PayPal advice needed

Off-Topic Chat
1

Ok, I need some advice. I got notification that my PayPal account was limited due to some suspicious activity on it. So I tried to login, but I could not, because they could not verify my phone number (although it is registered to my name with my operator, but hey, its not English or US phone number and maybe who cares about small country like CZ). SO I had to pay the internation call for the customer service, who helped me to get some access, but said there is no way they can tell me what happened.

I logged in my account and I could not see any suspicious activity, but notification, that PayPal wants my passport photocopy. Plus copy of ID with my name, address and photo, which I suspect would mean my national identity card. And I admit I am not comfortable providing this, since it can be used against me.

Plus it was made clear, that they may not even release the account afterwards - which could just be normal warning, or not.

So now the question is, did someone have similar experience? Should go ahead and try to release it, or just say hmmm ok. I dont care?

The thing is that most sites in CZ do not accept Paypal or they accept other payment, including bank transfer. So the only site I used it for was ebay, like 3 or 4 times a year, but I guess, I would/could go without that.

2

Do not give them any information. It sounds to me like you gor a phishing email. People pretend that they are emailing from Paypal saying that there is a issue with your account and that you need to log in to fix it. The link you clicke don via the email was probably not a link to paypal themselves but to another address, if you tried to log in via that page then the people who are trying to scam you may now have your paypal information.

I would contact paypal directly and tell them that you received a suspicious email from someone you thought was paypal and tried logging in, hopefully they can help you change your password and confirm that your account is ok.

Paypal would never ever ask you for your passport. Do not call the number that is on the email you received. You are better off going to https://www.paypal.com/cz/webapps/mpp/home

and contacting them va the phone number they provide, That link I posted is the real paypal site.

If you double check the email you received and look at the address it was actually sent from it will probably show as something other than paypal. I get these emails all the time.

3

You want to forward those to spoof@paypal. They appreciate people passing on the spam. I get them from Amazon too.they're a right nuisance!!

4

Actually, this I was told by the PayPal lady on the phone and I took the phone from the paypal website. and they want me to upload it into the PayPal website. And when I login to the regular paypal website, it does say upload an id with your phone and address shown.

But I am still very uneasy about it. Especially given their silence about the reason for suspensiion. I triple checked every transaction on my bank account and recognized every of them in last 3 months. CHecked every activitity on paypal and nothing.

The only thing I could think of is that someone stole my PayPal details, or tried to repeatably login with wrong password.

5

And yes, for the record, on paypal website, the account is limited to the point I can barely access it. EVery time it gives me message, I must receive automatic call or text message and carrier charge will apply. But then gives error that the number is not recognized (the number is correct and registered to my name). And I struggle to even view the account.

6

Laveila wrote:

Actually, this I was told by the PayPal lady on the phone and I took the phone from the paypal website. and they want me to upload it into the PayPal website. And when I login to the regular paypal website, it does say upload an id with your phone and address shown.

But I am still very uneasy about it. Especially given their silence about the reason for suspensiion. I triple checked every transaction on my bank account and recognized every of them in last 3 months. CHecked every activitity on paypal and nothing.

The only thing I could think of is that someone stole my PayPal details, or tried to repeatably login with wrong password.

This is so weird... When it comes to PayPal I might give them my ID details if they told me why they needed them. There are some questions that have to be answered:

- Is this supposed to be some new, general policy to make the payments more secure? (I imagine this might happen, seeing that even Lovehoney have introduced more stringent payment authorization - last time I was shopping with the company I had to submit the verification code that got sent to my phone.)

- Is this some policy that is applied to customers form specific countries/ to customers who have their accounts with some specific banks/bank groups? (That might happen, provided there was a dramatic rise in suspicous activities in orders coming from certain countries - once, customer service of one UK online store told me that they believed me my order got lost but that there were some countries - NOT the Czech Rep, by the way - that they were were starting to feel... reluctant about, because of increasing number of phoney orders - in theory, this could happen on the "larger scale" than was the experience of one small store, and even a big company like PayPal might be getting suspicous. And someone who might make their transactions appear to be related to some bank in the Czech Rep - they may be Czech, but seeing what some hackers and cheats can be like, they may just as well be Australians, Russians, Brazilians (NOT accusing anyone, by the way, these are absolutely random nationalities) or whatever nationality you can think of - may have been giving PayPal a hard time...)

- Did some online store/someone on ebay/whoever consider your account to be suspicious? (If so, why?)

- Did someone try to login into your account, attempting to make some fishy transactions?

And I would demand answers to these questions - if they refused to give me those answers, I would cancel my account.

7

Yep, it doesn't sound right to me either. I would not upload my IDs, if there really isn't any other solution, I would just try to delete my account or any personal info related to it and then make a new one.

8

Laveila wrote:

Actually, this I was told by the PayPal lady on the phone and I took the phone from the paypal website. and they want me to upload it into the PayPal website. And when I login to the regular paypal website, it does say upload an id with your phone and address shown.

But I am still very uneasy about it. Especially given their silence about the reason for suspensiion. I triple checked every transaction on my bank account and recognized every of them in last 3 months. CHecked every activitity on paypal and nothing.

The only thing I could think of is that someone stole my PayPal details, or tried to repeatably login with wrong password.

They won't tell you anything more than there has been suspicious activity, I am not even sure they can because it is a security issue for them to do so. There are so many things that fall under suspicious activity and trigger their need to verify your identity, it was probably your own activity was different in some way (using paypal more than usual, using it a few times in a short space of time, using different sites, anything different) or it could be something to do with your phone number, since that's not being recognised. You're flogging a dead horse trying to get them to specify exactly why they want to verify your identity though. I've had it before for no particular reason other than I'd been spending more, as has my father when he hit his recieving limit, not that they told us that ;)

Bear in mind paypal do consider themselves an online bank and so follow many of the same regulations banks do, including verifying peoples identity. It's normal if your account has been flagged, which is normal if anything has changed.

