Yeah, I know it’s been over year since I blogged last. Maybe that will change soon™? Maybe, but for now I just wanna get real here for a few. See this screenshot below? You all should check your PayPal accounts for the same thing I’m gonna talk about here.
These are not as Scammy as you might think…
The Bottom email is first. Paypal saying I’ve added a new address…? Say what? Gotta be a phishing scam, right?
Then PayPal telling me that my preferred payment method has changed too? TWICE…?!?! Turns out these are true PayPal emails.
I hopped on my Computer (The screencap was from my phone) and checked my account. Sure enough, there was a Staten Island NY address that I had no idea about! I’ve never even BEEN to NY! Tried to remove it, and it said it was linked to one of my cards. It wanted me to link another address to the card in question, in order to delete this address. -_-;;
Ok… cancel. (I’m not about to give my address away to someone else by linking my REAL Address like that!) Checked linked cards and there was a new card I had no idea where it came from. It was a CashApp Debit card. -DELETE- Go back to addresses, and delete the NY address finally with no issues.
So I think the idea here is that someone gained access to my account somehow, and linked a ‘renewable’ debit card so that they could transfer money out of my bank to the card they added. I double checked my transactions on PayPal, and nothing was initiated yet. Thankfully!
So yeah… think what you want about your unguessable passwords, but you really should update your security options, just in case!
I took the opportunity to enable 2-factor authentication, changed my PW, and updated my security questions as well! You all should do the same!
Wait, Why didn’t I have two factor authentication on my PayPal yet? The answer is pretty simple, really. I’ve been on PayPal since like… 1999-ish. 2-factor Authentication was a thing for governments and the military, maybe. Definitely wasn’t a civilian thing for the longest time. So I was either lazy when it came out for PayPal, or I just never heard it was a thing?
But I saw it now and got it enabled, and THAT’S the Important Thing!
In any case, I wanted to share this with you all out there and hope you pay better attention to your accounts than I do. Or maybe you might see this and check your own accounts and hopefully save a couple of you finding out how this all works, the hard way.
Someday, I’ll think about what I should do for another blog post.
But that day is not today.
“NOT TODAY, WORDPRESS! NOT TODAY!”
Catch you all later!
~ NetRaven