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Power Sellers Unite
Bringing Buyers and Sellers Together
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elgato
Joined: 24 Feb 2005
Posts: 13294
Location: TEXAS
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| Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 2:13 pm Post subject: Merchant Attack Exposes Vulnerability in PayPal |
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In mid-March, a merchant began receiving money into his PayPal account from bogus transactions and contacted PayPal. Neither he nor PayPal was able to get the money to stop arriving into his account, so PayPal restricted the merchant's account. For over 2 weeks, the merchant was unable to use his PayPal account to take orders, and while it does not appear to be a common occurrence, it could happen to any online merchant who becomes the victim of a determined fraud campaign.
The merchant, a programmer who sells scripts on his website, contacted us after the bogus transactions started arriving. And so began our investigation into a baffling case of online fraud in which we learned about some PayPal features that every merchant should know about and be prepared to use.
The merchant was using PayPal's Add to Cart buttons and PayPal's shopping cart. The payments began coming from different, bogus, email addresses on Sunday, March 15; by Wednesday evening, the payments were still arriving. At that point, he removed all Add to Cart buttons from all pages on his website, but additional payments continued to be deposited into his account.
more.. link to news article |
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Chris Drinkut
Joined: 05 Dec 2008
Posts: 11
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| Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 6:06 pm Post subject: Seller Get Bogus Offers, PayPal stands by watching? |
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Hey guys,
I found this story from Auction Bytes detailing an issue with PayPal. I thought I might share it here to get some additional perspective.
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y09/m04/i09/s01
Essentially, it seems a seller was getting bogus offers from maybe a robot or a scam system. Too there is an assertion that PayPal really didn't know how to treat this thing.
I personally don't have issue with PayPal. They seem pretty secure and stable. Any thoughts? |
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jjjcollectibles
Joined: 22 Apr 2008
Posts: 386
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| Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 8:02 pm Post subject: |
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I'm wondering how in the world these bogus payments would benefit the scammer(s)? He doesn't have access to the PP account, so how would sending all of this money to a complete stranger benefit him?
Also, how did the merchant figure out the payments were bogus? Was it simply because he's never gotten hundreds of payments in a row like this before? Looks like the scammers used different email addresses and information for each payment, so it's not like the merchant saw hundreds of payments originating from the same address.
Just wondering how to spot this sort of thing in future. |
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