If you're going through the actual paypal website there's no reason to assume your details wouldn't be secure. Scams are not able to make the notification appear on your actual paypal account, so I would rest easy that it is indeed paypal asking for your details if you're getting that notification upon logging in :)

9

Agree with others here. Never give them the details unless they specifically tell you why they want them and I would make sure I am speaking to a specific person who has emailed me directly and I have their contact details.

If in doubt, just open a new paypal account.

Maybe speak to your bank as well and advise them of suspected fraudulent activity linked to your paypal account as this would be linked to your bank

10

Well I am very reluctant to give them any details and I can barely even access the account since they claim they are not able to verify my Czech phone number.

I am also not aware of any increased activity. And all transection were small. Biggest was about 12 pounds. So nothing major. And that was half year ago. Last one was about 5 dollars. And If they limited it because I did one transaction for two subsequent months, then they waited strangely for over a month since last transection to make the move. Which just makes it even more weird.

Btw I am not allowed to cancel the account. I am not allowed to take money if there were any (there are none, balance is zero). I am no allowed to even update my details. Which really makes the situation ridiculous.
Btw yes the bank can also be strict but when my details were stolen once for my card from the system, the bank called me on my registered number, told me what happened and how they will sort it. Yes I had to answer lot of security questions I was told what happened and that someone tried to use my card because there was leak of the data. And they helped. Not be like ooh we cannot tell you anything but we just limited your account.

Oh well. The cherry on top of this cake is that due to the issue with them not able to verify the phone number (which my bank is normally using) is that it took me a week to figure way round the block and to view if something was wrong. Now this does not work again so i have no access whatsoever

11

I had this happen before and provided my pasport and proof of address as requested. It turns out sombody brought smthing off me from ebay and requested a refund from PayPal saying they had not received the item despite having proof of postage that was signed for.

As i did not have any funds in my account at the time they sent me a letter requesting the amount they had refunded the customer to be paid.

Could it be somthing similar to this?

12

Sounds almost as dodgy as the real paypal terms ... they have amazing small print saying they can pretty much do whatever they like when they like

13

NEvans wrote:

I had this happen before and provided my pasport and proof of address as requested. It turns out sombody brought smthing off me from ebay and requested a refund from PayPal saying they had not received the item despite having proof of postage that was signed for.

As i did not have any funds in my account at the time they sent me a letter requesting the amount they had refunded the customer to be paid.

Could it be somthing similar to this?

Definitely not. I never sold anything on ebay. I only bought items and always paid them immediately.

I dont sell on any other website either. I did sell few photos years ago, but not on page using paypal and that was like 8 years ago. Unless you count the books I took to second hand book shop and sold it there, but obviously, this was not via PayPal.

14

Here in the UK you can be "paypal verified" ie you live where you say, your bank account is yours and verified by certain payments, giving you and sellers more protection.

NEVER follow any links in emails, always type in the FULL paypal address into your browser, all paypal emails will have your full name on, look to see what the sender info is like "PayPail" or other such fakes, have a long password like a memorable saying(IloveLH2015, say), not random numbers/etc that are hard to remember, if in doubt, beleive its fake.

It's possible someone has taken your log in name and were trying different passwords, without success?

Make sure you PC is fully updated (software), and have proper antivirus software.

15

Quiet ones are worse! wrote:

Here in the UK you can be "paypal verified" ie you live where you say, your bank account is yours and verified by certain payments, giving you and sellers more protection.

NEVER follow any links in emails, always type in the FULL paypal address into your browser, all paypal emails will have your full name on, look to see what the sender info is like "PayPail" or other such fakes, have a long password like a memorable saying(IloveLH2015, say), not random numbers/etc that are hard to remember, if in doubt, beleive its fake.

It's possible someone has taken your log in name and were trying different passwords, without success?

Make sure you PC is fully updated (software), and have proper antivirus software.

Ok,  I already said I logged into the normal regular PayPal page and got the number from there. So obviously, yes I did that and yes, it is on the official PayPal website I get this limitation.

As for computer security, I work as project manager in IT department. So yes, the PC has that up to date and I ran a scan after this happened and nothing showed up and no other account issue showed up so far after 2 weeks.

I could not find anything on the PayPal website suggesting it was used to pay for something. I do not know if failed attempt would show up. I have separate card for online payments which has low monthly limits compared to the main card. I only enable the main card if I want to use it to pay for something more expensive and then disable it again immediately for payments over the internet. But even this smaller limit is like 400 dollars a month so I guess it would not fail unless it was extremely expensive.

16

Just for your information, PayPal now blocks me out of my account completely, so I cannot even check if there is an activity, unless I provide them all the documentation that they demand. I admit I may just say bye to them, as I am not happy about this.

Pity I cannot cancel the account.

17

Paypal do this quite routinely: and if you want to use your account, you need to provide the information. Go over to the eBay UK community discussion threads, and ask there if you're not feeling confident - but it's normal and not a problem, and they will tell you a secure address etc to send it to.

Sometimes, it's just that you've used your account over a certain number of times that is "suspicious": and it can be very few if you haven't verified your bank account and card details etc

18

Haven't read all, but if it is a link from an email, it's dodgy, log into PP on your account.

19

Never use any links that are sent. They are potential traps for information etc.

Sounds very much like a scam to me as I had a similar request last year . Ignore it and report it .

20

Laveila has said quite a few times already that she verified this was genuine on the actual Paypal website and not a scam email.