Foo - Sad when ppl would rather use paypal than take a money order

Had to close my paypal account due to all the fraud/phishing crap going on with it. I am an I.T. guy and I was ALMOST scammed! If they can get me, they can get just about anyone. :( It's just not worth the stress worrying about it all the time. I was looking at buying a bike rack on ebay and sent the guy a question to make sure he would accept a money order or cashiers check. He finally got back to me today and said that he would NOT take anything except paypal. I guess paper can be counterfeited just like everything else but geez. My momma taught me that MOST people are very honest. I guess that is not the case any more. Maybe ebay is a magnet for dishonest people...I dunno. What's the world coming to. :( :eek:

Favorites....ebay......right click.....Delete.......Yes :o

I dont understand how people fall for paypal scams. You need to have some understanding of internet basics to avoid it I guess. I have gotten scam emails where I am told my account information has expired and I need to enter a new bank account #, credit card #, SSN, etc. into a fake paypal site. All you need to do is look at the link, if it is not paypal.com then don't trust it.

I've been using paypal for 3 years, hundreds of purchases. Never once a problem. It is fast, I send and recieve money frequently. As a seller and a buyer I always lean toward the paypal auction, most are anyways. Actually I retract that statement, I had one problem once with a seller in Korea for an mp3 player. Sent him 160 dollars, a month later, nothing and no reply to emails. I filed a claim with paypal and 4 days later I had my mp3 player. Also your credit card company is a phone call away

I dont understand how people fall for paypal scams. You need to have some understanding of internet basics to avoid it I guess.

Not really internet basics. Banking basics. The same kind of scam was being done over the phone long before there was an interent.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Heh Anybody who falls for a Phishing scam needs to be smacked upside the ****ing head.
A phished email address will address you as
"Dear sir"

a valid email will address you as "Dear Your Fill Name", or "Dear Your Actual Company Name"

If you are not sure then open a new url. type in www.domain.com/ Log in and then go to the management section or where ever you need to go

Money Orders are used ALLLL The times toscam people also. I know people who live off of money orders / western union scams. Why? because once the money is gone it's gone for good. Poof. And from what I understand nobody either a) can trace it or b) care to because these people make a living off of this and they've not been caught yet.

Not really internet basics. Banking basics. The same kind of scam was being done over the phone long before there was an interent.

There is nothing new under the sun.
No kidding. And most phone scams are alot more effective because even if they dont know your full name they can easily get it because they are on the phone and they're talking. :rolleyes:

Had to close my paypal account due to all the fraud/phishing crap going on with it. I am an I.T. guy and I was ALMOST scammed! If they can get me, they can get just about anyone. :( It's just not worth the stress worrying about it all the time. I was looking at buying a bike rack on ebay and sent the guy a question to make sure he would accept a money order or cashiers check. He finally got back to me today and said that he would NOT take anything except paypal. I guess paper can be counterfeited just like everything else but geez. My momma taught me that MOST people are very honest. I guess that is not the case any more. Maybe ebay is a magnet for dishonest people...I dunno. What's the world coming to. :( :eek:

Favorites....ebay......right click.....Delete.......Yes :o
Money Orders are Slow and are easily lost. In fact whenever a company sends me money orders the money order magically takes 2-5 weeks (or doesn't even show up) 30 money orders or checks, at least 10 have never been received.

Read my other post. No insult to you being scammed by an obviously fraudulent phish has nothing to do with your job but merely having an ounce of heads up.

Have shopped via the Internet for at least ten years with no problems. Have had paypal for years without any major issues. When I *ALMOST* got scammed a few months ago, it scarred the hell out of me and I was like, NO MORE!! My son almost got scammed too....about the same time I did. He kept his paypal but had to cancel one of his credit cards. May pay a little more, but I'll shop local from now on thank you very much.

The most recent scams involve forged money orders. These are often the most damaging, especially on big ticket items, that often the seller ands up in legal trouble over it, since the person he got it fom doesn't check out.

