PayPal Account Hacked!

[Erich_870]

Uggg, just found out my PayPal account was hacked on Feb 1st. :chair:

Today the scum used my debit card info to try to withdraw $1 from my checking account. I’ve called PayPal and filed a claim through them and I’ve had my check card cancelled, but the thing is that my PayPal account had my checking account info as well, so my wife is heading down to the local branch to see if we have to totally switch account numbers now.

I caught on to the hack when I noticed the second line in my address said some appt. in Mass. The PayPal fraud guy was able to tell when on the 1st the hacker logged on and could see the address (I had changed it before I understood what had happened) :loser:

Anyway, check your accounts and make sure nothing looks funny. Our bank said they’ve been getting a bunch of calls reciently that this is happing to a bunch of people. The wife wants to ban me from having PayPal now, :loser: :loser:

Erich

[slosurfer]

That sucks! :( Good catch though! :thumbup:

[Good Times]

How was your pp account hacked? Did they know your password to your account or was it an alternative method of attack?

Curious :)

thanks!

[Erich_870]

How was your pp account hacked? Did they know your password to your account or was it an alternative method of attack?

Curious :)

thanks!


Well, the fraud guy I talked to said it had something to do with my email account, but I don’t know how that works. He was able to see the IP address the scum used and where they were.

That’s all I know… :tapedshut:

Erich

[Good Times]

Was your password a simple generic one that's easy to figure out? There's a bunch of ways to connect to PP and maybe they sent thousands of email/pw combinations into PP to gain access.

That's my guess. All of my pw's are pretty f'd up... enough that I have trouble just typing it in the first few times! haha

[Erich_870]

Was your password a simple generic one that's easy to figure out? There's a bunch of ways to connect to PP and maybe they sent thousands of email/pw combinations into PP to gain access.

That's my guess. All of my pw's are pretty f'd up... enough that I have trouble just typing it in the first few times! haha




I wouldn't say it's too easy, but it was 8 digits with two words in it and one number. I don't know how that ranks in security level, but I guess I should make a new one that has a bunch of variability.

[Good Times]

Here's a good recommendations:

Upper and Lower Case letters
Numbers
Special Characters (i.e. !@#$%^&*() etc)

The password should not make a word or a phrase utilizing any combination above. This means nothing like this either:

I17731!t3 = I'm Elite

Although it might be a pretty secure password it's really not cuz programmers can convert elite text just as fast as you just typing in "I'm Elite".

Go figure huh.

My pw's look like this now.

$.ja!C8=H23vA

It's basically just typing a bunch of nonsense :D

[Erich_870]

Thanks for the great tips!

I'd feel better knowing that they tried thousands of times than if I did something stupid and basically gave them my password, lol :loser:

Erich

[CJM]

Most of the time its from either dealing with someone thru paypal or one of those bogus emails that asks you to enter stuff so they can verify blah blah and so forth.

[Erich_870]

Most of the time its from either dealing with someone thru paypal or one of those bogus emails that asks you to enter stuff so they can verify blah blah and so forth.


I don't recall any phishing emails, but I did purchase a politically charged movie called "Not Evil Just Wrong", so who knows, maybe an environmental extremist is behind it, lol.

Erich

[CJM]

One never knows.

I recently had my CC charged for stuff I didnt buy, turned out to be some adult website thing and I canceled it MULTIPLE after looking it up times and yet multiple charges kept showing up. Apparently tons more people had the same info, someone stole the CC # and went to town basically.

[Erich_870]

One never knows.

I recently had my CC charged for stuff I didnt buy, turned out to be some adult website thing and I canceled it MULTIPLE after looking it up times and yet multiple charges kept showing up. Apparently tons more people had the same info, someone stole the CC # and went to town basically.


Riiiiight. I tried that one with my wife and she didn't buy it... LOL

J/K I've heard of the same thing.

Erich

[CJM]

It was amazing to find sooo many people got charged and couldnt figure out wtf was going on. You go to the website to cancel it and wtf it doesnt even have your info if you type things like your CC and email in YET you call the number and bingo they have it??

Plus it was like 3 different sites and all of them looked the same except for the name.

[Obi..]

*Never put in your account info. Always use a low based debit account, and every year or so, simply "lose" your card and call your bank for a replacement. Easiest and actually one of the most beneficial means to protect yourself in doing business online.

..or do like I do, only have at most 5-6 entities you do online business with, and know where they all work and what it is they do.

[Lee]

My pw's look like this now.

$.ja!C8=H23vA

thanks!!

now what does your social sec # look like? :flipoff:

[Erich_870]

*Never put in your account info. Always use a low based debit account, and every year or so, simply "lose" your card and call your bank for a replacement. Easiest and actually one of the most beneficial means to protect yourself in doing business online.


That's where I screwed up. I should have just had my debit card number on it, but I thought I needed to confirm the account at some point. Anyway, lesson learned. If I reopen an account sometime, it will only have a low limit credit card.

Erich

[CJM]

Ive taken to buying those giftcards that work like CC and using them alot of the time. Only inconvenience is I need to go buy them to use them.

[arjan]

I recently forgot my windows password (laptop has fingerprint reader for logging in) and used one of the popular boot disks to recover it.
After 15-20 mins it came back it couldn't find it.
I usually take a word easy to remember (ultimateyota for eg) and make something like $(ultimateyota)$ . The dollarsign, bracket combo will throw off dictionary attacks etc. You can use a variety of special symbols to make something that's still easy to remember. (and no, I don't use $(password)$, mine is a bit more complicated ;) )