New Scam Targets PayPal Users During Account Profile Setup

A highly sophisticated phishing campaign is targeting PayPal users with a deceptive email designed to grant scammers direct access to their accounts. The attack, which has been circulating for at least a month, leads victims to the official PayPal website rather than a fake login page.

The email appears to come from a legitimate PayPal address such as service@paypal[.]com, with the subject line “Set up your account profile” and a body claiming a new payment profile has detected a charge of 910.45 at the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken[.]com. The link is crafted to initiate the process of adding a secondary user to the victim’s account, letting the threat actor issue payments directly from the balance if followed, and ultimately potentially draining funds.

Security experts highlight red flags including generic greetings, mismatched subject lines, and unfamiliar recipient addresses, and advise never to click on links in suspicious emails, instead visiting PayPal[.]com directly and enabling two-factor authentication. The article notes PayPal has over 434 million active users worldwide, underscoring why it remains a high-value target.