I sometimes don’t check for longer than that, and I sometimes don’t check my work e-mail even if I’m checking my personal e-mail. I often set up an alternate account for business e-mail when I travel to areas with dubious practices, then kill that account when I get home. I do not agonize about my e-mail when I’m camping.
I have friends and colleagues who are reasonably wired in who check once a week. It really depends on a person’s relationship with e-mail.
Just to add an important piece of advice, given post #14: Kill the PayPal account. Disassociate all financial accounts from it, re-change the password, and close the account. It seems to me that somebody is trying to re-crack the account.
Good advice, and thanks for the reminder: A lot of sites will mail you your password if you forget it; so anyone who has access to your email could get your password. Something to beware of if anyone else has access to your email!
Just a follow up:
PayPal rocks. Their customer service has been wonderful. As of today, the full amount is being returned to me, with the proviso that Starbucks can file a counter claim.
WellsFargo, on the other hand, can fuck off and die. They are so backassward. I don’t know how many times I’ve explained the situation to I don’t know how many CSR, and they still have their heads up their asses. Today I received a letter stating they were being gracious to refund me PART of the claim amount. Um, it’s been resolved through PayPal. I don’t want the claim amount, I want the NSF’s credited back. You don’t want the claim amount? You want to talk about NSF’s on your account? I think you have the wrong department, let me transfer you.
GAH!
So I have my nifty Affidavits of Check Fraud (which weren’t check fraud, but according to some woman at WF I needed to “quit complaining and fill them out, even if they’re not correct”), a long assed personal affidavit of the fuck up, and a bunch of exhibits to show what idiots they are. I will again be taking time off to go to a local branch to go through it ALL, before sending it in to a department that I was told today was the incorrect department to be dealing with… before I was transferred to another CSR. Blargh.
Have you ever used the same password you used on Paypal for other sites? That’s one way someone could have gotten it.
Having stumbled across half a dozen such scenarios and one issue myself. No matter how impossible it might seem. The person who knows a password is the problem 90+% of the time. Things are only secret so long as only 1 person knows. Even without computer access, things tend to get shared among “trusted friends” who then abuse it figuring all you have to do is dispute the charges and nobody really gets hurt in the end except for a bank or some other “big evil corporation.” All it takes is a text message to someone to take care of the transaction while you can prove you are out of town.
Kids will do some really nasty things when they think they can get away with it, especially if it turned into, treating a couple friends to startbucks a couple times a week for months on end. One little credit card end run turns into big popularity bonus points.
This happened to my husband last year. Someone hacked into his Paypal account and ordered a bunch of stuff from Tiger Direct. In his case, we were in town and he did see the e-mails from Paypal…that’s how we knew something was up.
We went to the bank and they suggested contacting our local police department. We did so, and the police were able to determine that the person ordered the stuff, had it shipped UPS next day 10:30 am to our house, waited on our driveway while we were at work and picked up the shipment, signing for it with his own name (well, not my husband’s name, at any rate). The police found no warrants, etc. out for a guy with that name, so the case was closed. Paypal ended up refunding the money, and we canceled the Paypal account and opened a new bank account.
We still have no idea how it happened. My husband says he did not respond to any phishing e-mails. No one else knew the password, not even me.
What puzzles me is the fact that it was to Starbucks. I can imagine a person using $1000 of computer equipment. Who drinks $1000 worth of coffee? (OK, I checked the Starbucks site, and you can get their gift cards online…I guess that’s what happened. Still, that seems like a lot of coffee.)
We’ve essentially stopped using eBay, too, since so much of that is geared towards using Paypal, and I do not trust them.
You buy the gift cards and then resell them.
Who do they sell the cards to? Other criminals? Do people sell them at a discount? “Psst–I’ll sell you this $25 Starbucks card for $20!” If someone not from Starbucks offered to sell me a Starbucks card, I’d look at them like they had two heads. Why would I buy a Starbucks card in a non-gift situation when Starbucks takes cash? What if I decided I’d rather have Caribou Coffee instead?
If the seller is selling it at $0.75 on the dollar, that’s a lot of free coffee. A daily Starbucks drinker probably spends between $1.00 and $5.00 per day on coffee, so $1,000 coffee-bucks could last them as long as four years, and the last year would be free. That’s a pretty freakin’ sweet deal – if the coffee drinker in question also commutes, that offer would let them sustain their luxury coffee habit despite rising gas prices.