Is PayPal safe..??

I recently purchased about a hundred dollars of items from a dealer here and if I remember correct I used their PayPal link to pay. I will not mention the dealer as I believe it was PayPal who had the problem as I have had several good transactions with this dealer in the past.....Neverless I used a Credit Card from Providian to pay and this certain card is used for nothing but on line purchases.

I know this is the last time I used the card and was just contacted by Providian asking if I had attempted to puchase a few large purchases and I was shocked to find out someone else had attempted to use my number since my last valid purchase. There was one attempt I remember at some on line place called Skipe.com or something like that and also another 500 dollar attempt at E-Passport.com.

Providian advised the purchases did not go through however one smaller one for 20 dollars did.....they are changing my card and issuing a credit with an affadavit signed by me. I have never had a problem in the past with PayPal however do not see any other place my information could have been obtained. Has anyone else had this problem and if so is this most likely an isolated incident.....I am now very leery at purchasing anything else on line as a result of this crap.

Any certain ways to be sure of a safe transaction or should I just stick to Money Orders from now on??

robo.. good thing you are only using that card for online purchases and were able to isolate the funny tranactions.

had the same reservations about plugging in my personal paypal access information directly into an online merchant's form.

when I initial the paypal site from my bookmarks. it's fairly certain which site my access data is going. but when entering sensitive data into an on-line merchant's form. one has no idea if that data is also captured and/or going somewhere else besides paypal.

If I remember correct I did enter my information into the dealers site and after choosing all the items purchased I was given the option to use PayPal through a link on their site. I have done this many times and never thought of it however for some reason this time the information must have somehow been obtained.

What really puzzles me is the fact that Providian simply chalked it up as a loss and did not seem interested at all in tracking down the person(s) who used the information. It seems to me that the items that were attempted to be purchased must have had some shipping address or at least something they could use to isolate the persons responsible. I know I am thinking like a policeman here however I thought they would surely be more interested in criminal charges as this is a serious felony charge......I also realize they must have thousands of incidents like this each month so I should consider myself lucky it was caught in time.

Actually I would never have known until my statement came and they noticed a strange purchase attempt and called me first so I do give them credit for that much. It seems to me that Credit Card companies could apply a simple password to your account that would follow all purchases. I do have a password on some of mine but this is only used when I am calling about my account....they will not even talk to me unless I give the correct password....seems like this could also be used for on line purchases.....well I just realized if a criminal can trap your account number they could also do the same with any password typed as well....ok that was a bad idea.

The information could have been lost by paypal or the other merchants you purchased from or the credit card company it self or even your own garbage. There have been people that will go through someones garbage looking for thrown away paperwork with account numbers. How often do you receivd a credit card offer in the mail with 3 checks attached, or 3 checks attached to your credit card bill?

nothing is really safe. I purchased a shredder, all my paperwork that is being thrown out gets shredded.

you are smart to use one credit card for online purchases, keep the max low.

anything with my info is shreaded before going in trash.
especially credit card offers... if you have good credit, offers come in steady streams. all with your personal info pre-printed.

Don't assume that PayPal was the source of compromising your credit card information. Bogus cards are being made all the time and they have multiple sources for getting legitimate cc information. Many people who don't even use paypal have their cc numbers copied and used for illegal purchases.

i no longer use paypal due to a identical event.
no way i was "phished"
paypal has internal theft issues and they refused to fix it.
i issued a chargeback for the unautherised transactions,got my cc replaced again,and dumped paypal for good.
my bank has a free billpay option i can pay anyone with that takes a few days to get there.

I don't think it's just PayPal, and it's got to be hard to fix.

If you are not an employer you might not be aware of it, but it's virtually impossible in the US to get rid of employees you don't want around. Powerful and vicious agencies like the federal EEOC make it so.

I have a cash Pay Pal and only deposit the amount needed for each purchase. This hopefully stops them from trying to withdraw non available funds. No probs yet (crossed fingers).

snakebite said:

paypal has internal theft issues and they refused to fix it.
i issued a chargeback for the unautherised transactions,got my cc replaced again,and dumped paypal for good.
my bank has a free billpay option i can pay anyone with that takes a few days to get there.

Click to expand...

This is freightening.
Just wonder whether there is another safer alternative that the CPF community can accept and adopt?

don't automatically blame paypal... there's visa/MC proccessors too. there's been several high profile losses of 500,000+ credit card info.

folks that used Sam's gasoline loss a huge number of credit card info. don't know the rules if they have to disclose..