Paypal fraudsters operating from Berkeley University
By Aleksander Boyd
London 28.01.06 | In the last few days I have received some emails, purportedly from Paypal, requesting that I "reactivate my Paypal account." The email is an exact copy of those that one would expect to receive from Paypal, it even has a remark stressing "identity protection matters," and right next to it a link that states "Get Verified!" Once one clicks on it, it redirects to http://www.thursdayla.com/updates/us/webscr.php?cmd=LogIn. As readers can see the URL does not even contain the word paypal in it. So since it's Saturday morning and I'm a bit bored I got to do a little digging.
The email was sent out of Berkeley University servers [mvz18.MVZ.Berkeley.EDU (128.32.146.140)] by john@support.mvz.berkeley.edu.
The domain thursdayla.com was registered by Alex Man, who gave false information and put the same date for the creation, registration and expiry of the domain.
Hopefully Paypal and Berkeley University will investigate this matter further. The problem is that many people around the world fell for the Nigerian internet scam, surely some will fall for this one too. The advice to recipients of suspicious emails allegedly from Paypal is simple: if the url/domain does not contain the word Paypal, take no further action and report it.
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