PayPal scams came from P.Pal employees, I've the proof !!!

[DomainEmpire.com]

Yes, you'll never believe it but it's true !
Few days ago several thousands of people (including me in both my mails associated to my P.Pal account) got a scam mail saying my account will have been closed soon so I had to open the attachment to fill in a form with my personal data.

Of course, I ignored and deleted it but this's not the point ... In a first time, I thought to have received that message for a real case but, how could this company know about my P.Pal address and about a secondary address associated to the same if it wasn't public ?

Here's the proof: my local collaborator opened its first P.Pal account about a month ago but he has never advertised his new account, he doesn't spend a lot of time online ...
Well, he got the same scam !

So my question is: where's our guarantee of privacy ?
If such things may happen with PayPal, I'm afraid nobody will ever respect in full member's privacy ... :(

Instead of posting a warning on their site, they should investigate to sue the real responsibles inside their company !

[Steen]

They come to addresses without paypal as well.

They go to many addresses hoping the ones with PP think its real.

Generally they (emails) are spawned from ebay though.

[DomainEmpire.com]

Ok, maybe I'm wrong then but, considering I've currently about 20 active emails and I got it only to my 2 P.Pal accounts, I've had this suspect .... Same thing for my partner with 5 emails, he got it only and exactly to the address used to open his new account.

My doubts remain but hopefully you're right

[Domagon]

Ebay/PayPal employees already have access to much customer information - no need to steal what they already have!

I personally no longer use Ebay/PayPal and recommend others to do the same...PayPal is nothing but trouble...sure it's nice when it works, but when it doesn't, watch out!

PayPal is NOT a bank and thus many of the consumer protections one expects don't exist - people can and do lose money with PayPal.

http://www.paypalsucks.com/

If you gave Ebay/PayPal your bank account number, you may want to start shopping for a different bank - once Ebay/PayPal has one's bank account number, they can and sometimes do, withdraw funds - often at the very worst time...and yes, they reserve that right...read Ebay/PayPal's user agreement...

The fake PayPal email is the least of your worries...PayPal likely has your social security #, bank account #, credit card #, street address, etc...and a detailed record of all your transactions (including your inbound IPs for each)...and yes, they openly share that information with the authorities...do a Google and read PayPal's public statements in which they tout their extensive involvement with law enforcement.

And yes, remember all that talk about Total Information Awareness, which was then renamed Terrorist Information Awareness, which is now called who knows what...anyways, Ebay/PayPal is likely working with the authorities in developing data mining systems...and Ebay/PayPal truly are working with the authorities, what data does one think Ebay/PayPal would use for testing...of course, Ebay/PayPal customer data!

Umm, ok I really got off on a tangent...and yes it's clear I don't care for Ebay/PayPal...known too many folks who have run into nasty problems and some even have lost much money...sure PayPal claims they send the remaining money after 180 days for accounts on "limited" status, but often don't - there's even litigation regarding that matter too.

Bottomline is Avoid PayPal...and to keep this thread on-topic...yes, I own AvoidEbay.com and AvoidPayPal.com - anyone want to buy them

Ron

[aguss]

http://www.dnforum.com/t43962 ...
If it has attachment, dont open it...

cheers
agus s

[DomainEmpire.com]

Hi valuenames,

Many thanks for your interesting warnings, I believe you in full considering I heard many other people complaining about money stolen by P.Pal and several other troubles ... :(

Very important: to avoid most of these problems, here's what I'm currently doing, a strategy for anyone else wishing to use their service:

1- I'm from Italy so they've only my postal address +c card which I can lock at any time for anything wrong they should ever attempt to do;
2- I'm using P.Pal only for 100% legal purposes so I've nothing to worry about authorities ;
3- I've no bank account associated to my P.Pal because, every time we earn few hundreds $$$, we use them for new acquisitions reinvesting them immediately ... Our real profits come directly here to our bank through other ways ;
4- I never leave more than $200 there for a period longer than 15 days;

Told this, I doubt they've many chances to give me serious troubles but thanks again for sharing with me your opinion ... I'm the first who don't trust them

[Anthony Ng]

Originally posted by valuenames
If you gave Ebay/PayPal your bank account number, you may want to start shopping for a different bank - once Ebay/PayPal has one's bank account number, they can and sometimes do, withdraw funds - often at the very worst time...and yes, they reserve that right...read Ebay/PayPal's user agreement...

