Need Help Translating Email Message from French to English

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cosmiccat
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23 Jan 2010, 9:06 am

Can anyone tell me what this message says. It came in my regular email and I don't understand a word of it. I'm worried that it's some kind of a scam and someone has gotten into my PayPal account and made a transaction without my authorization. I'm from the USA and haven't ordered anything from Europe, or particularly, from France. I did order a couple books from Amazon, but I think they were both being shipped from locations inside the USA.

Cher utilisateur PayPal

Mise à jour nécessaire de votre compte

En raison de préoccupations pour la sécurité et l'intégrité de votre
compte PayPal, nous avons publié ce message d'avertissement.

Il a été porté à notre attention que votre compte PayPal doit être
mis à jour dans le cadre de notre engagement continu pour protéger votre compte et à réduire les cas de fraude sur notre site Web. Si vous pouviez prendre 5-10 minutes de votre expérience en ligne et de mettre à jour vos dossiers personnels.

Une fois que vous avez mis à jour votre compte, vous ne rencontrez l'avenir des problèmes avec le service en ligne.

Mettre à jour maintenant


Nous vous remercions de votre grande attention à cette question. S'il vous plaît comprenez que c'est une mesure de sécurité destinée à vous protéger ainsi que votre compte.
____________________________________________________________________________

Copyright © 1999-2010 PayPal. Tous droits reserves.

PayPal (Europe) S.a r.l. & Cie, S.C.A.
Societe en Commandite par Actions
Departement de l'examen des comptes .
Email PayPal n° PP1478



TallyMan
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23 Jan 2010, 9:15 am

It looks like a standard scam email. Was any of the text clickable i.e. linked to some site where they could steal your details? Just delete it. I get that sort of email. I have a French PayPal account (I live in France).
I get those scam emails in English and French all the time.

... A quick Google translation of the email gives:

Update your account required

Because of concerns for safety and integrity of your
PayPal account we have issued this warning message.

It has been brought to our attention that your PayPal account must be
updated as part of our ongoing commitment to protect your account and reduce instances of fraud on our website. If you could take 5-10 minutes of your online experience and update your personal records.

Once you've updated your account, you will not encounter future problems with the online service.

Update Now

---

Its a scam


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TallyMan
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23 Jan 2010, 9:22 am

One suggestion: If you are able to do so use a different email address for PayPal and another different one for online banking and another for your friends etc. Then if you get an email purporting to be from PayPal or your bank and it isn't the email address you use exclusively with them, you know immediately it is a scam.

I have several email addresses. One reserved specifically for newsgroup forums and it attracts all manner of entertaining spam and scams.


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miszt
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23 Jan 2010, 9:30 am

If you need a quick translation you can use http://babelfish.yahoo.com

Its grammer is hilarious, but you can generally figure out what people are saying



cosmiccat
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23 Jan 2010, 9:50 am

Yes, this part was clickable: Mettre à jour maintenant

I didn't click it, but on mouse over it shows a very long url with beginning with a set of numbers separated by dots and three paypals and many back slashes and then ending with webscr.php

Thanks TallyMan for the translation and the advice of multiple email addresses. I will delete the message.

Thanks Miszt for the link to Babblefish.



Maggiedoll
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23 Jan 2010, 9:54 am

miszt wrote:
If you need a quick translation you can use http://babelfish.yahoo.com

Its grammer is hilarious, but you can generally figure out what people are saying

I greatly prefer http://translation.imtranslator.net/ because it will also back-translate, so it's much more useful in trying to communicate in other languages.



cosmiccat
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23 Jan 2010, 9:58 am

Thanks MaggieDoll. That will come in handy so I can communicate better on a forum I belong to where some of the folks post in their native languages.

Wow. I tried the translator out and see that it has a text to speech feature. Very nice.

English to Italian
Thank you very much, my friends on Wrong Planet, for helping me out with the problem of translating a suspicious email. I wish you all good health and hope you have a very nice day occupying your time with a special interest.

La ringrazio molto, i miei amici su sbagliato di pianeta, per avermi aiutato con il problema della traduzione di un e-mail sospette. A tutti auguro una buona salute e vi auguriamo una bella giornata che occupa il tuo tempo con un particolare interesse.

Listen



hartzofspace
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23 Jan 2010, 10:27 am

Hi, cosmiccat! I get e-mails like that a lot. What I do, is click on the part of the e-mail that shows "Full Headers." This shows in detail where the e-mail came from. Then, I forward that longer version to PayPal. This way, they can trace the fraudulent source and report them to the authorities. You can tell an e-mail is fraudulent because they don't use your name. Banks and PayPal won't inform you of any problems by e-mail like that. Just be sure never to click on anything in the body of the e-mail.

I enjoy reporting these stupid people to whomever it is they are pretending to represent.


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cosmiccat
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23 Jan 2010, 10:58 am

Hi Hartz. Thanks for the good advice. I agree,they should be reported.



2ukenkerl
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23 Jan 2010, 11:49 am

Paypal has said that they will ALWAYS personalize the email, so "Dear paypal user" is a DEAD give away! ALSO, they will NOT ask for private info! ALSO, there is a bug in most software, and HTML emails work even if the bug isn't there, so people can HIDE the true URL, so NEVER click on the URL in email if the email wasn't expected.

Steve



cosmiccat
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23 Jan 2010, 12:26 pm

2ukenkerl wrote:
Paypal has said that they will ALWAYS personalize the email, so "Dear paypal user" is a DEAD give away! ALSO, they will NOT ask for private info! ALSO, there is a bug in most software, and HTML emails work even if the bug isn't there, so people can HIDE the true URL, so NEVER click on the URL in email if the email wasn't expected.

Steve


Thank you Zukenkerl. All of that is good to know.