PayPal phishing
I get a whole lot of spam that claims to be from PayPal and says my account has been blocked and I need to go to URL such-and-such and re-enter my personal information so they can unblock me.
At least 99% of that mail presumably consists of "phishing" attacks--some bad person who puts up a fake PayPal-looking website and sends out a fake PayPal-looking URL (disguised using a variety of techniques) in hopes of snaring unwary users. (Many of those phishing attacks consist of saying that some random email address has been added to my account, and that if that wasn't supposed to happen, I should click this link immediately. Pretty clever attack; every time I get one of those, I get the tiniest bit nervous that it could be true.)
I'm always nervous about just deleting such emails as spam, because on several occasions in the past few months, when I've gone to log in to PayPal I've been told that my password has been reset and I need to provide a new one. Which makes me suspect that a few of those emails might be legitimate.
But in the process of corresponding with PayPal support last week, I found out one very important/useful fact:
PayPal will never send you an email with the greeting "Dear PayPal User" or "Dear PayPal Member". Emails initiated by PayPal will address you by your first and last name, or the business name associated with your PayPal account.
That's made me a whole lot more relaxed about all the alleged PayPal spam I get. If it doesn't have my name on the top (and none of the spam does, so far), I can junk it without a second thought.
So figured it was worth sharing that info in case others of you are in the same boat.