Today I received an email that appeared to be from PayPal. It said if I wanted to see my PayPal Money Market Quarterly Report I should follow the link included in the email. I was doubtful, so I proceeded very carefully. When I clicked the link, I was instructed to sign in with my PayPal Username and Password. I closed the email without responding. Then my husband also got the same email. He noticed some inconsistent flaws in the email and he also closed it without responding. I warned some eBay/PayPal friends about the email and suggested that they also avoid following the link.

My concerns are two-fold:

1) If this is a scam, it is a good one that would easily fool some PayPal users.

2) If, however, the email was generated by PayPal it is in some ways even more alarming. PayPal and eBay both say they never send emails requesting username and password.  Yet we actually get them often, especially from eBay.

I am writing this guide for 2 reasons then. One is to warn PayPal/eBay users not to respond to the Money Market email. And second as an open letter to PayPal suggesting that they find another way to promote the Money Market income besides using emails requesting us to login by way of the email.

I hope that this will serve as another warning to all of us to be very careful. All of us need to remember that even eBay and PayPal make errors in judgement from time to time.

One last note. Both eBay and PayPal are interested in knowing about any actual spoof emails, or suspected spoof emails. If you get any suspicious emails that appear to be coming to you from eBay or PayPal be sure to forward them. If enough actual emails which have been sent by either eBay or PayPal are returned to their spoof email log, they will quickly get the message that the method being used to get that message out isn't a good idea. Send all such emails to "Spoof" at either eBay.com or PayPal.com. This is very important for all suspected scam emails that appear to be coming from either eBay or PayPal. .

Stay safe. Proceed with caution.