[hambones]

i'm gonna keep this pretty short because i have pictures and don't want to type a huge wall of text. basically someone from china registered a paypal account with my email, and now they're trying to log into my email. i've changed my password and updated some stuff but i don't know what else i can do about paypal. ok, here's the original email.

http://i.imgur.com/NjzRQ.jpg

i emailed paypal support immediately when i received the email and told them that it wasn't me, i've never had an account etc. they never replied. but a couple days later i get this email.

http://i.imgur.com/eJ8qZ.jpg

then today i log into my email, and i see this delightful message at the top:


and i get this email: http://i.imgur.com/1gyWE.jpg

i've done all the security measures google suggested i do, new password, reported it as suspicious activity etc. but i still don't know what to do about paypal. the fact that they're trying to access my email now is scaring the sh*t out of me. what do i do? and why did the first email say tom lee was in china, but the IP was from japan? so suspicious and i'm getting freaked out. this isn't the first time this has happened either i had a guild wars account (under a different email) that got hacked, i lost everything.

This post has been edited by hambones on Wednesday, Jul 18 2012, 17:24

[Wolf68k]

When ever you get an email like this; NEVER CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS!!!!
You know you don't have a PayPal account so there is no reason for them to contact you.
Here's what you do to make sure it's not really PayPal; next to the little "reply button" in the upper right corner is a down arrow with more options under that menu you'll find "Show original"
You'll get a new window/tab with the real email and how it looks in text with the HTML code. Look at the links. In the case of the pic you uploaded look at the link that says "Edit my information" find that same text in the "original" version and look at the HTML code just before that it'll show you a URL. It'll look something like href="http://badguys.site". If that doesn't say paypal.com then it's fake. But same is true for other places that might try to contact you in the same way, facebook, chase.com, bank of america and so on.
If you don't have an account with a site that is contacting you via email for something AND they want you to click on a link to "fix" something or give you something, simply do not click on it.
Frankly even if I had a facebook account (no effing clue why I would want to do that) and I get an email from Facebook I still wouldn't click on the link even if I knew 100% it was legit. I still type in the address manually, or use a bookmark, something I know to be safe.
I get emails from my bank every day about my account. I know the email is safe and I know who it's from and I set my online bank account up to send me those emails. However when I see something in that email that makes want to go to the back I still DO NOT CLICK ON ANY LINKS to get there, I do it manually.
I don't even click on links like from emails for forgotten passwords or if a friend sends me something. I'd rather copy and paste it.
The only time I will click on a link in an email is if I'm on another computer and I email myself a link to look at later, and even then I hover the mouse over the link to make sure it matches and then click it.


As to your password, make sure it's a mix of letters and numbers and I don't mean something like password123 but more like p1a2s3s4w5o6r7d8 better still throw in some upper case and symbols as well and you get P1@2s3$4W5o6%5D8 (the reason for the % is because it's just above the r on the keyboard). Or take "your word" and spell it backwards and you can still use the same numbers; d1r2o3w4s5s6a7p8
What some people do so that each site has a different password is that use the name of the site within the password some how for example: Facebook+password can become pFaAsCsEwBoOrOdK of course you can reverse one of the words or both and replace letters for numbers and symbols.
You can replace the some of the numbers you normally use for the symbol above it; so p1a2s3s4w5o6r7d8 mixed with upper case can become: P!a2S#s4W%o6R&d8
Lastly make sure your password is 8 or more characters long. The longer the better.

If you want to completely crazy there are a bunch of other ways to make a password like using an online MD5 hash creator. Example: password = 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99 (MD5) or 70617373776f7264 (HEX) or 564117d9ec1f616136d7293a8dd9dfc0 (password in HEX then MD5) and use that for your password. Now this means you'll have to go do a site each time you want to long in, type in your plain text password then copy&paste the hash or hex.

You can also get with a site like a site like LastPass which has addons for most browsers to make it easier. You create 1 password for LastPass and let PL create the huge random character password for each site. You can still be on your smartphone and access those site passwords with LastPass even though you can't use the browser plugin.

[MIKON8ERISBACK]

QUOTE (hambones @ Wednesday, Jul 18 2012, 12:21)

i'm gonna keep this pretty short because i have pictures and don't want to type a huge wall of text. basically someone from china registered a paypal account with my email, and now they're trying to log into my email. i've changed my password and updated some stuff but i don't know what else i can do about paypal. ok, here's the original email. http://i.imgur.com/NjzRQ.jpg i emailed paypal support immediately when i received the email and told them that it wasn't me, i've never had an account etc. they never replied. but a couple days later i get this email. http://i.imgur.com/eJ8qZ.jpg then today i log into my email, and i see this delightful message at the top: and i get this email: http://i.imgur.com/1gyWE.jpg i've done all the security measures google suggested i do, new password, reported it as suspicious activity etc. but i still don't know what to do about paypal. the fact that they're trying to access my email now is scaring the sh*t out of me. what do i do? and why did the first email say tom lee was in china, but the IP was from japan? so suspicious and i'm getting freaked out. this isn't the first time this has happened either i had a guild wars account (under a different email) that got hacked, i lost everything.

Change your password immediately and perform a scan on your computer for key loggers and other dangerous software. Don't forget to check off all storage devices, all hard drives, every storage device connected. This is a very serious security threat that has been credited with enabling identity theft.

MalwareBytes Anti Malware

[MIKON8ERISBACK]

Also, someone may have already stolen your online identity and used it to send you that stuff just for the sake of pissing you off.