20/06/2025
I thought I was secure using PayPal for our business. Somehow a hacker logged in our business paypal and submitted 3 payments to this unknown business for an unknown product. On my first call to PayPal the representative told me she could not stop the pending transactions and all we could do was open an investigation to see if it "qualified" as fraud based on there criteria they uncovered during the investigation. She had no way of stopping these transactions which would have totalled close to $3000cdn to come out of our business account. I asked her what criteria they would be looking for and she said, "if the customer took proper actions to keep their account secure", or "what type of device was used and where it logged in from". Yah that sounded like a chance that they could decide I didn't secure my account and deny me a reverse of these charges. I always log out of my PayPal and don't actually use it very often. -the occasional customer uses it to pay. As I'm freaking out on how to stop this from going thru my, I went to my bank Scotiabank on Dunbar. They provided excellent and immediate service. I asked them to transfer all the funds out or freeze my account. The business manager responded quickly and opened a new business account and froze the existing one.
I put this out as a warning, check your passwords in Google-erase all data. You can also go monitor the "dark web" in your Google account to see if your information is circulating. And sure enough mine was twice the 2 days leading up to this. So concerning. The fraud is so bad right now. And for small businesses this is just not an option to "wait and see" as PayPal tried to say. When I called them back a few hrs later to tell them I have taken steps to secure my funds and the payment will not be going thru-and what will happen now, the new representative told me she would look into it. Came back 10 min. Later and said not to worry as the transactions have been flagged as fraud. However when I vew my PayPal, it still says "pending, under review". I asked them if they would investigation this fake business or report it and the first person said no. I will be reporting this to the governments cyber crime hotline, hopefully to help prevent further theft from people. Be careful friends.
Change your passwords. Delete all card numbers that may be stored somewhere. I still do not understand how they got my password. I'm looking into a paid cyber security but not sure where to start. If anyone has thoughts or advise, I'd appreciate it. Also, I'm deleting and closing my PayPal account. Not cool. Telling me "we are just a payment processor and have no way to stop a pending transaction ". Really. ? Very strange, yah no thanks.
