Best Buy and PayPal
A number of Stanford users have received emails purporting to be from BestBuy, PayPal, or other e-commerce organizations, asking for verification or updates to their personal account information. These fraudulent emails direct the user's Web browser to an illegitimate Web site, which collects their information and then uses that data to commit identity theft, unauthorized purchases, or other violations of personal privacy.
If you receive emails from any organization requesting that you provide confidential personal information (including but not limited to account names and passwords, Social Security Numbers, credit card information, or banking data), resist the urge. Do not click on URLs in the message or respond with the requested information. In the vast majority of cases the emails are not legitimate, and should be discarded with great enthusiasm, like other less-malicious forms of spam. The URL will direct you to a Web server that is not maintained by the apparent sender of the message, enabling the attacker to steal your confidential information.
You can usually validate the request for information by consulting the security or privacy sections of the host company's Web site, for instance http://www.bestbuy.com or http://www.paypal.com.