PayPal Account Hacked - £950 stolen from my bank account.

St8_2

Last Monday I logged on to my bank account to check my balance online. To my surprise I was heavily in my overdraft, so I checked my statement and there it was £950 payment paid via PayPal.

?!?!?!

This money was debited from my account two days previously.
So I logged straight on to PayPal. It seems PayPals anti-fraud system noticed the fraudulent activity and reversed the payment. I phoned up PayPal customer service to see what exactly was going on. There was no surprise in the tone of voice, or an apology. Am I the only one who thinks almost £1000 stolen from their account is a big problem? It must happen all the time at paypal.

I attempted to get some explanations by asking some questions:

Was my account actually hacked?
Is my account at risk again?
Should I have at least had an email telling me about what happened?

All I really got was something along the lines as

"sir, in my experience these types of activities results from someone obtaining account passwords"

Oh really? Well - I was glad I had spent over £5 on the phone call I waited 15mins on hold for to gain that bit of useful info.

I was not told, but I presumed I should change my password then?
Luckily I was within my overdraft, and now after about 7 days the money is back in my account. But it got me thinking.

Why on earth was I not told about this activity on my account? I found out 2 days later, I had no phone call or email. There was not even a flagged message or something similar when I logged into my account. As at the very least I need to change my password. I haven't used paypal for a while, so I don't check it while I’m not using it.

Also, what if I didn't have an overdraft and had only £10 in my bank? I would have been dealing with overdraft charges for 7 days. Sure, I could ask my bank to waive these charges, but will I be able to eat for the next 7 days?
Also I don’t know how I managed to be scammed. I have had a few paypal and ebay fraudulent emails. They are very obvious to me. I don’t even click links from genuine ebay and paypal emails. I go directly to their websites and log in from their to be 100% sure they are safe. I also don’t use the same passwords for other online account, though I do have variations of the same passwords.

Very strange but I am disappointed in the way PayPal dealt with it. I suppose I should be happen that they noticed straight away and reversed the payment though.

Rant over! :silenced:

:j

custardy

would you prefer they didnt reverse the payment?
seems pp saved you losing nearly 1k
perhaps you should be more proactive in preventing your passwords being obtained
use a secure password with numbers,letters(lower & upper case) and characters
dont click on email links and make sure your system is spyware/tojan free

St8_2

custardy wrote: »

would you prefer they didnt reverse the payment?
seems pp saved you losing nearly 1k
perhaps you should be more proactive in preventing your passwords being obtained
use a secure password with numbers,letters(lower & upper case) and characters
dont click on email links and make sure your system is spyware/tojan free

Well as I pointed out in the post, I am happy they reversed the payment. However, I am disappointed in how they handled it. i.e. They didn't tell me about my account being hacked. I'm sure you would appreciate the courtesy.

Also, as I pointed out, I am carefull with my passwords. I actually do use both upper and lower case letters with numbers. The particular password met all these criteria. So I would say I am "proactive" with my password prevention.

Again, as I pointed out, I do not click from scam emails (obviously), which stick out like a sore thumb. I do'nt even even click links in genuine emails. I go direct to the websites to access my accounts.

Don't people read posts before they reply anymore?

eyelinerprincess

Custardy is one of the life-savers on the ebay board and was only trying to help. You only mentioned changing your password, and that you use the same or variations of your password. The two ways he described are the classic ways to obtain passwords.
Have you scanned your computer recently? Another way to get passwords are viruses.

Blacksheep1979

If your password is as secure as you say (also over 8 chars) then it is very unlikely that the password has been brute forced and if they 'hacked' your account they would have done it to 10's of thousands of other people and it would be all over the news. The fact is that it's 99.99999999% going to have come from your end somewhere - you've used the same password elsewhere, you've got some malware on your pc, you've used another unsecure PC that's got malware etc.

Personally I'd scan your computer (what antivirus/spyware/firewall have you got?) and change all your more important passwords - email, forums, ebay and also any 'security questions' that you may use on these sites.

chuckley

St8 wrote: »

Very strange but I am disappointed in the way PayPal dealt with it. I suppose I should be happen that they noticed straight away and reversed the payment though.

Rant over! :silenced:

:j

if this is ur response to them REVERSING the payment... they shoulda just let it through and waited for u to come by whining... nice chunk a change for paypal

St8_2

Yes, you are correct, I certainly would have come by whining.

Thanks for everyones input. I was simply using this as space to vent my frustration and maybe get some stories from people who may have had a similar experience. Wondering if anyone else has had unauthorised payments as large as this and was not told about it really.

Yep, I agree it probably is some malware as I say my password is and was very secure (longer than 8 chars also). I also use a wireless connection so I will be looking into my firewall and anti-virus software to see if I can find a the culprit.

Thanks to all who listened to me whining...ahhhhh

Mike54_2

who in they're right mind keeps more then £50 (free withdrawal) in their paypal account..

custardy

Mike54 wrote: »

who in they're right mind keeps more then £50 (free withdrawal) in their paypal account..

if you gain access to the pp account you can withdraw via the funding method by sending a payment to another pp account

St8_2

Mike54 wrote: »

who in they're right mind keeps more then £50 (free withdrawal) in their paypal account..

Pretty much all paypal accounts are linked to the owners bank account so withdrawals and deposits can be made. This also means payments can be made for amounts greater than what is in your paypal account, as the access money is directly withdrawn from the bank account.

I actually had less than £10 in my pp account, so the rest of the money was withdrawn from my bank.

Mike54_2

St8 wrote: »

Pretty much all paypal accounts are linked to the owners bank account so withdrawals and deposits can be made. This also means payments can be made for amounts greater than what is in your paypal account, as the access money is directly withdrawn from the bank account.

I actually had less than £10 in my pp account, so the rest of the money was withdrawn from my bank.

yeah didnt think that one threw actually, silly me :rolleyes: