"PAYPAL do not use EVER" Topic

For the secound time my Paypal account has been hacked. First one was about 9 years ago. I deleted my account and boycotted any business that only took them. A year ago I gave in and opened a paypal account. Once again it has been hacked and my credit card info stolen. Thank god for Americian Express!!! I advise everyone with a paypal account to close their accounts or to take their credit card info off. As for any manufacturers that only take paypal kiss ALL of my business good bye. If you refuse to take credit cards I refuse to ever buy your products again even in a brick and mortar store

I will continue to use PP and I've been lucky enough to not have had something like this happen, but your experience is worrisome and leaves me uneasy. Presumably you found out about the stolen CC info when you got you bill?
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Tim

In the six years that I have been using PayPal I have never had a single problem. Conversely I have had my credit card cloned in shops on two occassions, but I am not going to stop using credit cards.

I can understand you wanting to avoid them if your experience has been bad, but I've never had any trouble with PayPal – I have been a victim of fraud and ID theft by other means though. I'll keep using PayPal; I believe they are as safe as any other type of transaction.

As a small business, PayPal is an invaluable way of getting payments in from around the world. There will always be a few who won't use it, but the majority do.

Never had a problem. Sorry to hear your bad luck. What are you paying for that you get hacked so much?

How do you know the theft occurred via PayPal? Did they admit that a loss of data had occurred?

I've never had a problem with Paypal over the years. In fact, they recently helped me settle a dispute with a seller who hadn't sent my merchandise and wasn't responding to emails.

Sorry to hear about your problems though.

I've had great luck with them as well. I certainly won't stop using such a convenient service just on the say so of one unlucky guy. I wish you luck in your future purchases, though, no matter how you pay for them.

Never had a problem,

Tally Ho!

Interesting – I've just had my credit cards hacked by an overseas (UK) source and hadn't thought of Paypal as the source, but it fits with the sequence of my on-line ordering etc recently. That is, unless Amazon has been hacked in similar fashion. :-(

It was Paypal that notified me when there was a problem, and they fixed it very quickly. I was satisfied.

I've been using PayPal for what must be going on 6-7 years and no problems.

I have had cards cloned/ripped at restaurants twice but that seems to be the price of convenience in modern society.

No problem here, suits me just fine..

First time paypal told me, secound time the ax one the account wasn't used for anything other than paypal. I kept it locked in my safe at my house.

I've had no problems w/ PayPal. Works well enough.

Scares me a little however I will keep using it for now……..

I've used PayPal since almost the absolute beginning. I feel safer using them then giving lots of companies my card number. I've even avoided sellers who don't take PP.

My wife had her identity stolen and has never used Paypal. I've been using Paypal since it began and have never had an issue with security. Are you sure it's not the credit card company that's the problem? Are you getting suckered in by phishing scams?

Phishing scams are getting more and more common.

Recently, I've been the recipient of two phishing emails supposedly from Paypal asking me to verify my details.

I have been fortunate enough to have been able to use Paypal over the past six years with no problems. Have had a warning from the CC company while I was o/seas as the last location I had used my CC experienced a raft of scanning and ID theft.

Never had a problem with Paypal. Sorry you've had such trouble.

I use PayPal all the time. I do move my money to a bank account every 30 days or when it exceeds $500.00. No need to tempt fate. The transfer doesn't cost a thing and then you are FDIC insured.

I have a special/separate account for PayPal transactions.

If you are too lazy to do this, and you don't insure your account, don't go blaming someone for your lack of foresight.

mjc

I've used paypal for years as well. In fact, my bank (Bank of America) has lost my account details far more often than Paypal ever has (last tme was just last month, when my CC stopped working; BoA shut it down as soon as they discovered a security leak, and re-issued me a new one!)

Damon.

You definitely have to be careful when you send out anything with personal information. With PayPal, as others have said, I've used for several years now and no issues as mentioned.

As mentioned already, I also have an independent account I use solely for PayPal as a just in case like this. When I'm ready to make a purchase I transfer cash in and pay out my bill.

Someone also mentioned Phishing scams. I get a PayPal one about every 6 six months and report it to PayPal Security.

Never had a problem with it as either a buyer or a seller. It has always worked fine. That being said, I have it linked only to a secondary bank account at a different bank than I use for my personal stuff. That would limit the damage any hacker could do. But so far I've not had a problem with Pay Pal

Ok. A lot of success stories and well widhers here. Being a security guy I will be the fly in the ointment. Given the positive feedback about PayPal, did you ever consider that it was something that YOU were doing to get the account hacked?

Hackers don't just magically hack in from the outside. Some ways they attack an account are:

1) Key loggers. Your system was infected by a key logger that recorded your key strokes. Once a paypal account has been hacked, it is relatively low hanging fruit.

2) Insecure sites. If you visited a site that has been comprimised, your information can be extracted and sent to whomever hacked the site in question. We all run this risk whether we use PayPal or a credit card.

3) Brute Force. Someone could simply have guessed your password. Passwords based on dictionary words are usually easily hacked if someone has the means.

Lets face it, if somehow PayPal was comprimised, it would be all over the news right now. If I were you, I'd go back and see where I went with my account. I'd also be updating my Anti-Virus software if I were you and run a full scan of the system(s) I was using. I'd also change all of my passwords. I'd also cancel the credit card that was used.

BTW, was the paypal account used or was the credit card used? You should be able to see the activity including logon activity. Occasionally, you get an insider that takes card numbers and uses them for a charge or two.

While what you say could be true, I still say the jury is out and you had better get your sensitive information secured.

What you really need to do now is find out how this happened. Usually when such info is "hacked" it is the fault of the user because there were lax in their security. They did not keep such protections up to date. They fell for a phishing scam email. They were careless about security is the biggest. For example, people who have wireless devices, such as routers, but do not have their network atleast passworded. surprising, on a daily basis, how many people came into work and i asked if their wireless network was protected and they had no idea what i was talking about. Hotwire hubs, like coffee shops, are another nightmare of security loss as well. I advise you step back, take a deep breath and look around. You might then be able to see the chink in your armor. :-)

Grimm

I would hate to think what I would do if I didnt have paypal. I hate ebay politics but its really the only way to go if you want to sell on ebay or buy from alot of great dealers who only take paypal. What about that dealer you arent too sure about, well theres paypal, he doesnt get any of your info.

Uh, no. I'll continue to use it because I have no other course and please dont suggest some POS fly by night paypal rip off because they wont last and when they go, your money goeth with them.

Wise words Acarhj – my money's on a key-logger….

Tens of thousands of dollars have flowed through my Paypal account over many years. Never an issue with Paypal except in the early years they were hard to get support from if you had a question but they fixed that a few years ago.

Thanks acarhj – I do all the security stuff you talk about, but there's always a chink somewhere. And I've already replaced the cards concerned. :-)

You might have to use a more secure approach. an anti virus and firewall is not enough. Run scans at least once a week, if not everyday. i use two systems Windows defender and a commercial. Surprisingly sometimes defender find trojans before my commercial antivirus.
if your passwords are to simple they are a risk too.
Email and Paypal passwords must be different, in fact it is good to have different passwords for all your sites.
Either write them down at home or use a memnonic system.
the longer the password the better.
I used to use phrases like this or shorter if system does allow it as passwords :*u$terlitzb*ttle2december1805
i replace A by * and S by $

I have moved thousands of dollars through PayPal over the years, and have had no issues. In fact, they got money back from a fraudulent vendor where my bank failed to on a separate transaction.

I agree with everyone above who says you need to check your personal security settings. Also, you could just be unlucky. Sorry to say it, but it happens.

Best of luck sorting this out.

Acrhj has it right.

paypal as a system is no more or less flawed than any other system into which you eneter personal or credit card information.

i've had much more toruble with loss of identity having given my acrd to real live human beings in stores!

cestmoi has the most likely reason. Also make sure the password contains lower case, upper case, numbers, special characters, and is at an absolute minimum of 8 characters in length (longer than that is even better, 12+). The length is the most important though. Each additional character is an order of magnitude harder to crack.

Wise words acarhj

another good idea is to use different passwords for different systems

don't be lazy and use the same username and password combo for everything as you are asking for trouble

Mike

I have never had a problem with Paypal and if if wasn't for Paypal, I would never buy anything from overseas.

You seem to be implying that paypals own system was hacked.
It is far more likley your own PC was hacked, either via a virus or malware or a rootkit intrusion.

Also, you didn't happen to keep your paypal account setup details in the confirmation email paypal sent to you in something like hotmail or yahoo or gmail etc. something free and with a far simpler password maybe than your paypal pass word..

I use paypal for my own small business and my personal purchases. The only reasons I don't think its a "great" service is the costs and the lack of decent support and help functions. As a tool it works well.

Password security is like any other chain, only as good as the weakest list.

As Papyal use 128bit encrypted servers I suspect the weak link is likley to be your own pc and information. Malware, rootkits and keyloggers etc are getting far more sophisticated.

A good password is a good first step, but if the password can be recorded whole because its written in an email or an logged as you type it on your pc, it might as well not exist. People happily spend hundreds of pounds on a fancy PC but then skimp on good antivirus and malware software.

Superantivirus and Malwarebytes are good and free! Nothing is 100% but something is better than nothing.

I rather like paypal. I went to a website I get art materials from every couple of years. Because they take paypal, I was able to use paypal rather than creating yet another authentication to remember.
My paypal is linked to a tiny local bank account I keep, just for writing checks to people I don't know. I don't even want to let people have my account nr.

MI98C10

---As for any manufacturers that only take paypal kiss ALL of my business good bye. If you refuse to take credit cards I refuse to ever buy your products again even in a brick and mortar store---

My website fernvalescenics.com only takes paypal, though if someone contacts me to work out another payment method, I'll work with that.

But MI98C10, I don't think I'll worry about loss of YOUR business, as it has been zero so far.

So, kiss, kiss, kiss!

I've never ( touch wood) had any issues with paypal, but don't get me started on 'modified' cash machines.

Never had any problems with PayPal at all and I have to admit it has been more than useful over the years. Extremely convenient.