Scam - Remote access of Laptop

masonic

If it's Paypal, funded from his bank account (so called instant bank transfer), it will be collected by direct debit a few days after the payment was made. There would still be time to cancel the direct debit, which would cause the payment to fail over to his primary card attached to his Paypal account. This may give him additional options, such as Section 75 or chargeback.

If the transaction has already debited his bank account, you would see if it was indeed from Paypal, and whether it was a card payment or direct debit.

Having said that I'd be surprised if scammers would accept Paypal payments.

Tildaplum

The most popular way to use PayPal is to link your debit card to PayPal - you then instruct Paypal to make a payment and PayPal take it from the debit card (which would hit your bank account fairly quickly)

 your father should rely on the PayPal guarantee and instruct Paypal to get the money back which - if it was a scam - should be fairly straight-forward

however scammers do not generally use PayPal for obvious reasons i.e. the PayPal guarantee means the money will be pulled back pretty quickly

Ballard

I watched one of the YouTube videos as mentioned earlier in this thread and they accepted PayPal in that example so it wouldn’t be a surprise if they did this one too. 

I will speak to my father about getting the direct debit cancelled if that’s the way he needs to go. 

Thanks for your help folks. 

Shakin_Steve

masonic said:

If it's Paypal, funded from his bank account (so called instant bank transfer), it will be collected by direct debit a few days after the payment was made. There would still be time to cancel the direct debit, which would cause the payment to fail over to his primary card attached to his Paypal account. This may give him additional options, such as Section 75 or chargeback.

If the transaction has already debited his bank account, you would see if it was indeed from Paypal, and whether it was a card payment or direct debit.

Having said that I'd be surprised if scammers would accept Paypal payments.

The scammer who was featured on Panorama this week, featuring cctv footage of the scam centre provided by Jim Browning, did, indeed, accept PayPal. Panorama got hold of his PayPal account details and there were thousands of pounds being deposited every week.
Did you not watch it?

callum9999

Tildaplum said:

The IT guys sound as if they will know what to do, but the best way is to re-install the operating system as you really don't know what they put on the laptop, ie:

copy off your data 
format hard drive - reinstall Windows (IOS, Linux whatever) - reinstall apps
copy back data

How did he pay the £250?

If you're worried enough to reformat the hard drive, is it really logical to copy files across?

masonic

Shakin_Steve said:

masonic said:

If it's Paypal, funded from his bank account (so called instant bank transfer), it will be collected by direct debit a few days after the payment was made. There would still be time to cancel the direct debit, which would cause the payment to fail over to his primary card attached to his Paypal account. This may give him additional options, such as Section 75 or chargeback.

If the transaction has already debited his bank account, you would see if it was indeed from Paypal, and whether it was a card payment or direct debit.

Having said that I'd be surprised if scammers would accept Paypal payments.

The scammer who was featured on Panorama this week, featuring cctv footage of the scam centre provided by Jim Browning, did, indeed, accept PayPal. Panorama got hold of his PayPal account details and there were thousands of pounds being deposited every week.
Did you not watch it?

No I didn't watch the Panorama programme and was unaware it was on the topic of scammers.

The reason I'm surprised that scammers would use Paypal is that payments funded by credit or debit card (which will be most of them) usually have a delay between when they are made and when they can be withdrawn. Once Paypal starts to receive complaints about a scammer's Paypal account, they will freeze it and the funds trapped within it will be lost by the scammer.

In all recent interactions I've had with scammers, they've wanted gift card codes or the use of some obscure payment service that presumably cannot be frozen or recalled.

gsmh

PayPal is very convenient but it is also very difficult to contact them and enlist their help. You have to file a dispute and there are a limited number of categories you can select. I recently had a problem with an eBay purchase and chose the closest category to my issue and it was rejected because the actual issue wasn't exactly what I had reported. I don't expect a 'bank' to call me out on a technicality when the problem was of their making. I called them and was given a number to contact - it turned out to be Citizens' Advice. The insisted all I would need to do is give CA the order reference and it would be sorted. The person I spoke to at CA was somewhat bemused as to why PayPal thought they could sort out the problem. As a result I will use PayPal only when there is no alternative. Contacting a bank is much better.

Tildaplum

yes data files eg .txt .jpg .mp4 are fine to copy back after formatting

born_again

masonic said:

The reason I'm surprised that scammers would use Paypal is that payments funded by credit or debit card (which will be most of them) usually have a delay between when they are made and when they can be withdrawn. Once Paypal starts to receive complaints about a scammer's Paypal account, they will freeze it and the funds trapped within it will be lost by the scammer.

And just how many people realise they have been scammed? Not many. Even then it's usually a good few days before they realise.

masonic

born_again said:

masonic said:

The reason I'm surprised that scammers would use Paypal is that payments funded by credit or debit card (which will be most of them) usually have a delay between when they are made and when they can be withdrawn. Once Paypal starts to receive complaints about a scammer's Paypal account, they will freeze it and the funds trapped within it will be lost by the scammer.

And just how many people realise they have been scammed? Not many. Even then it's usually a good few days before they realise.

Perhaps they quickly rotate through Paypal accounts and hope nobody realises they've been scammed too quickly.

I suppose it is a more legitimate payment method than having someone go out to the supermarket and buy an Amazon gift card.