I very recently registered for an eBay account. I tried to make one purchase, but it didn’t work. The Amount was for $12.00. I just now received this email:
We recently noticed that a transaction may have been made without your
knowledge or consent. We are currently investigating the following
transaction:
Details of Disputed Transaction
Transaction date: Nov 29, 2009
Transaction amount: -$25.94 CAD
Your transaction ID: 30L***F065545B
Case number: PP-548--111
To see the details of this case, log in to your PayPal account by following the link below.
During our investigation your account access will be limited. Please verify your
account details in order to lift the limit on your account.
The seller has been asked to provide information about this transaction.
During this time the funds are not available in your account, but if the
unauthorized activity claim is decided in your favor, we will fully refund
you for the amount of the transaction.
Sincerely,
Account Review Department
Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you
will not receive a response. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account
and click the Help link in the top right corner of any PayPal page
If it really came from PayPal, it should have your name on it. The phishing attempts don’t.
The wording sounds like a phishing attempt (is that redundant?) and I sure wouldn’t click on the link to verify my details. But you can log into your PayPal account the way you usually do and verify your activity.
It sounds a little different than the phishing attempts I’ve seen that claim to come from PayPal but has some similarities. I wouldn’t trust it. The date makes me really suspicious.
You seem to have figured it out but yeah, that’s a common phishing email.
Don’t ever log into paypal or ebay via one of those links. Real Ebay and paypal emails don’t provide you with links like that and will instead instruct you to open their web page and log into your account on your own (rather than follow a link). Remember that rule, because I have seem some damn fine scam websites to get your account info in my time, and some really legit looking emails that are very scary sounding.
When I ran the eBay store for a retail establishment we would get 1 or two of those a week. You can report them if you like to paypal, but I am not really sure it does anything.