Paypal is a fast growing on-line money laundering payment system. It is intrinsically secure against techno-busters, but spammers have ways and means of manipulating their way into accounts. It is a called Social engineering.

Social engineering is the greatest threat to on-line security

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That grandiose statement from seclists is a polite summary of how plausible con men persuade millions of users to tell them their most personal details, In some twisted way, you have to almost applaud the crims for their balls and ability to break into the most sophisticated computers on the planet. You would wonder about the effectiveness of saying "Hey people, here is a dark room full of money. It has no floor, walk this way." but it must work, because so many people just do as they are told, clicking on links and filling in forms on untrusted sites. And not just dumbasses!

How can people be so stupid?

Spammers, hackers, fraudsters, however you want to dress them up, are clever people, and they know how minds work. They play on humans' desire for money and users' lack of technical nouse. They also invent clever ways to bamboozle even smart internauters with tech smoke and mirrors. However, their biggest card is curiosity, and they know it affects more than just cats. Paypal users, especially those pumped up by 12-hour sessions on eBay, therefore make a great demographic for social engineering con men.

PS

This is Igor the Editor high on eBay bidding, dying to see how my payments are doing. So it is time to sign off from "I slept with your wife last night dot com" masquerading as The Pisstakers.

To follow: Money lures and password requests

Extra Paypal con job reading