Pay-Pal (was: Don't use "BidPay"!!!!)

Right. Phishing, it's called. The idea is to send you mail "from" paypal, or your bank, or amazon, or some such, asking (on one pretext or another) for various identification data, with various tricks performed to make it look as though you're giving it to the people the mail claims to be from rather than some scammer working off a 0wn3d end-user machine or some Russian, Chinese, etc, host. And of course, if you fall for it, the scammer now has your ID info and can go impersonate you, with various unpleasant consequences. Maybe. Depending on the mailreader in use and, in some cases, how it's configured, even that may not reveal the trickery. The only way to be sure you're looking at the page you think you are is to start up a Web browser separately - not by clicking anything in the mail - and type the URL into the Web browser yourself. And, of course, apply common sense first. If you don't have a PayPal account, PayPal won't be asking you for info (or at least if they do they should be told to take the same hike a scammer should); if you don't bank with CitiBank, a mail from CitiBank about problems with your account can't be for real; etc. Yeah. Stick around a while and you'll probably see them "from" more organizations. I've seen phishes "from" at least three banks, paypal, and ebay - none of which I've done business with. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B