I think that’s kinda the point. That it was a fake (though clever) website designed to harvest passwords.
Snopes has a page on Paypal e-mail scams.
Definitely beware the scams. I had some bozo try to transfer $1100.00 out of my checking account because I fell for it. :wally
Fortunately for me, I am barely a hundred-aire.
HOWEVER, my main gripe with PayPal is that (a) finding a customer service phone number is well nigh impossible and (b) trying to email PayPal with a complaint is also well nigh impossible, especially if you are locked out of your account because some bozo took it over.
Also, leaving money in PayPal is risky-- no interest and no insurance. It’s good as a pass-through, but don’t think of it as a bank. It’s not.
The issue is probably that if the funds are being drawn from a credit card, then the seller has to pay a fee to receive the payment. That is not the case for funds drawn directly from a bank account.
The fees add up, sure. But, I went and got a PayPal Visa that pays back a % on purchases. Kind of cool. I think I’m running either even or very slightly ahead on the fees vs pay back. The links and terms are easy to find on the PayPal site.
This is not meant as an endorsement, just part of the facts of using PayPal. YMMV.
The board’s URL setup messed me up. It was supposed to be (I’ll add a space to confound it):
http ://www.paypal.com98798q234987-98awkljw34nfpo8haw@joeblow.com/pplogin.html.
So the domain was joeblow.com, and the stuff before the “@” was an authenticated logon to that domain. This syntax is used mostly for ftp:// kinds of addresses, where you need to log in. But this password-stealing site put what looked like a Paypal domain up front to make you think it was at their site.