Just got this, and it looks quite legitimate, but its a fake.
(the link actually emailed wasn't the one in this post - the one here is a link to a paypal page asking you to login...)

Thanks for that heads up h_c

I had a fake Paypal email a couple of years ago. Luckily I realised pretty quickly and changed my passwords. Knowing about this one is really useful.

That's quite convincing! Scary.

I would be convinced by it apart from the fact that it talks about account suspension which I doubt paypal would do for not updating your details.

''reduce the instance of fraud''

I think they misheard the person dictating the email!

I had several over the holiday period similar to yours, HC.

Looks quite convincing. Except I don't have a paypal account.

Most of these things are fairly easy to spot, as they are often badly written or from an organisations you have no connection with, and usually threaten some sort of suspension or other penalty if you don't respond quickly.

If in doubt I have a golden rule for dealing with any enquiry regarding financial or personal information - be it email, phone call, text message or even the ordinary post these days - I never give any information on the spot, or follow any links provided in the message. I check it out through a route I know is legitimate.

I had something similar recently, but I've only ever used paypal twice, so I decided to ignore it in case it was fake and worry about it if I couldn't use paypal if I ever need to again.

If an e-mail from Paypal is genuine it will be addressed Dear(your full name), not just Dear Paypal member.

I seem to remember reading this somewhere on their site in the tips against fraud etc. and it is useful to know.

If you want to PM me your Paypal details, HC, I can check it out for you, if you like.

It is easy to check out these "phishing"attempts. First they are almost always fake - your bank, building society etc. will never ask you to use a link in any eMail that thye send to you, but to see the devious methods that these criminals use just look at the raw text of the mail - rather than the prettified version that Outlook or Eudora or Mac Mail shows you - and you will usually see their spurious web addresses disguised as real ones. They are rarely sophisticated enough to hide their evil methods behind some legitimate looking, or impenetrable, javascript code.

As an extra safeguard, NEVER use a link directly from an email. Always go to your browser and either type the real web address in directly, or use one of your own shortcuts, or take it from your history.

Personally, depending on my mood, I sometimes like to go to these fake sites and enter a few (or a few tens of thousands!) of fake sets of details to mess them about a bit - but I do that in a way that means they don't get my real eMail address - so don't try it if you don't know what you are doing.

I had a very plausible email today purporting to be from Paypal. Firstly it was ostensibly from ebay's own email address which I've had genuine emails from before, and at the bottom of the email it had all the small print about registered office, copyright etc. It had the logo (not that that means much), but what made it particularly plausible is that it was very well written - not the usual bad spelling or gammar etc. It very nearly took me in, and then I suddenly noticed that it said "Dear Valued Customer" instead of my name. Phew! Narrow escape! I hovered my mouse over the link they gave, and sure enough, it was a weird url. But it's scary to think how I was nearly taken in and easy to see how it can happen when it sounds so plausible. They must have copied a genuine Paypal email and just changed the url for the link.

I had one of these yesterday. My e-mail was exactly the same except asking me update my Halifax details. I don't even bank with Halifax!