Having a PayPal account is an integral part of having an online business today.
To login to your PayPal account, you have to enter the email address that you registered and your password.
You also have the choice of redirecting to your account or your transactions once you have logged in.
PayPal employs an encrypted connection as a way of protecting your account information from any prying eyes.
However, there are still other ways by which you can get tricked into giving your PayPal account login details to online scammers.
From my own experience PayPal will never send emails asking for any secure details from you. If you do get an email claiming to be from PayPal you need to check the sender email address that will always give you a clue as to where it is coming from.
Here are a few tips on how to protect your PayPal login details.
Avoid Emails That Redirect To Fake Websites
First of all, don’t ever do a PayPal account login from a link in an email. This is perhaps one of the oldest online scamming techniques but unfortunately, many people are still fooled by it. This tactic is also used in banking emails and even emails claiming to be from Facebook that require you to follow a link within the received email to enter your account details.
Below you will see a screen shot of the current PayPal login page for business accounts.
Below is the current login page for PayPal personal accounts.
No reputable company will ever request you to do this so if you are not sure don’t do it, simply go directly to the website in question if you believe there is a problem and type in the URL address yourself.
While the link will bring you to what looks like your PayPal account login page, it is actually just a fake website that will obtain your login details, namely your email and password. Once they have gotten your PayPal email and password and if you are not aware of what has happened, they can use your credit card via PayPal or transfer any funds you may have to their accounts.
Now that you are aware of these suspicious emails that provide a link to a supposedly legitimate PayPal account login, you can report them to PayPal so that they can take the necessary actions. To report a shady email, simply forward it to spoof@paypal.com. Mark the email as spam afterwards. Remember that PayPal will never request your email address or password, so do not fall for such a request as they are nothing more than scams.
Be Careful Of Shared Computers When Logging Into Your PayPal Account
If you are using a shared computer to do a PayPal account login, don’t forget to log out of the website once you are through with it, also never accept the option in the web browser to save the username or password you may unknowingly be giving access to your account to another computer user.
Remember that by doing so, you are leaving your account vulnerable for other people to use. Also, do not do a PayPal login from an internet cafe ever or you can leave yourself wide open and may get your account hacked. These internet cafe’s may have a key logger or other malicious applications installed in their computer systems which can record your PayPal login details.
Remember that the best way to do a PayPal account login is by directly going to www.paypal.com with a web browser. Refrain from opening the site with a link or with a built-in browser from any software you may have installed.
It also is very advisable to have an internet security application installed on any computer you are using to access PayPal. We use AVG Internet Security and Malware Bytes to protect all our business computers from intruders.
