You may receive an email that claims there has been a change to your PayPal site, or Ebay. They ask you to verify this change.
Never click on links in an email that lead you to a financial site
such as PayPal or your financial institutions. They're done up to look like
legitimate sites, but they are not. Instead, if you think the email
may be valid, open a new browser window and type in the site manually.
Do not use the site in the email. (Don’t cut and paste.) Just type in the actual address such as,
www.paypal.com. But again,
if you entered your credit card number on the site that was in the
email, then you need to call up your credit card company or bank, and tell them
what happened. Have them cancel that card number and issue you a
new card with a new number.
Ebay scams are pretty popular too. Don't click on a link in an
email that says it'll take you to ebay, paypal, or your bank. Just
open a new window, type in the website name manually, that way you
know you're on the right website and not a spoof site.
An important note to mention, sometimes PayPal may ask for a card number,
but only give it to them if you typed their site in manually (in a
browser), plus they will give you the last few digits first, that way
you know they already have the card number, they just want to verify
it (like when you change your password). If you click a link in an
email, and it wants you to verify a credit card/bank account and
doesn't give you the last few digits (so you know they already have
it), then it's just another scam.
If someone was running a scam website, they’d try to get all the info they could,
but would take what they could get. If someone punched in a credit card
number, they may ask for a pin. If they didn't give a pin, they at least have the credit card number).
Or maybe they’d ask for a credit card number, but give an error so
if/when people realize it was a scam site, they won't worry, because
it didn't go through. (It did but they will think it didn’t. So they won’t worry or do anything about it.)
They're just collecting numbers. They'll use them later, or sell them
(yes you can buy illegal credit card numbers), or whatever. If you are in doubt call your bank anyway. If you were
wrong and you cancel anyway, it's a minor inconvenience for a few
weeks. If you’re right and you don't cancel, then it's a minor
inconvenience for a few weeks/months (you'll have to be combing over
your statement for any unauthorized charges no matter how big or
small), and a major inconvenience once the unauthorized charges show
up. It may take the bank a little while to clear it up, your balance may
go below zero, may be hard to pay bills or what-not while it's being
straightened out.
Here's one link of many detailing one of many internet
scams:
Paypal scams
You might want to look into getting a gmail email account. It's a
free email account like yahoo but with extra features. One of the
things they have is a scam-detector, basically it tells you if they
think the email was spoofed and isn't legitimate (it isn't 100%, but
out of many dozens of scam emails I think it only didn't catch one).
Click here to go to Growing Up With Wisdom, a site for adolescents and teens.
Click here to visit www.parentingwithwisdom.com
Click here to visit www.healingwithwisdom.com
Click here to visit www.teachingwithwisdom.com These sites are linked for easy navigation.