TIP Check your E-BAY PAYPAL acct. transaction history. NOW

ainitfunny

ainitfunny

Saved, to glorify God.
Good thing I couldn't sleep last night. I heard an e-mail come in at almost 3AM. I decided to check what it was before I finally did try to go to bed and get some sleep. Well, that event ended up keeping me up all night.

I went to my e-mail and it said "You have money in your Paypal acct." and it described somebody I never heard of had deposited some few GBP(British money-pounds) into my paypal acct. I went to Paypal to find out what was going on and HOLY SMOKE the rebate was on some purchase made a couple hours before by someone else. Thieves had hacked my Paypal acct. and had been busy making purchases on the BRITISH E-BAY for the last four hours. (I think, if the time is 11:20PM when they began and 2:39 am when the final transaction , I think, occurred) Luckily, there were only 8 transactions, but had I gone to bed, or not checked it they would have continued on their spending spree on MY credit card for who knows how long. As it is I have several hundred dollars in transactions to try to get taken off my credit card. I reported the card stolen at 3AM and took it off Paypal.

E-Bay keeps excellent records and I have a name and address in Lancashire England of where the stuff was to be sent, BUT MY SISTER TOLD ME THAT SHE SAW ON "60 MINUTES" THAT THIEVES, ESPECIALLY NIGERIAN, HAVE STOLEN CREDIT CARD PURCHASES SENT TO HIRED REMAILERS WHO FORWARD THE STOLEN LOOT TO THE THEIVES. I just wish that re-mailing crap was made illegal.

Anyway, when I called Paypal, they said "It is not your fault, these guys are professionals." I am very careful with all that CC stuff and my computer.
So, in hopes that IF these guys hacked YOUR account you catch it BEFORE too much damage is done I ADVISE YOU TO GO CHECK PAYPAL AND DO IT REGULARLY. I was surprised that I never got an e-mail from Paypal with the purchases, like I usually do. I only got an e-mail with that last seller's tiny partial refund going to my account.

By the way I e-mailed everyone who had sold these thieves anything on MY credit card and told them NOT TO SHIP THE ITEM TO THE THEIVES AS THEY PROBABLY WOULD NOT GET TO KEEP THE MONEY, AS I WAS CHALLENGING IT. A couple sellers thanked me and said they had not shipped yet. THEY ALL should not have shipped yet, since I notified them within four hours of the sale.

I WISH I knew how to report this theft to the BRITISH POLICE and have them go to that address in Lancashire and check out the guy receiving the stolen goods. Anyone know how to report a crime to BRITISH POLICE?
 
ainitfunny

ainitfunny

Saved, to glorify God.
Thanks for the information, I reported what I know to the Lancashire Police.''

I do not know why you are down on Paypal. I have had very very good luck with them. I have used Paypal for over 8 years, even on websites besides e-bay BECAUSE THAT WAY STRANGE WEBSITES AND INTERNET SELLERS DO NOT GET YOUR CREDIT CARD NUMBERS. I have never been charged a penny by Paypal for the service and this is the first time I have ever had a problem in many years.

I have made my donations to TB2K thru paypal AND EVEN BOUGHT STUFF FROM PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS ON CRAIGS LIST by asking if the person selling something on craigs list would accept an instant payment to their paypal account and ship the craigslist item to me and usually they say yes. THAT ALLOWS ME TO SURF CRAIG'S LIST IN CITIES ALL OVER THE USA for really good buys on items I seek. Say you are looking for a pressure canner, you might search in all the large cities of the USA and find one much much cheaper than you would on EBAY because the seller has nothing to compare the price to on craigs list.
 
clem

clem

Veteran Member
You've just had one event with PayPal. Just think if you had not caught it fast enough?

You go right ahead and keep using it.
 
It'sJustMe

It'sJustMe

Deceased
Thanks for the heads up aint! If it could happen to you, it could happen to anyone. I know you are one savvy shopper! I just checked my account, and am thankful it's fine. I wonder how crooks get such access? It's Just Me
 
sandra

sandra

Inactive
There is another side to this scam and it happened to a guy who lives near here and was all over the local news for a while.

The man had been talking on IM to a woman in Africa somewhere, I believe it was Nigeria. She led him on and led him on for a few weeks and he had been led to believe that she was in love with him and he had decided he would leave his wife and bring her to this country to marry her.

So, after she had him "smitten", she told him that she wanted to get some things in the US from places like e-bay and others, and could she have the smaller items shipped to him and then he could send them forward to her to resell in her country. She explained this is the way she makes her living.

So, fast forward about a year of this action and the police show up on his door step about all the packages that he was receiving. He was now out over $60,000 that had cleared out his bank account and was facing jail time for fraud. It ended up that he did not get jail time, but they never got the person on the other end.... as they used public cyber places to do their dirty work and had the items shipped to "local delivery" and would pick them up in person.

When they showed the picture in the newspaper of this "woman" I nearly fell off my chair as a dear cyber friend of mine who lives in Switzerland had sent me this VERY SAME photo of the same woman... she had been trying to get him to fall in love with her also. She wanted him to send her money to come and visit him with... but "she" wanted him to send it to her male friend as she did not have a bank account.

These people are very crafty... and it is not just your account they may be after, but your love, your self respect and possibly your freedom from prosecution by the law... while they skip away clear as can be.
 