So now that person has no money and no item.

Honestly, I prefer using paypal as a buyer...it's quick, easy, and for the most part, rather secure.

I feel your pain dragracer....have had MUCH experience doing online banking, purchasing, etc... for many, many, many years. I do get some paypal scams that were pretty professional looking. They used my name and/or user name (not just "dear sir"). They ususally tell me that something is wrong with my account and provide a link to log in and fix it. But when I hover over the link, I see it goes somewhere else.

I have not been duped....but they are getting smarter and smarter about it. There may come a day when I have to do the same. That day isn't here yet, but the ebay scams do seem to be the most professional and not as easily discernible ones out there.

The most recent scams involve forged money orders. These are often the most damaging, especially on big ticket items, that often the seller ands up in legal trouble over it, since the person he got it fom doesn't check out.

So now that person has no money and no item.

Honestly, I prefer using paypal as a buyer...it's quick, easy, and for the most part, rather secure.
Yep. The problem is simply this.
All of those PSA's that you see about "smoking" or "being tolerant of certain people" that you see brainwashed on NBC/ABC/CNN They need to do the same thing.

Because ultimately there are several things that one can do to ensure that one doesn't get scammed

#1 - Look at who is being addressed. Most (unless it is directed by somebody who knows you) which is very unlikely adress it as "Dir sir" or some random other address. Because they don't know your name.
#2 - Look at who the email is being sent to. If you have 5 email addresses and you use someaddie@gmail.com for PayPal and your bank and it's being addressed to thisaddie@yahoo.com. Take a guess as to why you are receiving an email fore something that doesn't have your email address ;)
#3 - Look at the URL. There is usually 1-5 URLs that they want you to click on and they are very prominent. Usually all the others (terms of service) will point to valid links. In most email clients if you hover the mouse over a link for a few seconds a tiny tooltip will popup and you will see something like http://www.signin.ebay.com.gotome.tk/bleah
where as the url should look something like http://signin.ebay.com/
#4 - In almost all cases you should never ever follow a link from an important email like the bank, or paypal. Instead open up the Url and go to http://www.paypal.com. Sign in and then go to the appropriate screen to get what the email was talking about

In almost all cases you can simply scan the email and should be able to tell instantly that the item is a scam.
#4

I feel your pain dragracer....have had MUCH experience doing online banking, purchasing, etc... for many, many, many years. I do get some paypal scams that were pretty professional looking. They used my name and/or user name (not just "dear sir"). They ususally tell me that something is wrong with my account and provide a link to log in and fix it. But when I hover over the link, I see it goes somewhere else.

I have not been duped....but they are getting smarter and smarter about it. There may come a day when I have to do the same. That day isn't here yet, but the ebay scams do seem to be the most professional and not as easily discernible ones out there.
I have yet to see a phish that actually addresses the individual by their proper name. Ebay/PayPal/Wells Fargo / Chase etc.

yeah, chase had a recent round of email fraud. i recieved several of them and they looked really good. company logo, chase name in the link, etc. basically someone was trying to get you to follow the link and "log in" to verify something. crazy.

called up chase to report it and apparently it was very widespread.

yeah, chase had a recent round of email fraud. i recieved several of them and they looked really good. company logo, chase name in the link, etc. basically someone was trying to get you to follow the link and "log in" to verify something. crazy.

called up chase to report it and apparently it was very widespread.
Yep. Chase is probably the most common bank fraud
PayPal and Ebay would come in as the next most popular although I think these are actually more popular then Ebay and PayPal

I've seen a few wells fargos
Wells Fargos seems to be more directed. It's almost like there is somebody monitoring certain factions of their operations as they send very targeted phishes. That is the closest I've seen coming to a phish targeting.

