Well, I've received a lot of those "please update your PayPal (or ebay) account" scams but I just received a new variation that plays on greed. It purports to be a message from PayPal notifying you that someone has payed you money for an ebay auction ($222 in the case of the one I received). It contains a link for you to "check the details of the transaction" and that link will take you to the typical "confirm your credit card data" form.
It's implied that after "PayPal" confirms your data you'll get $222 that was meant for someone else. I guess one could say that anyone who falls for this deserves whatever they get, but I know how greedy you folks are so I thought I'd better warn you
John
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The Internet is wonderful. Surely there have always been thousands of people deeply concerned about my sex life and the quality of my septic tank but before the Internet I never heard from any of them.
Three weeks ago $1400 was stolen from my Paypal account by hackers. I hadn't used Paypal in more than a year, and I never, ever clikc on these faked links or respond to fraudulent e-mails. Be careful out there.
Chris
Is there any recourse after something like that happens? Does PayPal take any responsibility for their own security?
I use PayPal every day, usually for fairly trivial amounts of money that I don't leave in PayPal more than a day or two, have never had a problem. However, I want to know as much as possible about what can go wrong and how to protect myself if something happens.
it was bad enough giving so much info to become an Ebay Seller but I balked at registering with PayPal and am glad about it. I still worry about how much data Ebay has.
Well, honestly I don't think I will ever use PayPal again.
The theft appears to have taken place a month before I noticed it. I noticed when I received my credit card statement and all the money was missing. I logged into my PayPal account to see what the heck was going on, since I hadn't used it in a year or so, and found that there had been lots of activity. The strangest thing was that PayPal apparently noticed my account was being robbed and e-mailed the people who had robbed me, requesting them to return the money!! Of course, the money was not returned. The worst part of all of it is that although these theives had full access to my account, though they'd stolen over a thousand dollars from me, though they'd altered my account information PayPal never informed me of anything! They didn't e-mail to let me know I had been robbed. They didn't close down the account and even let the fraud continue to occur after they had noticed it. They didn't follow up on the fraud they had noticed and made a half-assed attempt to remedy. Nothing! If I hadn't noticed that $1400 easily could have slipped into oblivion. PayPay was, to put it midly, grossly negligent and totally irresponsible.
Fortunately, I was able to contact my dad who is in the US (I am in Costa Rica) and he was able to get them on the phone and start to sort things out. They finally refunded the money, but it was not a fun process. I'm waiting to see my credit-card statement to see whether they really did what they said they'd do.
I'd like to be able to use PayPal, as I don't know of any similar option, but my experience with them made me so angry and so skeptical of how they run things that I don't think I'll ever use their services again.
Chris, there are other services available out there. I don't know if they can assure you of any better security or service though.
I do not purposely leave more money in Paypal than I need to. I flush the account within days of transactions, like Jerry does. I also send money through them with my Credit Card and that does give me a degree of security for things I am purchasing.
Steven - IDAwHOa - Wood Rocks
"If you keep asking questions.... You keep getting answers." - Miss Frizzle - The Magic School Bus
this whole business gives me the willies. I had my credit card co-opted a couple years ago--luckily I have a good bank, and they called me.
I recently, for just this reason, went and made all my passwords strange and different. So, NorCal, are you saying that only using paypal as a vehicle for payments from existing bank accounts is safer than having money banked with them?
(they really need to address this problem if they want to retain credibility)
I get these emails claiming to to be Paypal and they look very much like the real thing. Never ever use an email link to sign into anything.
When I get them, I hover to the link to see their IP address and then I go to the ARIN.net registry to see where they are. I then email copies of the message including the IP address and message headers to the Secret Service. I also email copies of the message to the authorities in the country it originated from if there is a place to mail to.
emmline wrote:this whole business gives me the willies. I had my credit card co-opted a couple years ago--luckily I have a good bank, and they called me.
I recently, for just this reason, went and made all my passwords strange and different. So, NorCal, are you saying that only using paypal as a vehicle for payments from existing bank accounts is safer than having money banked with them?
(they really need to address this problem if they want to retain credibility)
I do not know for sure if it is safer or not. I believe that if there is no money there to steal that it would most likely make the account less tempting to mess with.
I still have to store the information that paypal needs to operate on their site. As long as I don't get stupid and click one of those email links, I think it is fairly safe. Hard to say any more though.
Anyone taking bets that at least some of the rip offs are from inside these "money moving" entities?
Steven - IDAwHOa - Wood Rocks
"If you keep asking questions.... You keep getting answers." - Miss Frizzle - The Magic School Bus
NorCalMusician wrote:
Anyone taking bets that at least some of the rip offs are from inside these "money moving" entities?
First, we'd have to establish that some employees cheat. Husband Jeff is a hardware store owner. Guess what? Some employees are thieves. Not a stretch to suppose people of similar character are also hired by Paypal, et al.
I remember that a couple of years ago "Law and Order" or one of the similar shows did a show where a mail-order company was using prison inmates to process credit card phone orders. I figured it was just bad fiction 'cause noboby would really be that stupid.
A couple of weeks ago one of the news shows did an article on just that topic, it seems that some mail-order outfits really are that stupid/careless/venal.
These are just a few of the reasons I absolutely refuse to have one of those debit cards - they don't offer any of the protection of credit cards. About a year ago my bank sent me a debit card free. I cut it up. A couple of months ago my five-year-old ATM had finally sacrificed too much of it's magnetic strip to the friction gods so I went into the bank for a new one. The gal tried and tried to get me to take a debit card instead ("oh, it'll do everything your atm card will do and more.") I told her when she could show me in writing where they offered the same fraud protection as a credit card then I'd take the debit card. You should have seen her face, it looked like she'd just eaten a whole tree full of lemons. I guess they don't get very many informed customers...
I also keep a small savings account separate from my checking account. All of my affiliate and PayPal transactions go to the savings account and I leave in it only the bare minimum required to keep the account open.
John
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The Internet is wonderful. Surely there have always been thousands of people deeply concerned about my sex life and the quality of my septic tank but before the Internet I never heard from any of them.
Thanks for the wonderful idea, a separate savings account just for PayPal. I could never give PayPal the account numbers to my regular checking and savings accounts. (I even had second thoughts about giving the IRS my account number for the direct deposit of my tax return!)
Thanks for the wonderful idea, a separate savings account just for PayPal. I could never give PayPal the account numbers to my regular checking and savings accounts. (I even had second thoughts about giving the IRS my account number for the direct deposit of my tax return!)
