PayPal users are once again the targets of a hit-and-run e-mail scam aimed at conning them out of their personal and financial information. On Thursday, netizens began receiving a convincing forgery of a PayPal e-mail, with the subject line "PayPal Verification" and the false return address verification@paypal.com.
The text of the message claims that PayPal -- owned by online auctioneer eBay -- has launched an anti-fraud initiative that requires the recipient to verify their account information on a particular website, "as part of our continuing commitment to protect your account."
Clicking on the supplied link -- masked as a PayPal URL -- takes the user to paypal.un-fraud.com. The website, hosted by Verio, consists entirely of a professional-looking "Personal Account Identity Verification" page that asks the user for their name, address, birth date, credit card numbers, social-security number, mother"s maiden name, checking account numbers and ATM codes.