Home
Site Map
Pecos Gab
NEWS PAGES
Obituaries
Archive
Photos
ADVERTISING
Commerce
Classified
Economic Development
TRAVEL
Area Papers
West Texas
STAFF
Smokey Briggs
Jon Fulbright
Peggy McCracken
Rosie Flores
LINKS
Other Sites
|
|
|
Weekly Newspaper and Travel Guide for Pecos Country
of West Texas
Opinion
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Squarely Pegged
By Peggy McCracken
Internet thieves
reek sophistication
Paypal is a legitimate company that provides a quick and easy method of payment to Internet shoppers. It works sort of like a credit card, with authentication for both the buyer and seller. Hassle-free shopping makes it worth the small discount.
However, Internet thieves have glommed onto Paypal as an easy way to steal your identity and bank account numbers. I received so many fraudulent emails the past two weeks that I closed the Enterprise Paypal account for protection.
The first email informed me that I had added an email address to the Paypal account. As a precaution, I tried to log into my account, typing in www.paypal.com for the URL, but found the password had changed or expired. To get a new password, I had to enter my personal security information, credit card number or bank account number. But how could I be sure I was on the real Paypal site?
I went back to the email and checked out the link provided to “update” my account. It looked legitimate on the surface, but when I held the cursor over the link and read the actual address at the bottom of the screen, it was different, and I knew it was not a Paypal site. Out of curiosity, I clicked the link to see if it looked like a Paypal site. It had the right colors, but the sizing was off, and some grammatical errors in the text convinced me that it was a fraudulent site.
Going back to the real Paypal site, I read their security instructions. One is to never click on a link provided in an email, and another was to forward such an email to spoof@paypal.com . I have now forwarded eight similar emails. The last two were more sophisticated than the first. They had plagiarized the Paypal site code to make it look authentic, then added a paragraph with a link to their fraudulent “update” screen.
Folks, that makes me nervous. I have bought a lot of stuff over the Internet without incident, although I suspect some of the sites made their profit by selling my personal information. That is one reason I get 50 or more spam emails every day.
One of today’s offerings was a notice that my Credit Union account needs to be updated. Again, I don’t have a credit union, so knew it was a fraud, but I checked out the URL to confirm it. Even moving the cursor over a URL can cause something bad to happen to your computer, I’m told, so I may have picked up a cookie or virus or something that will eat my data.
Some days I wish the computer had not been invented. But I don’t think I could function without the Internet. Mine doesn’t go down very often, but when it does, I feel like my right arm was cut off. Best to remain vigilant.
“Who is wise? He will realize these things. Who is discerning? He will understand them.” Hosea 14:9, NIV
EDITOR’S NOTE: Peggy McCracken is Enterprise business manager. Contact her at peg2@pecos.net
Return to top
Pecos Enterprise
York M. "Smokey" Briggs, Publisher
324 S. Cedar St., Pecos, TX 79772
Phone 432-445-5475, FAX 432-445-4321
e-mail news@pecos.net
Associated Press text, photo, graphic, audio and/or video material shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium.
Copyright 2003-04 by Pecos Enterprise
|