I have been reporting to you about PayPal scams for many years and there is a good reason for that. PayPal is a popular payment service used by many people particularly with eBay. Anything popular with the public is popular with scammers. Recently a new PayPal scam has surfaced in which scammers are hacking into the accounts of PayPal users that have open accounts, but are not active users. The scammers hack into the accounts by guessing the password or by using passwords that they purchase from other criminals on the Dark Web where hackers sell passwords harvested from data breaches of large companies. Too many people use the same password for all of their accounts. The scammers then use the victim’s PayPal account to make multiple purchases. Often they will even change the security question and password to make it difficult for the real account owner to access his or her account thereby providing the scammer with more time to perpetrate their scam.
TIPS
There are a number of things that you can do to protect yourself from this scam. First and foremost, you should have a strong and unique password for each of your online accounts. This is not as difficult as it may seem. To learn more click on the Search for Scams tab at the top of the first page of Scamicide.com and then insert the words “strong passwords” where it says “Search here.”
PayPal also uses dual factor authentication which they call the PayPal Security Key by which a code is sent to your smartphone whenever you attempt to log on to your account. This onetime code is required along with your password to gain access to your account.
Additionally, you should also make sure that any bank account you link to your PayPal account is one in which you keep only a small balance to avoid problems in case you are hacked.
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