On Thursday, netizens began receiving a convincing forgery of a PayPal e-mail, with the subject line "PayPal Verification" and the false return address verification@paypal.com.
The text of the message claims that PayPal – owned by online auctioneer eBay – has launched an anti-fraud initiative that requires the recipient to verify their account information on a particular website, "as part of our continuing commitment to protect your account."
Clicking on the supplied link – masked as a PayPal URL – takes the user to paypal.un-fraud.com. The website, hosted by Verio, consists entirely of a professional-looking "Personal Account Identity Verification" page that asks the user for their name, address, birth date, credit card numbers, social-security number, mother's maiden name, checking account numbers and ATM codes.
Read more: The Register.