Wow, the PayPal and eBay scams must be flying around the Internet like crazy lately! I got three of them just today!

The first one is a PayPal scam and it’s pretty plain-looking in comparison to the ones I usually see which have all kinds of authentic-looking graphics in them. This one is just text and it informs me that a new e-mail address has been added to my PayPal account. Then of course, they want me to click on a link in the message to “confirm” my e-mail address. Yeah, right.

The next one is an eBay scam I am seeing more and more lately. It looks very official and like it came directly from the eBay system. It is set up to look like it is a message from an angry eBay buyer who supposedly bought something from me, has not received it and is threatening to report me to eBay! Oh my!  This one is signed “Mark Barett.”

This one appears to have a link that redirects to a page that was on AOL but is now gone. It was probably a page that was set up to infect a visitor’s PC with a “Trojan Horse” program.

The third message is another PayPal scam claiming that PayPal is using some new security features and that if I do not update my account to take advantage of these new features, my account will be placed “on hold.” Again, there is a link they want me to click on that would probably take me to another site that would try to infect my PC with something nasty.

Most often these scammers try to use the element of fear as a motivator. In the eBay scam, they want to scare people into believing that they are going to be reported to eBay, and of course, the first thought for most people is that they want to clear up this obvious misunderstanding.

One of the PayPal scams also uses the fear of having my account put on hold if I don’t do what they ask. These low-life crooks will use any trick they think will compel people to click on the links in their e-mail messages.

These guys are getting more clever all the time. One trick you can usually use to foil them is to hover your mouse pointer over the links in the e-mail message and see what site the link will send you to. With Outlook, the address should pop up on the screen when you hover over the link and with Outlook Express, you may see the link show up at the bottom.

The eBay scam looked like it was more cleverly engineered however. When I hovered my mouse pointer over the links in that message, they all appeared to be legitimate eBay addresses except for the second half of the address that seemed to be some kind of redirect to another site, which was apparently a page on the AOL network that they had set up, but has since been taken down — probably by the AOL administrators when they found out about it.

Be very cautious about any e-mail message you receive with the intent of persuading you to click on a link or open an attachment. If you have any doubts about whether it is legitimate, get in touch with the company that it appears to be from and ask them about it.

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