How a phishing email made PayPal my best pal

Who’d have thought that a phishing email trying to compromise my PayPal account could leave me with a warm, fuzzy feeling in the end? PayPal managed to reassure me by dealing with this security threat quickly and efficiently and even gave me a £10 eBay voucher as a thank you!

Soon after I started using PayPal I got a phishing email telling me my account was frozen and that I needed to download an attachment to prove my identity and reactivate the account. I instantly recognised the scam, having naively fallen for a similar one a few years ago that led to my online bank account being compromised!

Customer service system that thinks like a real person
I immediately logged into my PayPal account to contact customer service to check if they had frozen my account. The ‘Contact us’ link was easy to find and I had several contact options. I wanted to speak to someone so I chose the ‘call us’ button. A website message popped up telling me that I had received an email with a case number and that I would have to quote it when I called. Full marks from my end to be assured that a robust security system was in place by a company managing my money.

I dialled the number and then the magic began! The automated voice system that I initially went through was so sophisticated that I felt like I was speaking to a real person. I felt extremely comfortable answering everything I was asked and was impressed at how ‘he’ grasped everything I said and the swiftness of the responses.

Finally I got diverted to a real person, and I thought to myself, ‘Oh no, security questions again!’ But I was proven wrong, the person I spoke to simply asked for my name and surname and we went on to discuss my problem. He confirmed it was a phishing message and requested me to forward the spam email to him so that PayPal could take measures to prevent the fraudsters from striking again.

Friendly sign-off and £10 voucher!
In my head I am thinking, “Yay, they’re actually going to do something about it.” The call ended with a short, soft marketing message in the “Thank you for calling us, have a nice weekend” sign-off, suggesting PayPal banking or other services to me as a new customer. No hard sell, book appointment, “Big discount if you buy now” in this call.

In return for the email I forwarded, I got an email back showing me what a genuine PayPal email looks like. It had no attachments, addresses the customer with his/her name and never asks for personal details. But the final jewel in this customer service crown was the £10 eBay voucher from PayPal as a thank you for contacting them about spam email and for doing business with them.I think there is a lesson or two to learn from this and I am sure as marketers you will agree that it is important for companies to ‘keep it ‘real’.

Posted by the DMA’s Research Executive, Yashraj Jain