I have yet to see a phish that actually addresses the individual by their proper name. Ebay/PayPal/Wells Fargo / Chase etc.
I've gotten tons of Ebay ones.....most address me by my ebay ID, but a few address by name.

yeah, chase had a recent round of email fraud. i recieved several of them and they looked really good. company logo, chase name in the link, etc. basically someone was trying to get you to follow the link and "log in" to verify something. crazy.

called up chase to report it and apparently it was very widespread.

Sounds simlilar to the paypal phish I got. Once they get your login and password you're hosed. :o

URL I got was very tricky. Can't remember it exactly but it was something like www.paypal.xyz.com. It looked VERY real....even to someone as skeptical as me. I did not fall for it, but almost did. It was close enough to freak me out and say bye bye to paypal. Call me a wuss(or just plain dumbazz), but I get plenty of stress without worrying about stupid $h|7 like that.

I was scammed two weeks ago selling something on eBay. The guy used buy it now. The money went into my paypal, showed up as my money in my account. I recieved the instant payment notification from paypal and it was legit. Then two days later, I shipped the item. Day after that, the money disappeared from my account. I got e-mails from paypal saying the guy is being investigated for fraud etc. He is no longer an eBay member so their resolution dispute was cancelled by them. Paypal was no help at all. They could care a less. Called Canada post to stop the item. No dice. Called the cops and they actually tracked the item and had CP stop the item for me. They are still tracking the guy. He scammed me an one other guy now he's on to a new user name and e-mail.
Everything was totally legit and a normal transaction but then POOF, the money didn't exist. All you could do to guard against that is not ship anything for 5 days, and even then, not knowing what, or how he is doing it, that still might not work.
Got to hand it to the cops though. I was impressed that they worked so hard for my $300 item and actually got it back. eBay and papal suck ass and are a total pain to deal with. All you get is the runaround. Even the cop said he'd been trying to deal with paypal for a week trying to resolve the case but finally gave up on them.
Can't trust anyone and you can't do anythign about it when you do get scammed. It;s not like you can go into the eBay store down the street and complain. eBay and paypal are faceless companies that can ignore anyone they want with no reprocussions.

I think thats a per basis item. I've been dealing with PayPal and Ebay for many years for not just one individual or company but for many individuals and companies. I don't really have any recollections of any incident where that has happened. When there has been a dispute regarding anitem or a transaction there has always been a dispute with open dialogue with all parties including an arbitrator.

I have had numerous scams that addressed me by name, and one that even addressed me by a former job title...either way, I wasn't interested....the part where they called upon "a good chrisitian" (referring to me), I knew it was crap, since I never have called nor consider myself a christian.

I have had numerous scams that addressed me by name, and one that even addressed me by a former job title...either way, I wasn't interested....the part where they called upon "a good chrisitian" (referring to me), I knew it was crap, since I never have called nor consider myself a christian.
:roflmao:

There have been many lately for paypal. Tre annoying.

Had to close my paypal account due to all the fraud/phishing crap going on with it. I am an I.T. guy and I was ALMOST scammed! If they can get me, they can get just about anyone. :( It's just not worth the stress worrying about it all the time. I was looking at buying a bike rack on ebay and sent the guy a question to make sure he would accept a money order or cashiers check. He finally got back to me today and said that he would NOT take anything except paypal. I guess paper can be counterfeited just like everything else but geez. My momma taught me that MOST people are very honest. I guess that is not the case any more. Maybe ebay is a magnet for dishonest people...I dunno. What's the world coming to.

I understand the sentiment about Paypal and scams but I have to admit, I prefer the quick convenience of Paypal over waiting for the darn MO in the mail. I guess I'm too much a part of the 'Instant Gratification Generation'. :D

I don't know, I just don't think the internet is any less safe than anything else. There are little devices you can buy that yoiu can slip in a pocket. A waiter could have one of these, take your credit card when you go to pay and scan your card int his device, it records the #. There you go. You can get a phone scam very easily too, mail, catalog problems. The only difference is hte tool being used. I hear about these poeple actually going to Nigeria following one of those scams, the sad part is that people will do it.