Confirm information admonishes phishing email

Confirm information admonishes phishing email

Yesterday’s phishing email wagged an admonishing finger at recipients with a call to action. Today’s phishing email is in a similar vein. The email uses a genuine link and a malicious link. Although it sounds threatening, the email is a fake.

We have reproduced the email as Figure A. The email does use an authentic appearing PayPal logo. The email greeting is “Dear Customer”. The subject of the email is “Dear customer your must confirm your account information !” The sender of the email is “PayPal”. A PayPal case identifier is used, and is situated in the top right hand corner of the email. A PayPal email identifier is also used, and is located at the foot of the email.

Two links are present in the email. We have circled the two links. One is to the genuine PayPal site. The second link is to a malicious site. This is a technique used by criminals to fool the recipient. The anchor text of the first link is “Click Here”. The text for the second link uses the text of the PayPal help URL. The email looks realistic.

The subject line of the email is a call to arms. The body of the email backs this up by informing the user they have 72 hours to resolve the issue. If the user does not resolve the issue within the time frame then their account will be limited. The email invites the user to click on the link and proceed with confirming their account.

Despite the authentic feel, the email is a fake. There are some giveaways. One of the signs is poor grammar. Another sign is the generic greeting used. Checking on one of the links shows that it does not lead to PayPal. The link leads to a phishing site. The site is a rough copy of the genuine PayPal site, but it is still a fake.

As mentioned yesterday, the mix of real and fake links is used by criminals in a further attempt to fool users. Delete this email.

Scott Reeves
MailShark
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