Someone has PayPal.com email address

[Brandicakes83]

If someone has a email ending in PayPal.com what does that mean? Is it legit? They want me to send money to their email address but it ends in PayPal.com almost like they work for the company.

[DPCreations]

Where did you find the email address you want to use for sending?

What is it, exactly?

[Brandicakes83]

It’s someone in a local Facebook group. I’m trying to purchase something and they sent me their email address. It’s their name and then the paypal dot com I’ve never seen someone have a PayPal email before so it through me off.

[PayPal_Olivia]

Hi @Brandicakes83,

Thank you for posting to inquire about this. I definitely understand your caution!

There's an extremely slim possibility that the person is a legitimate employee of PayPal and is using their work address to transact. It's also highly likely that someone has given you an address that has a capital I instead of an L or something like that so it looks like it's the PayPal domain and they're hoping that you copy and paste characters as they appear. 

My recommendation is to trust your gut. If you feel something is amiss, do not proceed. This has kept me safe on many occasions.

@DPCreations - Thanks for assisting! Please note that members may not post any email addresses in the community. 

I hope this helps!

Olivia

[DPCreations]

@PayPal_Olivia

Actually Spoof@PayPal.com is permitted.

How are we supposed to help posters recognize the difference between spoofed and email addresses if we can explain the details.  Many see the spoofed address and overlook the real one, as might have happened here if the poster had described the real email address?  That is what I was getting at.  What the poster saw may well have been a spoofed address.

[PayPal_Olivia]

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wrote:

Actually Spoof@PayPal.com is permitted.

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Good call out! Yes, that is the one exception.

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How are we supposed to help posters recognize the difference between spoofed and email addresses if we can explain the details.  Many see the spoofed address and overlook the real one, as might have happened here if the poster had described the real email address?  That is what I was getting at.  What the poster saw may well have been a spoofed address.

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It does present a little difficulty, but it's a necessary measure. A posted email address may be a malicious person's email in an attempt to pretend to be PayPal, or it may be someone's stolen email address that a fraudster is using, or it may be someone's own email address that they are posting without realizing that they are opening themselves to potential fraudulent activity. Sometimes it's possible to tell by looking, but many times it isn't. For that reason, no email addresses may be posted at all, with the exception of the spoof@paypal.com address.

A person can always send any suspicious email to spoof@paypal.com to allow it to be checked out by the review team.

Olivia