PayPal Said Slam the Door On Their Face

In this video, PayPal Chief Information Security Officer, Mr Michael Barrett, gives us some priceless tips for staying safe when we buy and sell online. Note, towards the end of the video how he says that if a stranger showed up at your door asking for your bank account details you will slam the door on his face. He advises that we should do the same to online criminals. After you watch this video share with us what is your perception of online crime, how to avoid it, and how you “slam the door on it”

Slam the Door on Their Face

PayPal is an online e-commerce business that specializes in electronic fund transfer via the internet. Online transfer of money is an alternative to paying through paper-based money such as notes or checks.  PayPal formed as a result of a merger between Confinity and X.com. Back in 2002, PayPal was acquired for $1.5 billion by online selling store e-Bay.

In 2008, PayPal acquired an Israeli company by the name of Fraud Sciences for a whopping $169 million. This company specializes in online fraud and PayPal and e-Bay felt they could enhance their fraud management system this way while also improving their fraud detection capabilities.

In What Countries You Can NOT Use PAYPAL– and WHY?

PayPal is available to all US states and other non US states such as China, Argentina, Hong Kong, Greece, Singapore, United Kingdom, Denmark, Italy, India and many more around the world. It is not, however, available in most third world countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Sudan, Libya, etc.

This is because PayPal does not trust the financial systems, or the governments of these countries to be efficient with electronic fund transfers.

Even though PayPal is useful and efficient, there are some pitfalls associated with using it. In this article we are going to examine the risks of using PayPal for online transactions and how they can be eliminated or reduced.

Account Hacking

There is a risk of a PayPal account being hacked and used to make payments of items purchased on e-Bay and elsewhere. This problem can be rectified by users of PayPal as well as those selling on e-Bay by making sure they only carry out shipments to addresses that have been verified. A verified address is a guarantee that the product will reach the right recipient.

Frozen Accounts

Often when fraud is suspected from a particular account, PayPal is known to freeze that account. PayPal users have often complained that it is difficult to get their account unfrozen once they have been cleared of any activity involving fraud.

If this occurs, the user should contact PayPal immediately. The account will be restored, however, when it is confirmed that the transaction was legitimate.

Illegitimate Payback Demands

The biggest convenience and advantage of using PayPal is that it allows payments to be made via credit cards. Hence, buyers enjoy all the benefits that a credit card transaction provides. This involves the option of challenging the company in case any of the promised products were not received or for products that arrived but were slacking in quality and were in a poor condition.

No one can deny that this is a big plus but it poses a risk to the seller. This is because buyers can very easily claim that they never received the product and demand a pay back. Use of services such as FedEx or UPS is the best way to verify or prove that the product did actually reach the desired destination.

The Benefits of Using PayPal

Those who use electronic means to transfer money will know of its benefits. It is easy, convenient and doesn’t take a long time to transfer money to the desired place. You can send money to almost anywhere around the world in a limited amount of time.