PHISHING SCAM – ‘Receipt For Payment to Apple Store’
The original site is no longer online; links go to the Internet Archive copy.
The claim
Message purporting to be from PayPal claims to be a receipt for a recent payment to the Apple store. The email includes a ‘dispute transaction’ link that you can click if you did not authorize the charge.
Subject: Receipt for your payment to Apple Store Australia
What the fact-checkers found
The email is not from PayPal. It is a phishing scam designed to trick you into giving your PayPal account login details and credit card information to criminals.
This email, which claims to be from PayPal, is supposedly a receipt for a recent $158 payment to Apple Australia.
The email includes a ‘Dispute Transaction’ link that you can click if you did not authorize the listed transaction.
The message is designed to emulate a real PayPal message and includes the PayPal logo.
However, the email is not from PayPal and the listed transaction is fake. The email is a phishing scam designed to steal your PayPal login details.
The criminals realize that many people who receive the email will quickly click the ‘dispute transaction’ link in the mistaken belief that their PayPal account has been misused.
The link opens a fake PayPal website that asks you to log in with your PayPal email address and password. Once you have ‘logged in’, you will be taken to a second fake page that asks for identity details and credit card information. Providing the information supposedly verifies your identity so that the payment can be cancelled.
After you supply the information and click the ‘Cancel Payment’ button, you will receive a final message claiming that the transaction has been successfully cancelled.
Meanwhile, the criminals behind the scam can hijack your PayPal account and use both the account and your credit card to commit fraudulent transactions in your name.
Note that the details in these scam emails may vary. Other versions may have different transaction amounts and name different vendors. But all are designed to trick you into submitting your personal and financial information to criminals.
Be wary of any email claiming to be from PayPal that asks you to click a link to verify account information or update details. Always login to PayPal by entering the account address into your browser’s address bar rather than by clicking a link in an email.
Remember that genuine PayPal emails will always greet you by name. They will not use generic greetings such as ‘Dear Customer’. Nor will they use your email address as a greeting.
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