<p>I just want to thank you all for this thread. I run a small non-profit and we take on-line payments. In the course of a change, we have to switch to a PayPal account linked to a bank account. Because of all the discussion on this thread, I just opened a new bank account solely for the purpose of linking it to PayPal. I probably wouldn’t have done it otherwise.</p>
<p>Thank you for those who responded re my particular question. There are a lot of older, non-tech-savvy people in the non-profit I’m describing. Some of them mistrust/don’t understand the very concept of PayPal. Others (rightfully imo) embrace the advantages it offers us. So… if I bring up this type of issue and/or suggest the need for a separate bank account, it may rekindle the internal politics/dispute about whether to have PayPal at all.</p>
<p>I like hearing opinions from two of you that the risks are fairly minimal. So I think rather than bringing up at a Board meeting, I will discuss privately with the Board Pres (one who is an advocate for using PayPal) and see if she thinks it is worth having a separate bank account linked to PayPal).</p>
<p>Thanks again.</p>
<p>I agree all around regarding risks. My issue is still ongoing with pay pal. I now received an email that the funds cantle put back IN my bank account because of the limitations they placed. So to summarize I understand the risks and I am not stupid or technologically ignorant. I pay my bills online thank you captain obvious and I understand that my routing and account numbers are on my check. What I object to is that a week and four people later I am still struggling to resolve this and the process is a ridiculous waste of my time.</p>
<p>I don’t blame you one bit. Very poor customer service.</p>
<p>We’re having an unrelated but quite annoying problem with PayPal right now (the non-profit theater). We need to regularly view our transaction history for a variety of reasons (customer says they paid for tickets but we have no record of it; need to separate our accounting of donations vs. memberships vs. ticket purchase etc). I would say that 95% or more of the time we get the message “History search is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.”</p>
<p>From googline online, it seems this is a long-standing and widespread problem and people report never getting responses to trouble reports and never getting through to a “real person” by phone. I’ve gone through the motions of using their email query system with my problem. No response yet, but it hasn’t been 24 hours.</p>
<p>Still, poor customer support yet again.</p>
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<p>It took me a lot longer than a week and much more effort to get my money back 23 years ago when my personal check was altered with the extra 0’s. And you don’t even want to know the hoops I had to jump through with FedEx to shut down an account when some company in Iowa (probably because of an innocent transposition of numbers) kept sending out shipments billed to my account. </p>
<p>I am NOT trying to defend PayPal. I’m just point out that fraud can happen in a number of different ways. I have a family member who is currently dealing with an identity theft issue; it’s a mess – and no PayPal involvement at all. These things take time to sort out. </p>
<p>It is HELPFUL to raise a security concern and we all are thankful that you have done so. It is an excellent reminder that PayPal should never be tied to an account with a larger balance than is needed to handle typical and frequent PayPal transactions. </p>
<p>I also think the PayPal thing is different than merely having a bank check & routing number, because there is some sort of internal approval mechanism going on with the bank to set it up in the first place. </p>
<p>On the other hand – you really have not given enough info to those of use who are more technically/security minded to figure out what happened in your case. Someone from Germany put money into your account without permission – ok, makes sense, anyone can send TO a PayPal email address. But then it gets murky – they made unauthorized payments FROM your account as well. How did they gain access to the PayPal account to be directing money <em>from</em> it? If they were able to gain access to your account to make that transaction, why bother depositing money into it in the first place? Or are you saying that they first hacked into your PayPal account, then deposited money to your bank account (perhaps to verify the bank/paypal link), and THEN made payments from PayPal requiring a withdrawal from your bank account? </p>
<p>I think PayPal should have better security, including improved options to require verification of bank withdrawals and make it trickier to log into accounts, at least at the customer’s option. </p>
<p>But your account of what happened in your case is also murky. We still don’t know if there is some new internet scam afoot that we need to be wary of, and who managed to gain access to your account when, & how they did it. Maybe you don’t know either, but your posts seem to be saying that it’s all too complicated for you to bother to explain. </p>
<p>If you don’t know, that’s understandable. And certainly your frustration is understandable. But if there is some piece of the scam/fraud puzzle that you have left out – it would help others to know exactly what happened. And it could be that the murkiness of it all is what is bogging down the fraud investigation process at PayPal as well – assuming that you are an innocent victim of a fraud scheme that is more sophisticated than the typical phishing problems they are used to seeing. I mean… they might need to have their tech people do a lot of detective work to figure out how this character actually gained access.</p>
<p>It is murky and I don’t know. The purchase was supposedly for some kind of online facebook game that I didn’t even know existed. The merchant is zyinga which apparently sells virtual chips for this game. I honestly am not sure if it was connected to the deposit from Germany or not. I think ? That you can also buy these virtual chips and resell
them but I don’t understand it all. That is what is taking pay pal longer. They were trying to trace virtual product. What I object to is that their system seems broken. While they are investigating and agree it is fraud their own limitations prevent them from returning my money?
