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About John
John Morris is the founder and owner of morriscode, a leading Prince Edward Island web design & development firm that works with organizations to take advantage of multiple forms of technology and enhance their efficiency through online initiatives.
Occasionally John likes to share thoughts and opinions on his blog. When not working on web design, web development, social media strategies or building new websites, this entrepreneur can be found adventuring through PEI's backwoods capturing the beauty of our province.
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I know this an older scam but, a client of mine sent me an email today asking if the following email had something to do with their website.
----- Original Message ----- From: "PayPal"
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2008 2:33 AM
Subject: Limited Account Access
Dear PayPal Member,
As part of our security measures, we regularly screen activity in the PayPal system. During a recent screening, we noticed an issue regarding your account.
For your protection, we have limited access to your account until additional security measures can be completed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
This might be due to either of the following reasons:
1. A recent change in your personal information (i.e. change of
address,e-mail address).
2. An inability to accurately verify your selected option of payment due to an internal error within our processors.
Please update and verify your information by checking the link below:
(if you can't open it just copy the link in your internet browser)
We thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. Please
understand that this is a security measure intended to help protect you and your account. We apologize for any inconvenience.
This is what is called a spoofed email. It wasn't actually sent from Paypal but from a scammer.
How can you tell? A couple ways.
1) "From: "PayPal" "
Paypal never send its from simply just Paypal.
2) From: "PayPal"
Paypal's domain name is paypal.com, the domain name here shows ppl.com, therefore it wasn't sent from the Paypal domain.
But don't always go by this, as the better spoofers will list paypal.com!
3) Dear PayPal Member,
Paypal never sends out emails generic like this, its usually Dear your name.
4) http://210.245.85.131/29august2008/serverupdate/limited.html
As with point #2, this is not a paypal domain name. It is an IP address. So, if you visited the site you won't be going to Paypal's
actual website, though it may look exactly the same. This spoofer was a newbie spoofer. In the URL it says, serverupdate? What does a server update have to do with limiting an access account?
By visiting the url in the email, there is a lot of potential for major problems. Firstly, these people are scammers and will obviously resort to what ever level possible to scam you. So by visiting the website itself, there maybe be a trojan or virus linked to it. This would then be immediately placed on your computer via cookie.
If you did visit the website, run a virus check of your computer. Just in case. Then go to paypal.com and change your password. Then, go through your paypal account and look for suspicious activity, or
unauthorized transactions. Check the credit card link to your paypal account for unauthorized transactions. Then call Paypal and ask
them to look over your account and explain to them that you logged into a spoofed paypal website.
The things listed above are not easy to catch to the average user, but you gotta look for patterns to identify if it is from the sender or not. These
same scams apply to more then just Paypal. I saved a client $2600 in February from another scammer. You should read about it here...
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This blog features information on 
John Morris is the founder and owner of
morriscode, a leading Prince Edward Island web design & development firm that works with organizations to take advantage of multiple forms of technology and enhance their efficiency through online initiatives.
