It is a pleasure shopping online with paypal. Every freelancer who works online with customers from across the globe finds it simple to get paid if he/she holds a paypal account. Paypal does make life simpler, and with the newly launched paypal debit card, you can even withdraw money from an ATM, just like you would with a bank account. Because of these reasons more and more people are adding themselves to the paypal name every day, and more and more hackers are targeting paypal as a result!

The most common of scams with paypal are the ‘phishing’ emails. I got those scammy paypal fraud mails already three years ago… but they haven't stopped – so I think this article is worth lightening up things for all of my readers and the internet crowd in general.

Remember, you are never supposed to disclose your paypal ID and password to any one, including employees of paypal, and if any employee asks you for this, be aware and report him/her to the concerned authority.

Now, the reason people required paypal is because revealing credit card details to a stranger was always and still is a risk. When you give your credit card details to someone (crucial details like your PIN number), you are putting yourself at the mercy of the guy, who can enter a wrong amount, maybe con you into recurring payments, hack into your bank account, whatever.

What a phishing email is, is this – you get an email from a fraudulent person posing as a paypal employee, asking you to attach a credit card to your paypal account, and to send in the card details. Read on to get information on how you can tell a phishing email from a genuine paypal request.

For the security of their customers from their own employees, paypal advises never to reveal critical details like credit card PIN numbers to anyone including their own employees.

So first, if you get a genuine email from paypal asking you to add a credit card to your account, they will ask you to LOG onto the paypal website and then enter the details into the automated web page, not manually to an individual.

The second tell tale sign of a fraudulent email is – paypal never asks you to reply, paypal always requests you to log on to the web site. If you do reply to paypal, it is not always the same person who responds your problems. Every other time you get an email from paypal, it is generally someone else.

If you see a recurring name on every response, be cautious. Don’t hang up on them, because it may be by fluke, but double check everything if this happens. Once you have had a definite genuine communication with paypal, do keep the email id in mind.

Using paypal is a very convenient option from using a credit or debit card for your online transactions. But remember that hackers are targeting a shopping site usually many times every day, because it has a cluster of juicy credit card details!!

Use paypal and be aware how to use it use it safely.