Huh?</p>
<p>I’m wondering if the breach could be through facebook or one of those facebook apps – you know the kind where someone posts on your wall with a link to some sort of quiz or game, and then when you click the link, it comes up with a notice that you are agreeing to let the application see your personal info? I always click “cancel” and the delete the post with the link from my wall – but I’ve always wondered what sort of personal info they then have access to.</p>
<p>Makes sense but I never click on those links. I don’t play any online or fb online games. I hate the fb quizzes and try to defriend people who play them. I don’t care how many sheep someone has on their fb game or what Disney princess they are.</p>
<p>Me too, I only use facebook to post the latest pictures of my grandson.</p>
<p>There was a thread earlier this year where the OP was shocked to find her hotel review on Trip Advisor had somehow become linked to her FB acct.</p>
<p>Yup everything on yelp and TA and lots of other sites now wants to link to your fb. I always say NO.</p>
<p>jmmom,</p>
<p>I think it’s really an issue of prudence. On a personal level, it’s the same reason a debit card is more dangerous than a credit card. 99% of people will never have an issue, but if you have a choice, why open yourself to the potential danger? Fortunately, I don’t need anyone’s permission to open a separate bank account, and there are many other reasons for my nonprofit making the change, including the fact that it allows us to accept more forms of payment than just Visa/MC that we were accepting, the transaction stays on our site (thus eliminating the possibility of payments being registered for which we have no order because the customer doesn’t return to store from the offsite payment site–happens 3-4 times/month), and it removes the biggest bane of my existence–reconciling monthly bank statements. We have an online store with one account, an application process with another, and an in-office credit card machine. All of these payments appear on our statement in exactly the same way with the same coding, so I have to sort through the various amounts in order to tell where they came from. It takes forever, esp. if there’s mistake somewhere. </p>
<p>I do have yet to get it to work. That’s my Monday task, so I’ll let you know if it works.</p>
<p>When I started Paypal, I opened up another, free, checking acct, so it would be easy to keep track of Paypal $, expenses on Ebay, and not linked up to my regular checking acct… I keep very little money in it. I really use it for Paypal only. </p>
<p>Ebeee, let us know when this matter is resolved.</p>
<p>Update. More than ten days four supervisors and hours on the phone later I finally have my money back and my pay pal account closed. Shortly after posted this my father sent me an article in an antiques magazine about pay pal and the fact that they are largely unregulated. They do not fall under lending, banking or credit card laws. I may open an account in the future if I have to buy something on eBay but I will never link my bank account again. Of course like all things CC YMMV.</p>
<p>Ebeee - WAY off topic, but whenever this thread moves up I think it is some warning about the pope or some dire message that he delivered - Papal Warning?</p>
<p>And I am now a practicing Presbyterian.</p>
<p>Definitely something to be aware of --thanks to BunsenBurner for reminding me about this thread. I will forward it to S, who likes PayPal, so he can be wary & maybe open a small free checking account just for his PayPal stuff. </p>
<p>I will open a new free checking account for our non-profit for PayPal transactions too. Sheesh, sounds pretty complicated.</p>
<p>Just checked and closed my account. I had not used it since 2009. If I need to again I will attach it to my credit card–the hypervigilant one.
Thanks ebeeeee.
Now to get my S to do the same.</p>
<p>Ah, to get our kiddos to EVER do what we recommend. If you do, please share the secret. <grin> Actually, if they really feel they could lose money, sometimes they do take heed! :)</grin></p>
<p>Unattached my bank account and deleted a credit card - BUT it wasn’t easy. It kept telling me I couldn’t do either because of a pending transaction. I knew that wasn’t true because it had been months since I used paypal.<br>
Long story short, I ended up calling them and within 2 minutes it was taken care of. I went back in and it was clear.</p>
<p>hmmm, little creepy. my bookkeeper suggested we open a dedicated checking account for PayPal so we can watch it. since we don’t expect too much in the way of transactions, we can just move things every month or less often, depending on value rather than having a sweep. think PayPal is probably better known to most than network for good, unfortunately.</p>