M

Michiana MaJo

Deceased
This thread scared me....a few days ago, I ordered a product available only from the UK, and soon after that, I got an e-mail from Pay Pal that I had a small refund.

This has never happened, before, but I assumed it had to do with the currency exchange factor. I didn't bother to check my account at PP, assuming it was legit.

When I saw this thread, I quickly checked my Pay Pal account, but everything is kopasetic, thank heavens! Still, if this should happen to any of you, it is a good idea to check your account with PP, just to be on the safe side.
 
O

OddOne

< Yes, I do look like that.
Add me to the list of users that haven't had a problem with PayPal. Then again, I use cryptographically strong passwords and change them occasionally.

The biggest issue with PayPal tends to be user-side security: bad passwords. If your pass is easily guessable if someone knows you it's a waste to even have one. Same can be said for anything that can be looked up in a dictionary, as brute-force "try every word" attacks sniff those out pretty quickly.

For a password to be considered "strong," it generally has to fit a few basic guidelines. These are:

  1. It's at least 8 characters long, preferably 12+. Each extra character adds nearly an order of magnitude to the number of possible combinations to sift through.
  2. It contains a mix of capitals, lowercase characters, numbers, and punctuation or other non-character symbols (where this is permitted). For example, an underscore in a strange place, for example, makes a password MUCH harder to guess.
  3. It doesn't directly correlate to the proper spelling of any word, so it cannot be looked up in a dictionary. Leetspeak is popular for this reason, although it too should be modified as enough people know leetspeak well enough to guess probable permutations.
  4. It doesn't correlate to any particular piece of personal information, such as birthdates or birth locations or pet names, so acquaintances and relatives cannot easily guess it based on their personal knowledge of you.

As an example, let's say your password is "iamloved". This is fairly weak - the Password Meter gives it a score of 10%, or "dismal failure" in terms of security. CamelCase it, though, and you have "IAmLoved", which is tougher but still only scores 32% on Password Meter's check. Leetspeak it and tweak the case a touch and you get "1@mL0v3d", which pushes the score to a whopping 90% strength, far tougher to crack. Mix some unusual punctuation into the mix and the weak "iamloved" becomes the nearly uncrackable "1-@m_L0v3d!" and nails 100% strength on Password Meter. In fact, the final form is so tough that you can probably tell someone what your password is verbally (as in saying, "My password is 'I am loved'.") and they will likely still not be able to use it.
 
Dennis Olson

Dennis Olson

Chief Curmudgeon
_______________
Remember this: NEVER CLICK THE URL IN THE EMAILS, EVER!!

I get stuff all the time supposedly from PayPal and eBay, about "unusual account activity", or someone wants a refund for something I sold them (I never sell on eBay; I just use it to buy stuff). The link in the emails LOOKS GOOD, but it's actually going to take you to some hacker website, where your passwords, etc, will be provided BY YOU in short order.

ALWAYS go directly to the PayPal or eBay site. Any communication they want to have with you will be available to you there.
 
P

Possible Impact

TB Fanatic
Add me to the list of users that haven't had a problem with PayPal. Then again, I use cryptographically strong passwords and change them occasionally.
Click to expand...

More examples:

Th1s_p@ssw0rd_1s_2_l0ng

1_allw@ys_f0rg3t

2_much_1nf0

n0_p@ssw0rd

n0ne_0f_th3_@b0v3

1_d0nt_h@v3_1
 
Dennis Olson

Dennis Olson

Chief Curmudgeon
_______________
At work, we use phrase-based passwords.

For example, in one application, the password is based on the phrase: "I don't care what the password is."

The actual password is"Idcwtpi".

It's much easier to remember a phrase than some strange word one might make up.
 
ainitfunny

ainitfunny

Saved, to glorify God.
Dennis Olson said:
Remember this: NEVER CLICK THE URL IN THE EMAILS, EVER!!

I get stuff all the time supposedly from PayPal and eBay, about "unusual account activity", or someone wants a refund for something I sold them (I never sell on eBay; I just use it to buy stuff). The link in the emails LOOKS GOOD, but it's actually going to take you to some hacker website, where your passwords, etc, will be provided BY YOU in short order.

ALWAYS go directly to the PayPal or eBay site. Any communication they want to have with you will be available to you there.
Click to expand...

I also am aware of that and never use any link in an e-mail and also can recognize those fake paypal e-mails which I also get frequently. Actually, I don't think it is anything I did as the Paypal rep SAID "It is nothing you did". Meaning they were probably dealing with some kind of hacking of the site, I inferred. Also, whoever did it was a pro and ordered a credit card reader on my dime and some other chip stuff that I think may be fake card related.
 
Josie

Josie

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Thanks, all on the password suggestions! I just came up with a much more secure password!
 
Jeffrey Thomason

Jeffrey Thomason

Veteran Member
Dennis Olson said:
At work, we use phrase-based passwords.

For example, in one application, the password is based on the phrase: "I don't care what the password is."

The actual password is"Idcwtpi".

It's much easier to remember a phrase than some strange word one might make up.
Click to expand...

This is a GREAT suggestion, throw in some numbers or symbols at the end is even better.

Idcwtpi92! for instance.

Actually, THE BEST solution is to just use a password manager like KeePass:

http://keepass.info/ for Windows and http://www.keepassx.org/ for Linux
 
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