Phishing: PayPal Needs Your Help to Resolve an Issue with the Account

“We need your help resolving an issue with your account!” reads the subject of the latest phishing email users should be aware of.

The spam emails try to convince recipients that their assistance is required in order to address an urgent issue that limits their accounts, Hoax Slayer reports.

“We need your help resolving an issue with your account. To give us time to work together on this, we've temporarily limited what you can do with your account until the issue is resolved,” reads part of the email.

“We understand it may be frustrating not to have full access to your PayPal account. We want to work with you to get your account back to normal as quickly as possible.”

The notification claims that the user must provide some information that’s allegedly needed to confirm his/her identity. This data consists of details regarding the latest transactions the PayPal customer has made.

As the screenshot shows, the cybercriminals didn’t go through too much trouble in making the email look legitimate, but in some cases, the PayPal logo may be more than enough for an internaut to believe that it’s real.

Those who click on the link will find themselves on a site that contains a form. Here, the victim must enter his/her name, date of birth, home phone number, address, state, country, and other, even more valuable data, including credit card type, car number, expiration date, CVV, Social Security number, and the two security questions and their associated answers.

If the form is submitted, the data is stored in a database managed by the individuals who launched the scheme.

Scams that leverage PayPal’s name and reputation are not new, but every once in a while fraudsters come up with a slightly different angle in the attempt to convince users that their notifications are genuine.