More on online security: Penpal

Got an email today from an email ID purporting to be from Paypal. It urgently sought my attention and informed me that my Paypal account has been hacked into and I should immediately (of course, in my best interests) log into the website and update my accounts. With the nice, sweet warning that if I didn't do that, my account would be suspended.

The email was so well written, that for a minute I really started believing that I actually have a Paypal account. The good folks had generously also provided the link to click on,in the e-mail itself. This was how the link looked like: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_login-run. I am *very* suspicious when it comes to online security so I knew this was a lemon. Try the link, see where it goes! The link look perfectly valid. In fact, Paypal users use this link as a shortcut to log in. In reality the link actually goes to another URL: http://217.5.157.244/update/paypal/login.htm, which is a fraudulent website. The amazing thing is that the website looks exactly similar to the real Paypal website. Hope nobody's been fooled by this one. See the images below:

False Paypal:



Real Paypal: