Fraud - a new source of income
Last Wednesday Paypal handily informed me that they thought my account had been fraudulently accessed and they were putting a block on all transactions.
Very helpful you might think but it hadn't stopped £611.73 being taken from my account (and therefore debited to my bank account). Thankfully, and somewhat rarely, I actually had that much money in my bank account and wasn't overdrawn or charged anything. I;m not sure whether this was luck or whether the hackers were somehow able to test what could be withdrawn and went right to the limit (I had £0.34 left at one point).
All very annoying and even more so when I realised that, as it was a bank account, I can't just cancel the transaction as you can with a credit card and therefore had to wait for Paypal to go through their torturous dispute resolution process which involves emailing the "seller" on a number of occasions for an explanation as to why they had my money. Normally, not an unreasonable step but as they were the ones who had spotted the fraudulent activity, I was a bit peeved about the length of time it was going to take.
Anyway, all resolved today and the money is back in my paypal account and now on its way to my bank account (another 3-4 working days). However, some of the funds taken last week were in US$ - $434 to be exact. Last week when taken from my bank account, they needed to take £274.73 from the account to make $434. This week, due to good old Mervyn King and the impending collapse of sterling, I will get back £287.18.
I can't say that being the victim of fraud is a great experience but an accidental profit of over £12 does at least provide me with some recompense and amusement at Paypal's expense.
Lesson to be learned though; Paypal is all nice and secure and avoids giving your bank details to lots of potentially nasty sites but that protection is worth fuck all if your Paypal account gets hacked.