PayPal Warning

For those of you who have PayPal accounts, it would pay you to check your transactions activity listings on a very regular basis, as well as your bank accounts.

I just happened to log onto my on-line bank on Monday and noticed immediately 2 large PayPal transactions had gone through that day, plus another one several days earlier, totalling about £400.

All transactions relate to purchases on the well known online auction site but our account on that site had not been compromised, or at least, no-one had used our account there to make the purchases

I have to say PayPal responded very quickly; I raised the unauthorised purchases with them immediately and within a few hours had an email back to the effect that they agreed and had refunded my money. This I could see on my PayPal account straight away although it was only today that I was able to transfer the money back into my account. Phew! So in that I cannot fault them but it shows that security there can be compromised.

We obviously changed our PayPal password and security questions/answers straight away, but what is bothering me is how someone was able to use our PayPal account in the first place to make these purchases.  Anyone with bright ideas on this please shout!

Unfortunately, PayPal is one of those sites where it is very difficult to actually talk to a human and ask the questions it would seem. Call by telephone and you just get recorded messages, try online chat and you just talk to a useless computer.

I for one will now be keeping a far more close a watch on my PayPal, Ebay and bank accounts in future!

Chris

Edited By ChrisH on 12/09/2019 14:52:08

Edited By ChrisH on 12/09/2019 14:53:34

Always pays to check your all your accounts on a regular basis.

WHY OH WHY are people afraid to say EBAY on this forum. Much quicker to type than "That well known auction site." Everybody here uses it probably so what is the problem with using the correct name. ?

Sorry for the rant but just one of my pet hates along with teh .

regards

That is very disturbing Chris, I must keep an eye on my own PayPal account. You would think it was impossible to do that and PayPal must know who the perpetrator is. I hope they take action against the fraudster, but perhaps that is expecting too much.

Doug

Oldiron I couldn’t agree more, quite happy to name PayPal by name but not Ebay.

[This posting has been removed]

A few years back i noticed a similar thing with my credit card and notified my bank , it turned out to be fraudulent and somehow through facebook which i have never used and never will.

The money was refunded by the bank ,that credit card cancelled and a new one issued ,.The teller asked me what i used my credit card for and i said to do my shopping and it was also linked to my paypal account -the teller explained to me that it was fraught with danger as you can have money withdrawn by fraudulent operators via things like paypal very easily .

They set up a debit account for me to use on paypal as it won’t pay money that isn’t in the account and if i know I’m going to make a purchase online i first transfer the required amount into that account and proceed .

I decided to check this one day and as they stated it wouldn’t let me transfer enough to overdraw the account - sorry funds unavailable was the message i got back when i tried .

Every time i use either paypal or my apple account i get bombarded by fraudulent emails saying my account has been locked or someone has accessed my account and please click on the link below to update your account details - seriously do they think I’m that stupid !

Very true, epay, the bay etc, its just silly. What is it with people...

Ian P

mind you, one of my hates is spaces before full stops

Of a similar nature I had a very realistic Smishing attempt yesterday (Smishing is phishing by phone SMS).
The SMS purported to be from EE (my phone provider) saying they were unable to process my last invoice payment and providing a WWW.EE.CO.UK.abc/xyz.com/account link (not that exactly) link.

The giveaways were the .co.uk and .com in the link and the fact that the origin was a full mobile telephone number. A genuine provider SMS would normally be rom a 4 digit number. And of course the common on that it did not have my name in it.

Reported it to EE and they confirmed it was fraud and that anumber of people had fallen for it.

I don't authorise PayPal to automatically debit my bank account. You have to let them to open a paypal account these days, but can, and I suggest you should, cancel this once the account is set up. You have to transfer funds manually but at least you have control. It's not just fraud, I know someone who sold a vluable item and took the paypal payment out and a couple of weeks later the buyer made a complaint, paypal then took the same amount out of his current accout to put "on hold" while they sorted it out. No warning whatsoever.

Well spotted. I slipped up on that one.

I have reached that age where I get a free TV licence(for now) and recently have received an EMail warning me that my licence is due that day and should be renewed before midnight or face a fine of £1000. This has happened a number of times.

I have an official letter from the TV people advising that a new licence is not required until next June. I ignore these EMails because they are a scam.

A similar dodge is when you look to renew the car or driving licence, the search engine will take you to a number of siites which charge a fee to submit the request to the DVLA. I believe a similar scam is operating for renewing a passport. They charge for a service which is free from the official site.

Oldiron, I quite agree with you about mentioning Ebay, I think I must have written that on automatic having read it that way so many times on here, but Ebay it was that they bought their goodies on and charged my PayPal account for it.

I quite like the the idea that you manually transfer. funds to PayPal before you make a purchase, didn't know you could do that, and also to set up a bank account dedicated for the PayPal account that will not pay out unless funds are available; however PayPal has a facility that allows a purchase to be made and paid for by PayPal, who then debit your account several days - 7 in this case - later, which is what happened here. That would need to be deactivated as in my case, the scumbag got their goods a week before PayPal got paid by me.

I can quite believe that you have fraudulent activity via PayPal and similar accounts, I just don't understand how. What is needed is an authorisation email or whatever before a payment is made, but I suppose the hackers would get past that too. All very worrying.

Bill, thanks for the "Agent" tip when calling PayPal, I will try that as I want to find out how to make my account more secure than it obviously is now.

Chris

Re scam emails, whenever I get an email purporting to be from PayPal, or whoever else, that seems even a tad suspect I always check the senders email address; It then quickly become obvious that the sender is not from wherever they say they are and I forward the email to scam@Paypal etc, or whoever else without opening it and then delete it straight away.

Chris

I agree Ian, went on PayPal last night I couldn't see a way either - PayPal seem to be light on actually giving useful information and instructions on how to work their system it seems to me.

Chris

On the Dutch PayPal site under the heading "Payments" (Betalingen) you can stop authorising Ebay to automatically debit your account. Niko.

Don't know how to turn it off, my account just gives option to turn it on. If all else fails ask them.

Robert G8RPI.

I just checked and I have this option too.

For anyone wanting to check it out, log in to Paypal, click the little gearwheel icon top right to go into settings, click Payments, look under eBay refunds and disputes. You can turn it on or off as you prefer.

I had 2 incidences where a company deducted an amount twice and when enquired i was told it was a mistake and will be corrected 3 days later my money was payed back, A thought crossed my that an acute cash flow problem can be quickly solved this way for the customers account.

Ahh Thank you for that, I have now stopped ebay from taking money from my paypal account automatically but I have not managed to stop paypal from automatically taking money from my bank.

Does anyone know how if I can add money to my paypal account so that it is there when needed, but stop paypal from taking money from my bank account?

In short, I can send money to paypal but they can not take it from anywhere.

Thanks,Ian

Ian, this looks to be a question of the funding source you have nominated. If you go into your Paypal account and make your default funding source a credit card instead of bank account, Paypal will then put charges on to your credit card rather than take payment directly from your bank account.