Portugal’s Judicial Police is investigating a wave of fraudulent activity where cyber-crooks have duped PayPal customers into revealing their account details.
Seemingly genuine emails are being sent to Portuiguese PayPal account holders asking for personal data, claiming that their account is locked.
The scammers give contact details in Luxembourg and have managed to persuade hundreds of account holders that because their account has been blocked for security reasons they have to fill in a form with their bank details. Failure to comply 'will result in the cancellation of the account.'
Paypal says its system is secure and that customers should give their details to no third party, adding that no suspicious activity so far has been detected with the accounts where details have been given out.
However, any email received purporting to come from PayPal will not start ‘Dear user','Dear customer' 'Hello member" or the ever-popular ‘Dear One’
According to the Judicial Police, in 2012 there were 1,300 cases of serious computer fraud in Portugal, the majority in Lisbon.
PayPal asks for any spoof emails to be forwarded to spoof@paypal.com
