Russian hackers are no pals

net1

Russian hackers are suspected of being behind a professional-looking but fake PayPal email scam designed to steal a person's financial and personal details for identity theft, Silicon.com reports.

The email, which has being doing the rounds this week, is a much more detailed and convincing version of the long-running email that asks users to confirm their PayPal account details.

The fake message appears to come from the billing department at PayPal.com and asks people to click on a link taking them to a genuine-looking PayPal page and re-enter their account details.

Once there the victim is presented with a convincing version of the PayPal site with a list of fields including name, address and date of birth, social security number, driving licence number, mother's maiden name, credit card and bank account details and PIN numbers, email address and password.

In short, that's just about all the information anyone would need to commit complete identity theft and use the details to apply for credit cards and loans.