Genuine PayPal emails with spoof URLs

PayPal emails are corrupt this morning. They are arriving for valid transactions with the PayPal URL replaced by an error. The links in the email including picture links all refer to https://SECURE.UNINITIALIZED.REAL.ERROR.COM/uk/vst/id=xx

Although disconcerting it appears simply to be an email error. The payments are real payments for real transactions and logging into my PayPal account shows that the funds really have been paid.

It has to be more than a little embarrassing for PayPal just as the number of phishing emails are falling and they’ve implemented domain keys to then insert a load of dodgy URLs into their payment notification emails.

5 Responses on "Genuine PayPal emails with spoof URLs"

1. 1
   Steve H says:

   October 19, 2007 at 8:42 am

   This has been happening for about 2 weeks now. When you look at the affected transactions from within Paypal, all have the user’s email in place of the eBay user id for some reason.
2. 2
   Chris Dawson says:

   October 19, 2007 at 9:28 am

   It’s not the user id/email address that’s the problem, it’s the fact it’s a totally incorrect URL – that’s only appeared this morning
3. 3
   Allotment says:

   October 19, 2007 at 11:50 am

   Steve is right, It has been happeing for a couple of weeks on a small percentage of payment emails (missing id and incorrect URL). I reported it to PayPal when I got the first one, have heard nothing since but still continue to receive them…
4. 4
   Allotment says:

   October 19, 2007 at 11:51 am

   I think it started soon after their announcement re Domain keys..
5. 5
   Sue Bailey says:

   October 21, 2007 at 1:07 pm

   Like Steve, I’ve been getting the secure.uninitialised etc. thing for a couple of weeks, but it appears to be fixed this morning.