Yes, but if you need that convenience (transferring funds between PayPal and your bank account with just a few clicks), that's the risk you have to pay and similar risks go with MOST contracts you sign with big companies, even that of your bank. My advice is to link a bank account that you don't use to keep your million dollar assets.

[ComScout.com]

Why wouldn't that surprise me, please check out my thread, as far as I am concerned, paypal.com support scams, and it not not even surprise me if there is millions of dollars passing through accounts that support terrorism activities.

Below is an a letter I sent the Australian Federal Police regarding PayPal.

OMC
Computer Crime
Australian Federal Police
PO Box 586
West Perth
WA 6872
Australia



Dear Sir/Ma’am

I am writing to letter to you on behalf of myself William Sherman, over the period of approximately the last 6 months I have been subject to a regular occurrence of fraud on my PayPal.com business account.

In about 6 months I lost approximately $4000 USD from people ordering e-goods off my two websites www.GoldTraffic.com (now sold) and my other website www.iNeedTraffic.com.

From these two websites I specialise in the following:

1. Search Engine Submission e.g. to search engines such as Google.com and Yahoo.com
2. Website marketing and
3. Providing Traffic / Hits / Visitors to website owners throughout the world

To explain this rather simply, people come to my websites, order visitors, pay me through PayPal.com and then once I receive payment I then deliver the visitors to their websites.

What has happened is that once I receive the order via PayPal.com, I will deliver the visitors to the customer’s websites having checked to ensure that the websites are “Legal” i.e. do not promote illegal pornography, spam, illegal weapons, illegal gambling and so forth.

Then I will deliver the traffic/hits/visitors to the customer over a period of 30 days.

So what’s the problem you may ask?

Well usually after about four weeks after the e-product has been delivered to the customer, they write an email to PayPal.com saying that someone has “fraudulently” used their credit card on PayPal.com

But I got very suspicious because it continued to happen to me on a regular basis, so I investigated the matter by myself and I found that certain things did not add up.

For Example:

Every single “Reversal” from my Paypal.com account… it told me that the customers email originated from a free based email website called www.Another.com to explain this better please refer to the cover sheets on each order I have supplied as follows

A.
Paypal.com reversal from Mathew Bubar
Paypal.com account email: herein@villa-fan.com (This domain name redirects to Another.com)
Amount Lost: $1050

B.
Paypal.com reversal from Daniel Aguilar
Paypal.com account email: dan@malochen.com (This domain name redirects to Another.com)
Amount Lost: $150

C.
Paypal.com reversal from Steven Loyd
Paypal.com account email: Rob@relightmyfire.com (This domain name redirects to Another.com)
Amount Lost: $150

D.
Paypal.com reversal from Claudia@mullered.com
Paypal.com account email: Claudia@mullered.com (This domain name redirects to Another.com)
Amount Lost: $150

E.
Paypal.com reversal from Charles Bowen
Paypal.com account email: charles@yumlicious.com (This domain name redirects to Another.com)
Amount Lost: $150

F.
Paypal.com reversal from Pete Lloyd
Paypal.com account email: llyod@annother.com (This domain name redirects to Another.com)
Amount Lost: $150 dispute won by my protest to paypal.com, money was refunded back to me

G.
Paypal.com reversal from Richard Hill
Paypal.com account email: retro@phpcoder.ws (unknown)
Amount Lost: $50

So after doing this research I have found that it is quite obvious that the orders above that their email addresses are registered at www.Another.com a free email based website similar to www.hotmail.com so with my websites I have only take around 50 orders in total this year and that means that approximately 10% or my orders came from someone registering their email address at another.com and then signing up to PayPal.com with these email addresses.

