Hardly seems fair to claim that "PayPal is dangerous" when the email you replied to actually came from someone else . . this kind of phishing is common and completely unrelated to PayPal

Rich

Rich ([email protected]),
It looked like the same emails paypal had sent me. It had their logo. I had NO idea it was from someone other than paypal.

This is indeed called "phishing", and it is not coming directly from PayPal. E-mails like this are from people trying to gain access to your personal information. I have received e-mails like this APPEARING to be from eBay, Citibank, Amazon, PayPal and others. If you receive e-mails asking for account numbers, passwords etc., do not answer them. If you do business with the company and think that the e-mail is "real" call them directly to verify or log in through the company's "front door" site as robespierre suggested. It is PayPal's policy as well as eBay's to never ask for your account info via e-mail.

Thanks for sharing your story here, you may have prevented others from making the same mistake!

<b>PayPal is dangerous.</b>

Your agreement with them allows them to dip into your bank account any time they want to, whether their justification for doing so has any validity or not.

If that isn't &quot;dangerous,&quot; I don't know what you'd call it.

I received a similar email with the eBay logo.

I forwarded it to them and they responded that it wasn't from thrm.

When eBay sends an email to a member, they also place a duplicate in that members account mail box.

So, if you receive an eMail that appears to be from eBay, before responding go to your eBay account and check your messages.

LoveItaly is correct, never &quot;opt&quot; out of these phony address sites as you DO end up verifying your e-mail address and will end up on other e-mail address lists. Just delete them and ignore them!

My PayPal account only allows a charge to my credit card . . which can very easily be disputed.

Janda . . my only point is that is does not seem fair to blame PayPal for a sucker punch from someones else . . based on my email today, I could claim that CitiBank, Bank Of America and Chase are dangerous

I sell things on eBay. You have to have a bank account to do that through PayPal.

Now I only accept credit cards for payment. I figure PayPal's siezure of my $475 has cost them five or six times that in the interim.

I C

I have gotten several of these recently from PayPal and also quite a few recently from Chase bank. Very scary!

I have an Earthlink account and I get these bogus emails all the time wanting all my personal information otherwise my account will be closed. They even include the logo. You just don't know who to trust these days.

Robespierre -

You do need a bank account to sell. But you can still have the option to buy with your cc - and get their protection.

If it was a sale that was disputed and PayPal decided the buyer was correct and took back the money from your bank account - you can still take them to small claims court. (I know they say you can;t - but that's like garages that say they're not responsible for your car when you leave it - they are just by virtue of accepting it for pay - no matter what they say on the ticket stub.)

nytraveler and Robespierre--

I'm getting the impression that they took money from Robespierre for a sale not related to Robespierre's account? A totally non-related transaction?

If that's the case, that's REALLY scary. I'm considering paying a security deposit for a summer sublease through paypal, and now I'm really hesitating--perhaps I should totally untie my bank account from paypal.

However, my biggest concern is the OP reporting that Paypal is danderous.

The last thing I need is dandruff.

I think &quot;danderous&quot; was just a way of saying the PayPal people are flakey.

Thanks for the clarification Neopolitan. :-)

I was seriously concerned for my scalp health. WHEW.

(But I am truly interested to learn more about what happened to Robespierre and how much at risk we are for that sort of mistake being inflicted upon us)

I sold a computer to a lady, and she sold it to someone else under false pretenses (not as advertised). She paid me $475 for it. When the buyer complained, they took the $475 out of my account. So I was out either the computer or the money, depending on how you look at it.

I just received an Email from Paypal, and have received several from Ebay. I don't have an account at either. I wanted to alert Ebay to this, but there is no way of contacting them without registering first, which I do not want to do.

Ooby, I was wondering how long it would take someone to bring up the danderousness of the thread :)

As for Paypal, I use it several times a month, for years now, and have NEVER had a problem with them. I have twice had problems with ebay sellers, and both times were able to work things out, with the help of both ebay and paypal.

GreenDragon, I had used eBay and PayPal several times a month for years without any problem.

Then they took my $475. See what I mean?