Here's a link to an article in the Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/01/AR2006040100171.html

In brief, someone in Russia is sending emails supposedly from Pay Pal, addressed to an individual's name, telling them a credit card purchase has been made from a company (a real company) in their name to be shipped to someone else and, of course, near the bottom, says "click this link". The link, of course, takes you to a site where you are asked for all kinds of identifying information.

The article repeats the usual advice, from Paypal:

· If you receive a suspicious PayPal e-mail asking for this type of information, "forward the e-mail to spoof@paypal.com , and our trust and safety team will let you know if it is in fact an e-mail from us."

· Always log in to your online accounts by opening a new Web browser window (such as Internet Explorer or Netscape) and typing in the URL. Do not follow e-mail links to enter personal or financial information.

· Check your accounts frequently to ensure security, says Bettencourt. "Change your online passwords regularly."

· Never download attachments from anyone you don't know.

I will add that PayPal and eBay are very good about acknowledging when you forward a potentially fraudulent email to them and have always responded to me. Some banks are as good, some are not - which is a shame, because it is their name being used in a fraud. Some financial institutions make it very difficult to even contact them by email to forward a potentially fraudulent email to them.

As this article points out, just because someone uses your name in an email doesn't mean the email is legitimate.

By Cocoabutter on Sunday, April 2, 2006 - 11:40 pm:

I have looked at the message boards on ebay, and there is a lot of heads-up-info about scams. Good place to go to keep up on all this stuff.