Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new email scam that abuses PayPal’s “Subscriptions” billing feature to send legitimate-looking PayPal emails containing fake purchase notifications. The emails, which appear to come from the legitimate service[at]paypal.com address, state that the recipient’s “automatic payment is no longer active” and include a customer service URL field that has been modified to display a message about a large, expensive purchase.
The goal of these scam emails is to trick recipients into believing their account has been used to make an expensive purchase, such as a Sony device, MacBook, or iPhone, and prompt them to call a provided phone number to “cancel or dispute the payment.” This tactic is commonly used to convince victims to engage in bank fraud or install malware on their computers.
Investigations have revealed that the scammers are able to send these emails directly from PayPal’s servers by exploiting the company’s Subscriptions feature. When a merchant pauses a subscriber’s subscription, PayPal automatically sends a notification email to the subscriber, which the scammers are then modifying to include the fake purchase information. PayPal has stated that they are actively working to mitigate this method and urge customers to be vigilant and contact their customer support directly if they suspect they have been targeted by this scam.