Some staff at the Alumnae Association received the following email supposedly from PayPal even though they do not have a PayPal account:

Dear PayPal customer,

We recently reviewed your account, and we suspect an unauthorized use
of your account. Therefore as a preventive measure we have temporary
limited your access to sensitive PayPal features. To ensure that your account is not compromised please log on to your PayPal Online Account, verify your account information and your online account will be reactived by our
system.

What you need to do:
Log On to your Online Account

Enter your Account Information

**************************************
IMPORTANT CUSTOMER SUPPORT INFORMATION
**************************************

We are committed to delivering your quality service that is reliable and highly secure. This email is one of many components designed to ensure your information is safeguarded at all times.


Please do not reply to this message. For any inquiries, contact Customer Service.

Document Reference: (92051208).

The links in the email take you to the following address:

http://mstudio2.aknet.it/.../.www.paypal.com/cmd=_login-run.html

This page is located on a web site for a furniture store company in Italy which is probably unaware that their server has been hacked and is being used this way. If you have the latest version of Firefox, you should get a warning if you try to visit the page that it is a fruadlent site.

The email message is very typical and unfortunately all too common. 

Here are some tips to help protect yourself: (More)