Supposedly purchased at Paypal for $799.99 from Coinbase Inc. The receipt was not from Paypal though it had a Paypal logo. The email acct they used is not the one we use at Paypal. The only thing I noticed is that the phone number they gave for disputes is not a Coinbase phone number. Were they hoping to gain info if I called? I reported it to Paypal and got a quick reply. I have also monitored both my Paypal and Visa accounts and nothing has appeared in two days. Anything else I should do?
No, this is obviously a scam.
Yes, though I think what Laura might be asking is “Apart from not doing what the scammer instructs (calling the phone number), is there any other recommended action?”
To my untutored eye—and on limited info—it looks like a generic driftnet phishing attempt that made it through your e-mail filters. I.e., they don’t have anything on you specifically that they’re trying to exploit. What you’ve done so far seems the appropriate response; I can’t think of anything else I’d do at this point, myself.
Yeah, I mean, I’d have just ignored it completely, after maybe checking the account balance if there was any particular reason to think they had more than my email address. I get Paypal phishing emails all the time. This just seems to be a variant of those, presumably because Paypal started processing crypto transactions recently
Pretty much any time I get an email that say it is from Paypal I hover the mouse over the sender to see what exciting alphanumeric characters are in the actual spoofing sender’s domain name. And then I consign it to spam without opening in case whomever is floating them out there is really looking to see which email accounts opened the email in the first place.
Thanks to all for your advice.
Here are some key things that make an email suspicious.
Does the email create a sense of urgency? “Click quickly or lose your account!” That sort of thing. Does it want you to click a link? Like @triggercut said, look at the link. often they will be close (paypalusa.com maybe) but often they aren’t even a little close (alpha213.pub). Hover your mouse cursor to find out. Is the grammar maybe less than perfect? Big red flag.
Your best bet is to delete such emails, don’t try to “unsubscribe” either, because if you do that you are just telling them the email is valid and active. Just delete it.
If it’s really convincing, like if PayPal is emailing you and saying there is an issue with your account, rather than click the link just go to PayPal.com yourself and look things over. Navigating yourself to the website in question will help you to be extra sure.
No urgency, nothing clickable and grammar is fine. They give a phone number to call if you want to dispute the charge. I checked the area code—402 and discovered that it is the Omaha area and Coinbase is in San Francisco. Also the 402 code is often used by scammers. I thought it strange that they said to go to your Paypal account and click on help if you need it. The phone number was the only odd thing in the receipt. I suppose a lot of people getting a receipt like that would call the number.
This article from Coinbase states the only phone number for the company and says anything else is a scam.
Hey now, I love that place! Great beer!
Now this will have an impact.
Gee, people want to move their money out of China? Go figure!
The problem is China’s economy is a house of cards. The ruling council sits down every 5 years and decides how the next 5 are going to go, and then they enforce it. But of course economies aren’t predictable in that manner, so it’s all smoke and mirrors. They do things like build 70 story housing skyscrapers in the middle of nowhere and then leave them empty. The global economy is starting to wise up to that, with Evergrande, and even though they will assuredly bail out Evergrande people are getting nervous that the free ride is about to end.
I wonder what we’ll be learning in a few days / weeks / months, how many “institution X had a boatload of money sunk into the Chinese economy” news we’re going to get.
Everybody has a boatload of money in the Chinese economy. If it really has a substantial fall that would cause a global recession, at the very least. My guess is their government will simply prop it back up and everybody will allow them to do that because the alternative is a major impact at home.
Everybody isn’t good news, all I can think is “Here we go again”…
I was surprised to read 30% of the Chinese economy is real estate.
The drop in the Dow Jones earlier this week was blamed on a Chinese real estate company possibly defaulting on payments.
Yes, I referenced that earlier.
Okay, never mind. 👌
Sorry, didn’t mean to shut you down hard. Just a quickly dashed response!