This article is not really belonging here – i know. But i believe it might help other people so i really want to write about it. Here it goes…
On 3rd of January, in the middle of the night (so 4th of January), i received an email from Paypal. I didn`t use my account in a very long time and neither this specific email. It was more like an email i only used for subscription i didn`t really need and for other accounts recovery.
At first, i honestly thought it was a SPAM email. I checked the amount, i even laughed for god`s sake. I mean, nobody would take so much RON from my personal accounts (most of them empty). But then i remembered i transfered my salary into my account last month. Oups! This was really happening. At 4 a.m. I checked on phone my online banking and i noticed not only this transaction, but two of them on different email adresses. Great! Checked my account – none of those emails ringed a bell to me, but both of them looked like they were fake. I changed my password right away, i deleted all my cards and my accounts.
After doing that, i started to call all my banks at freakin` 4 am. I canceled all my personal cards. Even i thought it was much worse, all my other cards were safe. To be honest, on one of them i had like only 20 euros, that`s it but i still called to ask if there is any transaction. I think the guy laughed badly. The next day i did the same thing for my company. I also put a claim on PayPal of course.
I`m not sure if the one who answered was Paypal or the hacker, but the answer is just so terrible. I`m ashamed myself for such poor service and i think Paypal is an easy target for hackers. And they just agree to be so as you can see below.
We have reviewed this transaction(s) and are denying your claim(s). This decision was made because this transaction was not unauthorized.
Really? And who authorized it because i was sleeping, dude. This is what people do in the middle of the night. They do not authorize payments to weird emails.
Paypal is not safe anymore. There were times when Paypal was good and safe. Not these times though.
It was really important for me to let other people know of this situation. After this happened to me and i had to lose 500$ cuz i felt safe with Paypal, i Googled it. Guess what? I am not the only one. It happened in the past years to a lot of persons. What did Paypal do?
Nada, guys. Nada.
Well i`m still waiting the bank`s answer regarding the matter. But this made me feel unsafe and suspicious regarding the online payments and not only. And believe me, i know a lot about being online, i do websites too for a living. I used to work with Paypal for online stores. If one could consider me as a person who doesn`t take the necessary precautions, then who takes them?