Paypal email oddities

As even PayPal themselves acknowledge, PayPal users are subject to a lot of phishing emails. So it’s odd to see a definitely legitimate PayPal email with a bunch of things you’d regard as pretty strange.

1. Odd header. Looking at the headers of the message, we can see it’s
   DomainKeys and DKIM signed, but then you have a header like:

   X-XPT-XSL-Name:
   email_pimp/default/en_AU/transaction/buyer/BuyerRefund.xsl

   Maybe they’re giving away a bit much information about how they feel
   about the emails they’re sending you

2. Invalid links. The top of the email contains a “Transaction Id:
   XXXXXXX” item, with the id itself being a hyperlink. Unfortunately
   the hyperlink is wrong, and has an href of:

   https:///cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_view-a-trans&id=XXXXXXX

   So clearly the hostname was accidentally left out.

3. Mixed case inline URL. The message contains a URL to their help
   page, but the URL isn’t a hyperlink, it’s just text, and they’ve
   marked up the URL in a very odd way. It looks like:

   Questions? Visit the Help Centre at:
   https://SECURE.UNINITIALIZED.REAL.PaYpAl.CoM/au/help

Put altogether, it’s a very odd email to receive, and took a moment and a closer check of the headers to believe it was legitimate.