Online payment website PayPal has again become the
victim of a copycat site which tricks its customers into divulging
sensitive account and billing information.
PayPal customers are directed to the site,
www.paypal-billingnetwork.net,
by an e-mail message which appears to come from the company. The
message, signed by a "Jhon Krepp" from the "PayPal Billing
Department", claims that because of a "recent system flush", the
customer's billing and personal information is "temporaly
unavailable" (sic).
It goes on to say that customers need to verify their identity
by visiting the site or risk having their account cancelled. The
site itself is almost identical to the PayPal site, carying the
same graphics, layout and wording.Many of the links on the site
point back to the genuine PayPal Web site.
PayPal could not be reached for comment about the scam site.
Visitors to the paypal-billingnetwork.net site are greeted with
an authentic-sounding pop-up message.
"We've worked hard to help make PayPal even better! However, we
have to ask you to re-enter your Billing Information," the message
reads. Visitors are then asked to have their last PayPal billing
statement and credit cards handy before entering the site.
The message warns PayPal members that if they do not enter their
billing information they will have their PayPal accounts
cancelled.
After acknowledging this message, users are presented with a
form asking for a wide range of personal and financial information
including social security number, driver's licence number, date of
birth and credit card information.
Unlike much of the rest of the site, however, the form does not
reside on PayPal's website, but on a server at a different IP
address.
Paypal-billingnetwork.net is registered through Vancouver,
Washington-based web hosting company Dotster, which did not
immediately respond to requests for comment.
Security experts said this was yet another example of brand
spooking which, they say, is a growing problem.
On Tuesday, e-mail filtering company SurfControl, issued a
warning about brand spoofing, saying it has noticed a jump since
March in unsolicited e-mail messages tied to fraudulent brand
spoofing scams.
Like the most recent PayPal scam, the fraudulent e-mail messages
pretend to be from customer service or security officials at
well-known companies and direct the spam recipient to phony
websites whichharvest their confidential information, SurfControl
said.
PayPal has long been the target of online criminals. Recently,
however, other high-profile companies have been the targets of
brand spoofing, including Best Buy and Discover Financial Services
DiscoverCard.
Sony, United Parcel Services and Bank of America have also been
been hit by brand spoofing in the past few months.
SurfControl said the proliferation of open proxy servers is
largely responsible for the problem. Lists of loosely managed or
insecure proxy servers are freely available online, as are tools
for locating open proxies, according to vice president of global
product content Susan Larson.
Spammers use the servers to forward large volumes of e-mail
messages to recipients. An open proxy server will not only forward
the e-mail messages, but insert its own internet address in place
of the original source information, effectively covering the
spammer's tracks, Larson said.
Working from lists of harvested e-mail addresses, spammers
target high-profile companies, counting on the fact that a certain
percentage of recipients will have a relationship with those
companies.
Because of the low cost of sending spam and the huge sums that
can be reaped by stealing someone's identity, only a small number
of recipients need to fall for the ruse for the spammers to turn a
profit, she warned.
Consumers' growing comfort with online retail is also partially
to blame for the increase in brand spoofing scams.
"So many more people are trusting the internet to do financial
business. We're not as sceptical as we used to be about going out
on the internet and giving passwords or credit card numbers or bank
account numbers," she said.
The US Federal Trade Commission warned internet users to check
for "sloppy copy" such as spelling mistakes or grammatical errors
in any solicitation they may receive, and check with the company in
question before providing any personal information on a
website.
Paul Roberts writes for IDG News Service