To sign up to PayPal.com all you need is an email address, anybody can sign up there for free, simply by registering with their email address, so what I have figured is that these orders what are fraudulent are probably coming from “One Person” or “Individuals” working as a team from one main Paypal.com account

To fund these other accounts, all they need to do is to send money from their main account into these other accounts, and then when they place their orders like they did at my website GoldTraffic.com, after I delivered the e-product to them, they write to PayPal.com saying someone fraudulently used their PayPal.com accounts, thus getting their money refund from my account and then the product for free.

So all up from this Scam, I have lost approximately $2000.

I would also like to report to you the main Scam that I have been ripped off by this year, and I have been waiting to receive an email from Paypal.com to tell me that another lot of money was going to be deducted from my PayPal.com account.

Approximately two to three months ago I was watching the News on television, and they had a special report on two websites that were disguising themselves as legitimate business partners of the following banks: ANZ, Westpac, National bank, and New Zealand banks, ASB and BNZ.

The websites were online as www.Avantyx.com and www.Devancy.com

Quote from this website: http://www.police.govt.nz/news/release/1044.php

QUOTE
New web banking scam targets New Zealanders
National News Release, 10:10, 29 August 2003
A slick new online banking scam is fooling New Zealanders into losing large sums of money says Police E-Crime National Manager Maarten Kleintjes.

The site www.devancy.com, running since late July, has a very professional look and is customised for New Zealand readers. A sister scam site called www.avantyx.com is customised for Australians.

Both sites claim to be business partners with all the leading banks including ANZ, ASB, BNZ, National Bank, and Westpac. Curiously the New Zealand site also lists the old Countrywide Bank which was sold to National Bank 5 years ago.

New Zealand Police has contacted the banks and has confirmed that they are not in partnership with these web sites nor were they aware that their names were being used in the scam.

Investigations by the E-Crime Lab have established that the scam is running from Denmark via USA. An international effort will be required to find those behind the sites.

The scam works by convincing people to accept deposits into their bank accounts which they then forward to a third party minus a transaction fee. The initial deposit is then retracted.

"Devancy deposit, say $10,000 into your account, then you send $9,500 on to someone else the same day. Devancy then quickly cancel their $10,000 deposit. You just sent $9,500 of your own savings to a Devancy associate," Mr Kleintjes says.

"The key to this scam is building a very convincing web site that looks just like a real financial services web site."

Mr Kleintjes advises people visiting the site not to be taken in by its authentic appearance. "It can't be true if they offer money for free," he says.

If members of the public do believe they have been prey to this scheme then they should immediately contact their bank.

The Consumers' Institute compiles information on all manner of scams at www.consumer.org.nz.

Police are publicising the scam as a warning for the public to steer well clear. Given the international nature of this scam the likelihood of Police taking successful prosecution action and recovering money for victims is not high. It really is a case of advising people to avoid being ripped off in the first place, Mr Kleintjes says.
UNQUOTE

Once again I received an email from Paypal.com saying that I receive another traffic order, I went to the customers website www.avantyx.com and verified with them that their site was legimate.

I then delivered the e-product to them and a month or two later, once again I received an email from Paypal.com saying there was fraudulent credit card use and this time they took $1600 USD from my account, visa card.

I have included with this letter all of the paperwork, emails, order/transaction numbers with Paypal.com.

I am convinced that when you investigate this Avantyx.com and Devancy.com fraud from my Paypal.com account that you will be able to trace exactly who these people are, where they are located and hopefully I may receive some of my losses back.

These people need to have a credit card on Paypal.com to send large transactions, and I know for a fact that with the help of Paypal.com you will easily be able to locate these “Scammers”

The two Avantyx.com “reversals” came from the following Paypal.com accounts:

A.
Paypal.com reversal from Todd Sudek
Paypal.com account email: Riviera@credits.com
Amount Lost: $900

B.
Paypal.com reversal from Carol Lutjens
Paypal.com account email: lutjens@thetee.com
Amount Lost: $700

Regarding the two above orders, I am 100% certain that if you investigate these email addresses registered at PayPal.com you will find out who the true owners were of both websites www.avantyx.com and www.devancy.com

They paid me $900 and $700 respectively and when the money was refunded (Reversed) back into their PayPal.com accounts, they would have most likely withdrawn the money into their “Denmark” Danish based bank accounts.

