Quote:
Originally Posted by speeder
The reason they offer PayPal is that they want your email address. Once you give them that, (so that they can ostensibly PP you $$), the con is over. All they wanted was your email address. That's where the easy $$ is these days, selling legit email addresses.
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That seems like a lot of work to acquire 1 legit email address, lol...
I think the real scams here usually involve a spoofed Paypal site and/or email. So, the "buyer" will make contact and agree to the seller's price/terms, and request their email to send PayPal funds. Then the seller will receive one of two emails:
1. A fake PayPal email stating funds have been confirmed/deposited.
The goal here is that the seller will ship the goods without actually logging into PayPal directly to verify funds.
2. A fake PayPal email with a link to a spoofed PayPal site requesting you to log in to verify/accept funds. The goal here is to get your log-on info to your PP account and go to town.
Other PP scam variants involve a scammer who has already obtained access to someone's PP account, and is using it to make fraudulent purchases. Or, someone that has created a PP account with stolen credit card/bank account info (ID theft).
There are plenty of other PP scams (overpayment, false charge-backs, refunds, etc.), but email-address phishing for the sake of compiling/selling lists is probably waaay down the line of profitable scams, considering the capture-time/rate involved. If they do want your email address, it's to try and hack your PP password and gain access to your account.
It's amazing/scary how many people still use ridiculously easy-to-hack passwords like "password" or "1234" etc.