I’ve just had my PayPal account hacked

I had a phone call from PayPal, and of course I was suspicious about it as I know some will phone, but they did not ask me for any personal information (no asking me for my username/password etc) - in fact he told me about a couple of transactions that I knew about - I use PayPal to sell stuff from a web site, and they not only told me the amount for a sale from today, but also what it was for. Someone seems to have hit my account for $100.

Anyway, I was advised to run a scan of my computers, log in and reset passwords. They locked my account down and reversed the transaction. I get the feeling that it’s not an isolated incident - it’s a Thailand pre-paid phone card site judging by the information I have on my account. And, yes, a payment for $100 was out, and there is a reversal put in, so I have lost no money.

And, yes, I always type the PayPal address in manually, and I never click on PayPal links.

Anyway, new (hopefully stronger) password in now in place. Just feel a bit shook up by that. I’ve been using PayPal for years, and this is the first incident I have had. I’ll be keeping a steely eye on my PayPal account over the next few days. I can only assume that someone used brute force to break my password.

It's good to see that Paypal are keeping an eye on things like this and sorting them out when they happen.

Now I have to check mine ,thanks for the heads up.

Just went and emailed a client about this as they use PayPal extensively, and may not know that this is happening (I have his home email as well as his work - hopefully he will pick up his email tonight and do check before tomorrow). I got a shed load of PayPal emails telling me about these transactions and that they are locking me down, etc..

As I said - I feel a bit shaken by this (dunno why really - I have not lost any money), and I have done sensible things like change my password. When the phone rang, and the caller said who he was, the first thing I thought was “prove it”. He did - he gave me information that would be hard to nail down. I think there has been a mass skim or a pattern of behaviour which flagged a problem.

So, good on PayPal for picking this up and dealing with it so promptly.

lacloss - now would be a good time to change your password