PayPal is a widely used financial service that allows people from all over the world to transfer money to other PayPal users by simply specifying an email address the money should be send to. It has become even more popular in recent years with the eBay tie-in which practically made PayPal the preferred payment method for many eBay users. A financial service that popular is a priority target for worms, phishing attacks, trojans and other kinds of attacks that try to steal PayPal login information in order to transfer money from the PayPal account to another one.
PayPal recently began to sell a so called PayPal Security Key to protect PayPal users from phishing attacks. The system works by protecting the login to the account not only with a username and password but also a security key that is generated on the fly on an external device. Attackers who are able to steal PayPal login information would need physical access to the security key to be able to log into the account at a later time.
It is not a 100% perfect solution as attackers are still able to circumvent the security key if they have additional information related to the PayPal user’s account. It still is a viable protection in most cases. PayPal is hosting a security center on their website that is informing and educating users about security risks and how to reduce them and prevent attacks.
Probably the best way of fighting most attacks and all phishing attacks is to always open the PayPal website directly instead of clicking on links that are supposed to lead there. Another security method is to use a password manager to store the PayPal login information. Many password managers, such as Last Pass, can fill out the login form and log in the user automatically in configured accounts. This can be a very effective method of detecting fake websites as the password manager will not fill out the login information automatically on these websites.
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Regarding using the password managers, I use Sticky Password and it also works with Paypal and very well.
http://www.stickypassword.com