How to stop “PayPal – Order Has Been Completed” e-mail spam

What is “PayPal – Order Has Been Completed” e-mail spam

PayPal – Order Has Been Completed email scam is a sophisticated phishing attack designed to deceive recipients into believing that a transaction has been made through their PayPal account. Typically, these emails are crafted to look like official PayPal communications, complete with logos and formatting that mimic genuine PayPal notifications. The scam email informs the recipient about a purchase, often involving a significant amount of money or valuable items like cryptocurrency, and urges them to act if they did not authorize the transaction. The email usually contains a link or provides a phone number that the recipients are urged to use to resolve the supposed issue. If the recipient follows the link, they are directed to a phishing website that closely resembles the official PayPal site. Here, they are asked to enter their login credentials, and sometimes additional personal and financial information. Alternatively, calling the provided number can lead to direct interaction with scammers, who may use social engineering techniques to extract sensitive information or convince the victim to engage in risky financial actions.

“PayPal – Order Has Been Completed” spam (sample 1)

“PayPal – Order Has Been Completed” spam (sample 2)

Spam campaigns, including those involving the “PayPal – Order Has Been Completed” scam, typically infect computers through several methods:

• Malicious Attachments: Emails may include attachments that, when opened, can install malware such as trojans, ransomware, or spyware on the victim’s computer. These attachments often appear as legitimate documents or invoices.
• Phishing Links: Clicking on links in these emails can redirect users to malicious websites that either download malware directly onto their systems or trick them into divulging sensitive information that can be used for further attacks.
• Remote Access Trojans (RATs): In some sophisticated scams, attackers might convince users to install remote desktop software under the guise of helping to resolve an issue, thereby gaining control over the victim’s computer.

Risks of interacting with “PayPal – Order Has Been Completed” e-mail spam

Interacting with these scam emails can lead to several risks:

Financial Loss: By gaining access to PayPal credentials, scammers can transfer funds from the victim’s account. Additionally, victims may be tricked into sending money directly to the scammers through deceitful refund or overpayment scams.
Identity Theft: Personal and financial information obtained can be used to commit identity theft, leading to further financial fraud and potentially long-term damage to the victim’s credit history.
Malware Infection: Malware installed through links or attachments can lead to data theft, file corruption, and can even spread to other systems connected to the same network.
Loss of Personal and Business Reputation: For business accounts, such scams can lead to significant reputational damage if client or company funds are misappropriated

1. Download Anti-Spam and Anti-Malware Tools
2. Mark unwanted e-mail messages as Spam
3. Delete Spam letters
4. Unsubscribe from e-mail campaigns
5. Change your e-mail address and forward it
6. Final tips

1. Mark e-mail as Spam

If an e-mail message has not been put to the “spam” or “junk” folder itself, then users can do it themselves in just a couple of steps. Marking e-mail as spam will let your e-mail service know how to treat the unwanted sender next time. All further messages received from the spam-marked address will be located in the appropriate folder already without your help. Here is how:

Gmail:

1. Open your Gmail and find a message you want to classify as “spam”.
2. Select this message by clicking on the square box next to it.
3. Then, click on the stop sign icon (the one with an exclamation mark) on top.

Yahoo! Mail:

1. Open your Yahoo! Mail and find a message you want to classify as “spam”.
2. Select this message by clicking on the square box next to it.
3. Then, click on the Spam icon on top.

Microsoft Outlook:

1. Open your Microsoft Outlook and find a message you want to classify as “spam”.
2. Select this message by clicking on the square box next to it.
3. Then, click on Junk and Block afterward.

Apple Mail:

1. Open your Apple Mail and find a message you want to classify as “spam”.
2. Click on it and choose the Junk Mail (trash can with “X”) icon.

2. Delete Spam letters

You can also clear your “spam” or “junk” folder from all the collected such letters. It is always good to maintain your e-mail clean and without trash that clutters even your spam folders. This is how you can wipe it:

Gmail:

1. Open your Gmail and go to Spam on sidebar.
2. If you want to wipe all the spam letters at once, click Delete All Spam Messages Now.
3. If you want to do it selectively, click on the message you need and choose Delete forever.

Yahoo! Mail:

1. Open your Yahoo! Mail and navigate to Spam on the sidebar.
2. Choose e-mails you want to remove and click Delete on top.

Microsoft Outlook:

1. Open your Microsoft Outlook and navigate to Junk Email on the sidebar.
2. Then, click on Empty folder to clear all spam messages.

Apple Mail:

1. Open your Apple Mail and navigate to Spam on the sidebar.
2. Choose e-mails you want to remove and click the Trash can icon on top.

3. Unsubscribe from e-mail campaigns

Many websites offer users to enter their e-mail address in exchange for exclusive content notifications, and tons of other marketing stuff. Over some time, regular users can subscribe to multiple resources that bombard your inbox and spam folder with continuous messages. This can be stopped by unsubscribing to them. Many messages, if opened, have a small gray hyperlink or button “Unsubscribe”. Clicking on it should unsubscribe you from letters you have been receiving for some time. Note that some intentionally malicious letters may use fake “Unsubscribe” buttons to deceive users into downloading malware or visiting suspicious pages. Therefore, remember to always stay on alert!

You can also do the following to unsubscribe to multiple newsletters in Gmail at once:

1. Open your Gmail and type Unsubscribe into the search box on top.
2. Then, click on the Show search options icon on the right end of the search box.
3. Click on Create filter and select checkboxes next to Delete it and Apply filter to matching conversations.
4. After selecting, finish by clicking on Create filter.

This will lead to all previously subscribed messages evaporating from your flood list in seconds. No more letters of such will appear in your Inbox or other folders again.

4. Change your e-mail address and forward it

It is sometimes hard to get rid of all spam in case of an e-mail breach. Receiving unreasonably high numbers of spam could mean your e-mail was leaked to large masses of spamming campaigns grateful to use it. Victims of this can quite easily avoid it by creating a new e-mail address and forwarding incoming e-mails from their old address. Don’t worry, this will not redirect abnormal streams of spam to this new address, but only normal messages you received on your behalf. It is also worth notifying people you had close contact with that you changed your e-mail address, so they do not get scared after receiving a message from an unknown address.

1. First, you should begin with creating a new account for the e-mail service you use (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, or Apple Mail).
2. Then, log back into your old account, go to Settings and Add a forwarding address. In Gmail, these settings can be found in the Forwarding POP/IMAP tab. Something similar should be in other services as well.
3. Enter the newly created e-mail address and click Next > Proceed > OK.
4. You will then receive a verification message in that newly created address. Make sure you click on it.

If you also want to forward a copy of already existing e-mails, do the following:

1. Go back to the settings page for the Gmail account you want to forward messages from, and refresh your browser.
2. Navigate to Forwarding and POP/IMAP and select Forward a copy of incoming mail to.
3. Choose what you want to happen with the Gmail copy of your emails. It is recommended to choose Keep Gmail’s copy in the Inbox. Click Save changes at the end.

All done and dusted! Now, all new messages tied to the previous e-mail will be sent to your new address.

Final tips

There is always a good practice to have personal and business e-mail accounts separately. If you are active on forums, Q&A sites, participate in link building you will probably need another account for that. Major e-mail services and applications like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Apple Mail and Outlook already have strong built-in anti-spam technologies, however, we recommend special software like MailWasher Pro to fight spam campaigns like “PayPal – Order Has Been Completed”.