A warning

[Almaa]

I'm sure most of you know what's happening at the moment, and I would like to warn everyone here who has a Paypal account.

I did some research on the matter, and what I found was pretty disturbing. Sending and receiving money through Paypal is a very dangerous practice. It is a popular target for scams and fraudulent funds. The scary thing is, if someone pays YOU with fraudulent funds, not only is the money taken from you, but your account is flagged for investigation, even though you did NOTHING. They can also freeze your account and hold any other money you had in there previously for 180 days, and may not even return it. An important thing to remember, PAYPAL IS NOT A BANK, it is NOT SUBJECT TO REGULATIONS enforced by regulatory agencies. Basically they can do whatever they want with your money, and you gave them permission to do so when you agreed to the terms and conditions you didn't read.

Making sure your money is in your bank account is not good enough. I suggest you do the following. First of all I suggest ceasing to do business with Paypal or any other similar institution. To do this, you need to withdraw all the money you have on your Paypal account, but NOT MORE THAN $2500 WITHIN A 24 HOUR PERIOD OR OVER THE WEEKEND. If you draw from than $2500 in a 24 hour period your account will be flagged for suspicious activities and subsequently frozen. Once you receive the money from Paypal, make sure it is in your hands or in your bank account, but an account Paypal does not have access to. After this, report any credit cards Paypal knows of as stolen, and change any bank account numbers that Paypal has access to. You must do this BEFORE closing your Paypal account or they will take the money out of your accounts.

Furthermore, NEVER buy anything through Paypal. Your credit card information can be accessed by almost anyone in the company. Many of the scams involve inside jobs and are never caught.

I lost $1099 and the remaining balance in my Paypal account, over $1300, is now in danger. If you want to know why I said in another thread that our society troubles me, this is why. Everyone is so obsessed with money that they don't give a shit how they get it. Technology advances in order to improve the quality of life, but in truth it just makes our life easier by letting us be lazy. Any new technology that is invented is exploited and corrupted. I hope that some of this information will open your eyes and help some of you out, I wish I had known it before I got scammed.

http://www.paypalsucks.com
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[joft]

this guy called paypal and recorded the conversation (it's about 24minutes long i think)

http://marc.perkel.com/audio/paypal2.mp3

[Almaa]

yeah I listened to it, he basically got them to say that their policy is that they can do whatever they want with your money, and said that he had a right to record it because the voice at the beginning said "This call may be recorded" lol

[joft]

btw this isn't just our society it's greed and it transcends all societies. but I know what you mean. The attitude they have that their whole company is based on the idea of looking for any remote reason they can think of to freeze your account and take your money is just sick...

[vudoodoodoo]

THis shit happened to me before. I sold an MD player on ebay. Some guy sent me money w/ stolen CC. Months later, I log into my paypal acoount to find it frozen. You can't do anything w/ your account at all when it's been frozen. You can't close it, you can't remove any CC or bank info. You can't send money, BUT YOU CAN RECIEVE MONEY. They let you recieve money, so they can freeze and keep money people happen to send to you. Assholes.
Luckily by this time, I had alraedy removed the MD player money from my PP account. I just had a -$200. I just said "screw you" to PP. I never heard anything back from them after that.
Paypal is OK if you are careful. Don't trust other people and don't trust paypal to help you when a buyer sends you fraudelant money.