To conclude this letter I would like to say that I pray to god, that you will decide to investigate these scams on my behalf and all of the other people that may have been “Scammed” by these con-artists.

I have sought legal advise from my Defence Force Lawyer (I am in the Royal Australian Navy), and he suggested that I report this crime to your investigations department in Perth Wa, I spoke to Darren O’Neil at the computer crime department today on the telephone, who was extremely helpful to me.

Darren informed me that a committee decides which cases to work on; once again I am certain that with the proper dedication and investigation by your expert staff, that you will arrest and convict these culprits.

I appreciate your time in reading this letter and all of the other information that I have provided

Yours Sincerely

William

[Domagon]

Originally posted by nameslave
Yes, but if you need that convenience (transferring funds between PayPal and your bank account with just a few clicks), that's the risk you have to pay and similar risks go with MOST contracts you sign with big companies, even that of your bank. My advice is to link a bank account that you don't use to keep your million dollar assets.

Ultimately it's a personal decision one must make. With that said, convenience comes at a very hefty price for folks using PayPal.

While bank ACH (automated clearing house) transactions here in the U.S. are highly regulated, PayPal is not. This can and does lead to situations where one can lose money and regulators can do little to nothing to help.

Importantly, when one provides PayPal their bank account number, the customer is in most cases also explicitedly agreeing that PayPal may withdraw funds from the customer's bank account at will. That's very different than providing one's bank account number to a company to pay a specific bill/amount, etc.

If one keeps money in multiple bank accounts, their money isn't totally protected *unless* it's kept at totally different banking institutions.

And, if PayPal does an ACH for more than what is in one's bank account, and for some reason the bank honors it, guess what happens next...yep, at least here in the U.S., the bank sends the person a bill!

Sure one can fight it and likely get the ACH transaction(s) reversed, but imagine the inconvenience of having a bank account with a negative balance - and all the penalties that come with that happening...one often is left holding the bag for some or all of the late penalties that are incurred during the dispute.

Even after such a dispute is resolved, PayPal has a nasty habit of trying to do ACH withdraws over and over again in the future...often forcing one to have their bank monitor/block such ACH transactions or even forced to change banks. Most people don't have the time to deal with all of this PayPal nonsense between work, family, etc.

Ron

[David G]

...............I personally no longer use Ebay/PayPal and recommend others to do the same...PayPal is nothing but trouble...sure it's nice when it works, but when it doesn't, watch out! PayPal is NOT a bank and thus many of the consumer protections one expects don't exist - people can and do lose money with PayPal. by valuenames.

IMO you are misstating or way exagerating any possible negatives involving PayPal. Overall they are excellent IMO and much better with significantly greater features and benefits than bank credit card merchant accounts, both for merchants and consumers.

[Domagon]

Originally posted by RealNames
IMO you are misstating or way exagerating any possible negatives involving PayPal. Overall they are excellent IMO and much better with significantly greater features and benefits than bank credit card merchant accounts, both for merchants and consumers.

Do you have a bank card merchant account? The difference between PayPal and that is like night and day!

With PayPal, they can cut you off with ZERO notice (and I mean literally none!) and ZERO reason even when conducting LEGALLY permitted business. And with PayPal, neither merchant nor customer has any real protection.

Bank card merchant accounts are far different - highly regulated and relatively few surprises for all parties involved.

You either do very little volume through PayPal and/or have been very lucky.

If PayPal works for you, that's great. But none of what I've posted is an exaggeration...if anything I've actually understated some of the problems/hazards of using PayPal.

Ron

[Steen]

Originally posted by valuenames


Bank card merchant accounts are far different - highly regulated and relatively few surprises for all parties involved.

I wouldnt say that. Finding the right merchant account is very hard and there are tons of not so good providers.

I do agree that having a good merch account + gateway is less hassle then PP for some things (not domains!).