Someone hacked my paypal and stole $1350 from me. Help!

[D Money]

Long story short. I check my paypal last night for money I was expecting and my email and password wouldn't work or allow me to log in. Now I know my info so I called paypal this morning.

While on the phone with them, they kept referring to my email name @gmail.com, and I never had a gmail. So I check my bank account and they did an instant transfer for $1350.00 and also took out the $75 that I had in paypal. I immediately filed a claim with paypal and they're disputing the charges from the bank account.

What they told me to do is call my bank and stop the instant transfer. I did that and I have to do an affidavit, and sign it. Did that. So now I need to wait until that clears to get it back.

What I want to know is can this be a fluke? Or is someone really out to get me? The money they sent from my paypal was in Euro's and to some random website. Paypal secured my account and re-set my passwords, but who is to say this wont happen again.

Has this ever happened to anyone?

[J.Ralli]

best thing you can do is have every email sent to your phone, the send every info change email everytime something changes, one time i changed a bank account then looked at my phone and got about 5 emails, 1 saying i changed it, one saying i removed the old one, one saying i added a new one and so on. just gotta be on top of that **** or delete your accounts off paypal if you dont use them often

[russiankid]

This is why I don't have my Paypal linked to my bank account.

[mndthegap1]

wow thats scary.. .sorry to hear about this.
makes me want to reconsider linking my accounts.

[D Money]

Does anyone suggest I cancel my paypal account after this and maybe start a new one with a new email address?

Also, how do you pay for things if you do not link your account to a bank account? can anyone explain this? I definately want to take that off immediately.

[russiankid]

You can link it to your credit card. So it will just charge your credit card, but IMO that is better than straight to your bank account.

[Xavier]

Was your password easy to guess?

[DPancoast]

I never keep any money in my paypal, and it's linked to an empty savings account. So when I want to buy something, I go to the bank and transfer money over.

It's a pain in the ass sometimes but it's safer since I dont buy that much anyway.

[D Money]

I don't trust the credit card either, and no my password wasn't easy to guess. Paypal said it was just a fluke and someone who had some type of program to steal my password. They didn't have access to my bank account numbers or debit card number. All they did was just log into my paypal and have the money sent.

Paypal is sending me their upgrade for free. It's a card with a remote on it connected to my account. Anytime I want to use my account, I hit the button and it gives me a random only someone with the card could have, therefore only I would have access to my funds.

[xEJ20x]

I just get emails from "Paypal" saying things about "new security measures" from obviously fake email accounts.

They try to get a **** load of information too from you too.

[DPancoast]

hmm, that's pretty cool of them. i'd assume you push a lot of money through them because I doubt they do that for most people lol

[D Money]

Originally Posted by xEJ20x

I just get emails from "Paypal" saying things about "new security measures" from obviously fake email accounts.

They try to get a **** load of information too from you too.

Yeah. I would never open them or even follow them without speaking to a rep from paypal.

Originally Posted by DPancoast

hmm, that's pretty cool of them. i'd assume you push a lot of money through them because I doubt they do that for most people lol

Yeah. I do push alot on paypal. I think they said $7,500+ in the last month or so. I guess that's why my account was targeted? Idk.

That's also why I can't have paypal without a debit card attached to it because the limit is $2,900 total.

[DPancoast]

yeah im sure they have a system that pics out high volume accounts

[D Money]

whatever it is, im still nervous. I don't want anyone to have access to my checking account information or any of my money.

[Red94Celica]

Someone got into my back account one time and spent over $300, I went to the bank and filled out some form. They refunded my money within a week and havent had any problems since.

[TROLL]

did they get your money back already or are they working on it? if its out of their hands, i don't think they'll cover you... just based on experience. if the money hasnt transferred yet and they still have control over it though they will.
you usually need to confirm when your account is changed, and it will send an email to your original email address linked to the account. if you keep an eye on your emails you'd probably catch it i think. they'd have to add a new email address and change the account over to that, i would change your email password as well just to be safe. after they add the new email address they'd have to add a bank account, wait for that to confirm, then they could transfer money to the new bank acct.
hopefully you get it all straightened out, that sucks. its not common and i think paypal is usually pretty secure, but nothing is 100%.

[Got Insulin?]

For what it's worth, you might want to set up a "junk" account at another branch. I don't trust any institution enought to have all my money stashed in one place, so I have a main account that my paychecks get put into, and then I have a different account at another bank that I use for things like paypal and paying bills. That way, should my account ever become compromised because of my intrawebz transactions, the only thing that would have been in there would be the minimal amount put there for bills. And so many banks want your business these days that alot of them are offering free checking accounts, so it's hardly detrimental to your funds.

On the other side of the coin, accidents do happen. I'd think about taking some precautions on your side like the seperate accounts bit.

[D Money]

Originally Posted by TROLL

did they get your money back already or are they working on it? if its out of their hands, i don't think they'll cover you... just based on experience. if the money hasnt transferred yet and they still have control over it though they will.
you usually need to confirm when your account is changed, and it will send an email to your original email address linked to the account. if you keep an eye on your emails you'd probably catch it i think. they'd have to add a new email address and change the account over to that, i would change your email password as well just to be safe. after they add the new email address they'd have to add a bank account, wait for that to confirm, then they could transfer money to the new bank acct.
hopefully you get it all straightened out, that sucks. its not common and i think paypal is usually pretty secure, but nothing is 100%.

Nope, paypal got me back the money they spend out of the funds I had in the actual paypal account. It's already back in my paypal and pending in my bank account. My bank stopped the transfer before it got into the paypal account. Even if it did, I already changed the paypal account password so they wouldn't be able to get to the funds or create a new bank account to transfer them to. So I should be good.

For some reason dude, paypal didn't send a confirmation that they changed my email address. Also, my email password is not the same as my paypal, so they couldn't have both, can they?

Also paypal said even if they got away with the scheme, they would fully reimburse me for all fraudulant purchases, even if my original money wasn't recovered.

[TROLL]

oh ok well thats good to hear. people always feel 100% secure with paypal but its never 100%, gotta be careful.
i'd call and ask them why you didnt get an email notification about a new email and/or new bank acct being added... see what happened there.

[Whitekryptonit3]

[COLOR="Red"]You have a key stroke monitor on your computer run an anti-virus as soon as possible[/COLOR].Or F disk the whole computer .... As far as your bank is considered you are not liable for the charges due to fraud.