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davidcyclebackAgree Jay. First entering a bogus password is a good test for any site that has your financial information (paypal, eBay, online banking, etc). If the site says your password is not valid and you should try again, that's a good sign. A bogus site doesn't know your real password or user name (which is why they want you to enter it) and won't know and tell you that it's incorrect.
It's best to manually type into the web browser a financial site's address (www.nebraskabank.com) instead of following a link, especially in an email. An exception is eBay/PayPal as eBay owns PayPal. If you are at eBay and are logged in and are going to pay for winnings, eBay will switch you to PayPal. As, when paying this way, PayPal will list your full name, mailing address and the specific items you won (personal stuff bogus sites won't give you), you can be confident you are at the genuine site. Again, it is still a good thing to take the five seconds to first type in a bogus PayPal password to double check.
There is never a rush to address the emails that your account will be held. If your eBay or PayPal or whatever account is really lapsed because your credit card expired last month, these sites will always give you ample time to rectify it. This means if you get an email saying your information is wrong or they're going to hold your account, you don't have to address it is 10 minutues or your account will explode. You can take 24 or 48 hours to look into and ask around to make sure it's a legitimate situation.
If you think or worry or have a bad dream or your dog tells you that your account has been exploited, manually go to the site and change your password and/or user name. Changing the password regularly is a good thing to do anyway. The basic idea here is that if someone has your password and you don't even know about it, you changing the password invalidates the password he has. It's like cancelling a lost credit card. It doesn't matter if a thief has the credit card, because it doesn't work anmore.
Not unlike T206 Honus Wagners on eBay, I regularly see lots of fake PayPal emails, but have yet to receive a real PayPal email that asks me to change or re-enter my user information. There's a good chance the real PayPal has never sent such an email to anyone ever.