Not necessarily a scam. If you use paypal even a moderate amount, sooner or later you're going to run up against their limit (I think it's 2000 dollars) that you can transact without linking and verifying your account.
If you've never done that you'll need to do it once. Many people do it when they first set up the account.
Like others have said - don't go there from a link in an email, log in to your account on paypal directly.
Here's a video series from paypal that explains the entire process:
https://personal.paypal.com/us/cgi-b.../Account_SetUp