paypal -
an unauthorised transaction

september 2006

someone tried to use my paypal account to buy themselves a laptop.

it was on a sunday, i'd been out, come home at about noon and put the laptop on.
about 30 minutes later, an email popped up in my gmail account.
an email from paypal, confirming that i had just given some guy £1250 ....
my username in the email was incorrect and i thought it was spam. but i looked on paypal anyway.

sure enough, in my paypal history, there was the £1250 transaction.
for a sony vaio laptop, being sent to a prague address !
i called the credit card company and canceled the card.
then looked on paypal's website for help.
after a few minutes, i rang them up.
this worked well, he took me through the process of starting a dispute.
it would take a week to gather information and resolve the case.

so, i had a week of wondering, feeling down and abused.
abused, because my paypal account was the same as my gmail account.
so, this criminal was able to monitor and read my emails, deleting anything incriminating !
thankfully, the full history is stored on paypal's server.

by the end of the week, i was resigned to accepting the loss.
it's only money, after all ....
i could see the case going both ways.

just after seven days had elapsed, i got an email.
resolution of case ....
my money had been refunded.
phew.

moral of the story - take extra special care of passwords.
use different ones for different things ( yeah, annoying huh ? )
i'm considering closing my paypal account or at least removing the bank details.

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