New Paypal Scam

[HundredK]

I woke up this morning and realized my email address was used as part of a paypal scam. It's not an email address I use often, more of an alias, but I always keep tabs on it. The scammers used my email to sign up for PayPal and collect some sort of a $5 reward that PayPal must be offering. They used my name, added a bogus address in NJ as the physical address, and then they collected the $5 reward and then paid it out to a different person, and then they closed the new account. All of that in the span of four minutes! They weren't able to confirm the email address (I keep my stuff super locked down), but they didn't even have to try, because paypal apparently doesn't even require a confirmed email address to send small sums of money. I contacted PayPal who predictably didn't care in the least and said that once an account is closed, there's nothing they can do, but I was able to find out how to get that particular email unlinked from their system. So that seems like a pretty good scam, huh? Build a bot to maybe do thousands of these, knowing that paypal won't pursue it so long as you close the account when you're done with your small amount of scamming? Just thought I'd share. These scammers never fail to impress.

[disneysteve]

Kind of disturbing that they will send money without confirming anything. That doesn't seem like a good business practice on their end.

[ua_guy]

Account takeover doesn't really get prosecuted from what I understand. Thieves can steal hundreds of thousands of dollars and the private company can choose to pursue it if they wish, but on a small enough scale, a lot of big companies just look the other way. Scary.

[Jordan53]

I dropped PayPal after I sold my phone and the buyer falsely challenged the condition, then PayPal ruled in their favor allowing them to keep the money with no obligation to return the phone. Never again.

[HundredK]

I dropped PayPal after I sold my phone and the buyer falsely challenged the condition, then PayPal ruled in their favor allowing them to keep the money with no obligation to return the phone. Never again.

Yep, paypal has a long history of problems, not a great company. I still use them to have friends reimburse me for things, but I stopped selling online and now avoid any electronic transactions with strangers.