PayPal is a giant in online payment processing, making it an appealing target for fraudsters looking for an easy payday. By learning how fraudsters usually operate on PayPal, you can be better protected if they ever target you.
For this reason, cybersecurity expert Theodor Porutiu from VPNOverview has outlined the most common PayPal scams of 2023 and how to avoid them.
Here are the most common PayPal scams in 2023.
Email is a scammer’s preferred method of stealing your money. You may receive a phishing email claiming an issue with your PayPal account, and the email will also include a link and a request that you click on it to log into your account. These scams are some of the most common social engineering attacks designed to gain access to your PayPal account.
With this scam, you receive an email offering a cash rebate or other financial incentive. The email will tell you that you must log in to your PayPal account to verify a few details to claim that reward.
Like other email scams, the link in the email directs you to a fake PayPal website. If you click on the link and enter your login credentials, the scammers get access to your credentials and can drain your account.
This scam plays on emotion, sending you an email notification that you’ve won, inherited, or are entitled in some other way to receive a considerable sum of money from an unexpected source.
The only catch is that you first must send a small sum via PayPal to cover transaction fees (or some other fake expense), but once you send the small sum, you never hear from the scammer again, and you are out the money you sent.
Scammers have a ton of shipping tricks up their sleeves to try and steal your money from PayPal. Unlike unsolicited emails that lead you to a fake PayPal site, these scam methods involve actually engaging with you on the real PayPal platform.
If you sell items online, then you’re the target audience for these scams. Several types of common PayPal scams involve shipping addresses including:
This is not a scam in and of itself, but rather a measure that scammers take to leave you without options after defrauding you.
Sometimes, a scammer will ask you to transfer money using PayPal’s Friends and Family option. Although this may sound good because it eliminates the fee that PayPal levies on standard sale transactions, paying for goods is not permitted under the Friends and Family money transfer option.
Any payments made like this are no longer protected by the PayPal protection program, and once you transfer money this way for goods, you have no recourse against fraud claims.
A buyer will engage with you on PayPal to pay for an item you sell. They message you, claiming to have made the payment, but that PayPal won’t release the money to you until you provide a shipment tracking number.
The scammer wants you to ship the product and provide the tracking number before you get paid and if you do, the fraudulent buyer gets the item and disappears without paying.
In case of natural disasters, for example, many people search for local charities where they can donate to relief efforts. Scammers often use this to their advantage, set up fake charities or donation sites, and ask you for contributions via PayPal to fake charities.
In this scam, you get an email warning you of “suspicious activity” in your PayPal account, usually with large transactions involved. The email will urge you to call a number to cancel the transaction. This number then directs you to a scam call center that will try to get your PayPal login details and other personal information.
This scam can be quite convincing for multiple reasons. The scammers use realistic email designs and even create fake invoices to create a sense of urgency.
There are several actions you should take to avoid getting scammed: