The danger of PayPal fake calls: Only a quarter of all calls are legitimate

tellows Insights Report

 

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The latest developments show a high volume of calls relating to the online payment service Paypal. It is important to differentiate between official calls from Paypal and fake calls. With the help of the community, tellows can clarify scams and protect against such calls.

• Official Paypal Phone Numbers (e.g. customer service)
• Tactics used by scammers (e.g. Fake Paypal employees)
• Solutions to scammers (e.g. caller ID app)

 

Official Paypal numbers with positive ranking

The positively rated Paypal numbers are usually assigned to Paypal customer service or Paypal verification. The online payment service Paypal from San José (CA) in the United States is the world's leading payment service provider. In recent years, the way Paypal interacts with its customers has evolved significantly. This also includes telephone contacts, primarily for account verification, customer support and sales promotion.    

Paypal calls from a Toll-Free number

There have been numerous reports of Paypal calls from this toll-free number 08009172779, which looks the same as the official Paypal '0800' number, but don't be fooled, this is a cloned number, to trick clients into thinking that it is really Paypal contacting them. A cloned cell phone is one that has been reprogrammed to transmit the ESN and MIN that belongs to registered phone number. Scammers can steal ESN/MIN combinations by illegally monitoring the radio wave transmissions from the phones of legitimate clients with Paypal accounts.

SMS from Paypal

PayPal often uses SMS messages to send important verifications and notifications to its customers. Among other things, Paypal uses contact for the following services:

1. Account Activity and Transaction Alerts : PayPal sends SMS alerts to inform customers of important activity on their account. This may include, for example, confirming transactions, deposits, withdrawals or changes to security settings.
2. Security Notifications : PayPal uses SMS to notify customers of suspicious or unusual activity on their account. These security alerts are critical to protecting customers from fraud or unauthorized access.
3. Two-factor authentication (2FA) : PayPal uses SMS for two-factor authentication to ensure customers can only access their account with an additional level of security. This significantly increases account security.
4. Communication and customer support : PayPal may use SMS to inform customers about current offers, service changes or important updates. This is for customer support and to provide relevant information.

Important : Scammers often try to impersonate PayPal and send fake SMS messages to obtain sensitive information such as passwords or credit card details from customers. This type of scam is called “phishing.” It is advisable to be careful and not to share sensitive information based on SMS requests. If a fraud attempt is suspected, the respective phone number can be evaluated on tellows and reported to Paypal in order to protect other people from the scam.

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Scam or fraud calls with Paypal background

With a share of 80 percent, almost every PayPal call is fake. Fraudulent calls can cause great financial damage.

Payment verification via app: Be careful with this new scam

A new Paypal scam is making headlines: the so-called gift card trick. Scammers require victims to purchase gift cards and provide them with the codes over the phone to resolve alleged PayPal account issues. A user reports a computer voice that questions a payment made from the Paypal account: “Hello, this is Paypal. You just sent €781 to Coinbase. If you want to clarify the allegations, press 1.” In this case, the user reacted correctly and ended the call. tellow's research shows what happens when the instructions of the mostly female-sounding computer voice are followed. After confirming by pressing the “1” key, a connection is established to a call center employee posing as Paypal customer service. Accordingly, a remote maintenance app called “AnyDesk Remote” should be downloaded in order to grant access to the wrong employee. Gift cards should then be purchased as compensation for the payment allegedly made. The codes are requested from the alleged Paypal employee or read remotely. As soon as the codes are in the hands of the fraudsters, they are redeemed.

It is essential that no number keys or links are clicked that are sent by alleged Paypal employees via call or SMS. Phone numbers that are used for fake calls and fraudulent intentions are usually only active for a short time and are difficult to detect. Therefore, a certain degree of caution should be exercised with every PayPal call.

Securing Your Finances: tellows Insights for Consumer Safety

tellows equips consumers with vital insights to safeguard against Paypal scams:

1. Caller Verification: Rely on the tellows app to authenticate incoming calls, cross-referencing numbers against an expansive database of user-generated ratings.
2. User Feedback: Harness the power of user reviews to delve into others' encounters and identify potential scam indicators associated with specific numbers.
3. Caution and Authentication: Exercise prudence when confronted with unsolicited calls or messages from individuals claiming Paypal affiliations. Verify the legitimacy of the communication through official channels before disclosing any personal or financial details.
4. Community Vigilance: Play a role in the tellows community by reporting and rating suspicious numbers, fostering a collective defense against Paypal scams.

tellows Insights for journalists and websites

tellows Insights conducted this detailed research. The experts combine unique tellows data with expert knowledge and extensive research. tellows evaluates thousands of reviews every day and creates statistics and data clusters on relevant phone numbers and new scams. This allows the focus to be placed on actually active callers and new dubious telephone numbers to be identified quickly.

The tellows Insights team uses the unique tellows database. This allows detailed studies to be created. The team is happy to answer any inquiries. All graphics and data can be used for editorial purposes and published if the source is linked.

All data was last updated on Feb 26, 2024. The phone numbers examined were categorized using the tellows score (1 - serious to 9 - dubious). This indicates the risk assessment of a telephone number. The higher the score, the more dubious the caller is. Calls with the PayPal categorization and the number of reported phone numbers were examined. The analysis only takes into account numbers for which tellows users have assigned the company Paypal.

*User interest for phone numbers assigned to Paypal

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