things get uncomfortable. This scam shows how easy it is to exploit technical loopholes for criminal purposes—and how little it takes to abuse trust. The fact that PayPal has been offering features that can be manipulated in this way for years is no minor oversight. It's an open door—and one that stands wide open to attackers. Anyone who receives emails today has to be prepared for anything. Welcome to digital paranoia.

Source: chip.de