PayPal, providing on-line services, is a respected and established company now owned by eBay. So it was disconcerting to find this lovely item in my in-box.

It has come to our attention that your account information needs to be updated due to inactive accounts, frauds and spoof reports. If you could please take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and renew your records you will not run into any future problems with the online service. However, failure to update your records will result in account deletation.

Just as in another thread where aput found 260 hits for "recallection," I found 338 for "deletation." It can't be all bad!

Just in case anyone else gets this sort of e-mail, it is an obvious case of "phishing".

Delete the message (or even deletate it if you are so moved), but don't do what they ask. It is a scam, pure and simple. No company would ask you to do what is asked in these messages. One of the easiest ways to spot these scams is because the authors (presumably because English is not their first language) seem unable to spell.

"Deletation," a sure sign of spam,
Marks a thoroughly odious scam.
Their drive is ferocious,
Their English atrocious.
Let's refuse them, whatever they am.


(But, I'm getting ahead of myself...)

After posting that this sort of message is a scam, I got the following in my inbox today:

quote:

---

Dear Customer

We regret to inform you that the credit/debit card details we hold for you have now expired. In order to ensure that your service is not effected [sic], we need to update our details with your latest expiry date. You can visit the 'My Account' administration area at xxxxxx and securely update your details or call our customer services team on xxxx xxx xxxx, between 9am and 6pm on weekdays, who will be able to arrange this for you. We accept Visa, Delta or MasterCard payments.

Thanking you in advance for your co-operation.

---

I almost deleted it but I recognised that it is, in fact, from my Web hosting company, despite the clumsy phrasing and spelling error.

I sent them the following reply:

quote:

---

This is a nonsense. My card has not yet expired. It does not expire until the end of May. Your details have therefore not expired, either. However, I went to the site you quote and attempted to update my card details with those of the new card, which becomes valid from June. Can you guess what happened?

I suggest you re-send this message in June.

---

"What happened" was that the form refused to accepted my card details, saying it was not yet valid.

I did think about saying more about their message's faults, but decided enough was enough.

"expiry?" Was that another of their errors, or is that a new coinage?

quote:

---

Originally posted by Kalleh:
"expiry?" Was that another of their errors, or is that a new coinage?

---

This "new coinage" has two definitions in the OED Online:

1. Dying, death; = EXPIRATION 4. Also fig. of an immaterial thing: Destruction, extinction. rare.
The first quote supporting this is c. 1790.

2. Close, termination, end; = EXPIRATION 5. a. of a period of time.
First quote is from 1752.

b. of anything that lasts a certain time, as a contract, truce, etc. expiry of the legal (see quot. 1861).
First quote is from 1807.

You can also find expiry on OneLook.

Tinman

This message has been edited. Last edited by: tinman,

Leaving aside the matter of whether my card had or hadn't expired, their records certainly hadn't "expired". They could well have become out of date, but that's different.