SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the Email-confirmation-just-slows-us-down dept.
Recently, I received an email from PayPal asking to confirm my email address for a new account. Since I do not use PayPal, I figured it was a phishing scam and ignored it. However, I started getting other emails, which included updated address information and a sales transaction. The name for the account was not mine (but the first name was the same), and the address was in a different state.
Looking at the raw email headers, it appeared to be legitimate emails from PayPal. What confused me was that I never responded to the email confirmation message, so why would PayPal allow a person to perform a transaction without confirmation? Since the email in question is a Gmail account, I have had since Gmail beta, I wondered if my account had been compromised, but there is nothing to indicate that. Another idea was someone could be intercepting/listening to my email, but that is a lot of effort to do for a simple paypal transaction.
The likely scenario is PayPal failed to check the account email and suspend any further actions until the address is confirmed. PayPal sends an email to confirm the address, but does not bother to wait for the confirmation.
I called PayPal support, and after some time and educating the support person on how technology works, the person put in a support ticket. Not sure if the problem will ever get resolved or if PayPal will admit they have a problem. As of now, I have not received any more emails. I will have to decide if it is worth my time to call support again and get the disposition of the ticket.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @03:51PM (6 children)
I get regular emails from them for all sorts of wonderful things they can do for me. I keep going into my account an making sure all the email prefs are unchecked, but they apparently ignore those settings.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @04:09PM (3 children)
You have a paypal account? Ha, ha. That's your problem, right there.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Tuesday April 18 2017, @04:43PM (2 children)
Kind of difficult to buy or sell on eBay without one. I remember when you could send money orders directly to the seller. Then eBay bought PayPal and made them the only option. People tried to use Google Wallet on auctions but eBay would cancel them.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @04:55PM (1 child)
Then don't use ebay if it requires to use scammers like paypal.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday April 19 2017, @04:39AM
Great. Mind mentioning some alternatives, especially ones you've had experience with?
I know of Etsy, Ruby Lane, Craigslist, Offer Up, Let Go, Ebid, and Bonanza. Apparently Amazon and Newegg have also moved into this area. On Etsy, I've had one sale and 3 other items that did not sell. Been a long time since I looked at Ebid, but I remember very well that they had this lifetime membership option which they could kill in an instant if they feel you violated their terms of service, no appeal, no refund. So I stayed away from Ebid.
Shipping is incredibly expensive. Big sellers can negotiate discounts of 80% from UPS and FedEx, little guys can't. Cost me $15 to ship a box a bit smaller than a Mini ATX case. They've made it more complicated to figure out the shipping costs. Used to be purely weight based, now they're doing this dimension based pricing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @04:21PM (1 child)
I've had a paypal account since the late 90s and I don't get that crap.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @04:53PM
Likely these messages only come to people who don't already have a paypal account tied to their email.
And now that makes me think, in addition to being a way for a malicious user to use a paypal account not tied to the email it could also be a way for them to try and get money destined to other people. You can send money on paypal to any email address regardless of if it has an account set up or not, and if not it will just send an email saying to create an account. I've had coworkers (paying for picked up lunches, etc) send a paypal to me without confirming which of my multiple email addresses to use (and so now I have my PP account tied to all of them). It's possible a spammer could get free money by setting up paypal accounts tied to other people's email addresses.