I received an email about a request for money from my PayPal account. Not recognizing the person or the transaction, I elected not to click on anything in the email. Instead, I went directly to my PayPal account, logged in there, only to find the transaction listed. There was a phone number to call to cancel. I called and ended up in a multi-hour film-flam involving fake PayPal security people, fake credit card security people, etc. I canceled the transaction in PayPal and it showed as canceled. The calls continued.

I will spare you the gory details. Suffice to say that when I later contacted PayPal to ask how it could be that a phony phone number was lodged inside my account along with the phony transaction, the answer was that PayPal is aware that scammers are able to insert bogus “call XX to cancel” numbers inside the PayPal website. Calling the number leads you to the scammers, not to PayPal’s security people.

PayPal told me they are “working to fix this.” But it’s not fixed now and almost led to disaster. Be careful. Be very careful.