Online Threat Alerts (OTA) - Alerting you to scams and frauds.

Paypai Scam - Fake and Deceptive PayPal Website
Paypai Scam - Fake and Deceptive PayPal Website

Can you tell the difference between the legitimate PayPal website: "paypal.com", and the fake one: "paypaI.com"? By looking at them, the answer is no. So, let us convert both website names to uppercase letters: "PAYPAL.COM" and "PAYPAI.com". Can you tell the difference now? I know your answer is yes, because looking at the websites’ names in capital letters, you will notice that the fake PayPal website has an "i" in it, while the legitimate one ("PAYPAL.COM") has none.

What cyber-criminals have noticed, is that the uppercase form of the letter “i” looks like the lowercase form of the letter “L” on most computers, so they registered the website or domain name “paypai.com,” send fake email messages from it to their potential victims, and change the lowercase letter “i” in the website’s name to uppercase. This makes the sender’s email address looks like the legitimate website: “paypal.com,” when it is actually the fake PayPal website: “paypai.com”.

Here is an example

If the scammers send a fake email message from "info@paypai.com" and change the letter “i” in the email address to uppercase, the email address will then look like this: “paypaI.com”. This is because the uppercase “i” looks like the lowercase form of the letter “L”.

If the scammers’ potential victims respond to the fake email message, although it appears as if was sent from paypal.com, the scammers will receive it at the fake PayPal domain: “paypai.com”.

To avoid getting tricked by these phishing scams, never click on a link in an email message to sign into your PayPal account. Always go to www.paypal.com and sign into your account from there. PayPal will display important messages or notifications to you once you have signed into your account.

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