I want to renew my star membership but the only way is with PayPal!

[usonian]

4. You are right to QUESTION EVERYTHING!

Many scams come disguised as PP. So do ones claiming to be LinkedIn, Docusign and Yahoo, which were hacked for email addresses and old passwords (which you all changed!!!). Also all the popular sites, but they were not hacked. The scammers are just shotgunning. Like, from places where I have no account, and never did, unlike those 3 above that I dropped for very good reason.

I couldn't say how to distinguish a PP real email from a scam other than looking at the reply/sender email address in full, if you're mail app lets you. More likely on desktop than mobile, where we're treated like dummies.

Hovering or holding down your finger/mouse might reveal the real address rather than the spoofed one. Hope so.

I can say more if you have a desktop email app, namely "show full headers " and "show message source" but that's detailed and I should find a well-written reference and send the link to it.