Monday, August 1, 2011

Well, that was a PayPal adventure...

Today, my business account got hacked.
I check my email very often, and when I opened it up not an hour ago, I saw "Receipt for your payment to match.com."

Some jerk had used my account to spend over $40 on a month's subscription to match.com, with authorization for automatic renewals. Now, I have nothing against match.com, but that was NOT me. I have a boyfriend, and furthermore, that account is nothing but business. All the money that goes into it is from sales of jewelry. All the money that goes out of it goes toward Etsy fees, supplies, tools and similar things like business cards. That money IS my business. I did NOT want it hacked.

I did a few things. I changed my password and security questions (though there are not many people who both know the name of my childhood best friend AND the name of my first roommate - except my boyfriend and I'm pretty sure he wasn't signing up for match.com - I still changed them just to be safe) and I opened a dispute claim with PayPal. PayPal seems to handle such things with cold ruthless efficiency, which is great in most cases except it didn't inspire in me a lot of confidence that they would believe me. I mean, when you click on the Pay with PayPal button, you log in and then who knows, you know? Nobody can tell if it's the right person or not...and my name is Leo in my PayPal account, not my full first name, so the person could have found that information in my PayPal account, put my name on his picture and still looked plausible to PayPal, and then what would PayPal think?

So, this claim was opened and I had this feeling of impending doom...I mean, after the dispute was officially under way, it said "funds will not be available" - I've heard so many horror stories about trying to get money out of PayPal when something is up with your account on either your end or a buyer's end, and I sort of despaired either of ever seeing my money OR of ever being able to use the account, or the rest of the money that was in it, again.

Well, I called match.com, too. And they handled it much less ruthlessly, efficiently OR coldly. I talked to a very nice man whose name was either Rico or Ricardo - the signal was low and I didn't quite catch it - who said he'd never come across such a thing before, he'd see what he could do. I gave him my details, my PayPal email address, my transaction numbers and what have you...and after a couple brief holds while he talked to his superiors, a cheery lady named Stacy came on and told me all was well. Not only had I been refunded, but my PayPal account and credit card number had been blocked from match.com's systems...so even if I've got some sort of keylogger and the guy has my new password as well, at least he can't use it on THAT anymore...and maybe if he tries it again and I catch him again he'll give up trying to use my account for things - too much effort, I hope.

And the best part of having called match.com is knowing that the guy had his account blocked. I don't know if they'd bother with any sort of investigation into someone using someone else's PayPal account, but you have to admit...for some sort of hacker with at least enough skill to get my username and password together in the same login box, he's kind of an idiot...not only did he not change my passwords or anything, or try to hack my email account as well to prevent me from getting the receipt of payment (lesson learned, by the way - from now on my PayPal email and PayPal account have different passwords), but the thing he bought was something that could be cancelled at any time by the provider...not like if he'd had a TV shipped to him or something...and it was also connected to his name and pictures of him, at least in theory. What was this guy DOING?

Anyway, PayPal immediately closed my case as soon as it detected that the transaction had been refunded, so my account is unlocked and all is right with the world except that there are identity thieves in it. Full day.

Also I may have been bitten by ticks. We'll see how this goes.

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