I don’t fall for scammers. Period. You cannot successfully phish me, spam me, sell me vinyl siding, get me to join “[Blank] of the Month club”, recruit me into Scientology, or any other number of things. So I am dumbfounded as to how someone managed to get into my PayPal account today and tried to wreak havoc which, luckily, PayPal caught before any real damage could be done. I didn’t have the world’s strongest password on it (this is where the slightly less-vitriolic pitting of me comes in) but still, even if someone did a brute-force attack, it would have taken time and I have no idea why the account wouldn’t have been locked out long before he got to it. So unless they caught it in the clear the one time I was dumb enough to access PayPal from the wifi on campus (which would mean I might actually know or go to school with the asshole) I’m not sure how it got through. And I thought PayPal uses SSL, which should mean that nothing should have been in the clear to begin with, correct?
But still, there was a credit card linked to the account. It is not my credit card, it is actually my parents. A long time ago (like a couple years) Mom wanted to buy something off eBay and it was easier to use my eBay and PayPal accounts to get it (I’m pretty sure it was BuyItNow anyway) than for her to spend all the time it takes to get both accounts up and verified. I forgot to delete the card afterward, but since I never use PayPal and would never use that card it didn’t seem like a big deal. So this asshole tries to make a nearly $2,000 transfer off that credit card. Actually, first he tried to pull it out of my checking account, which failed mightily as I’m a poor grad student and it’s been a long time since I had that much money in my account. So then he tried my parents’ credit card, which worked (hell, I don’t even have a credit card with a $2,000 limit) for a little bit, until PayPal caught it and managed to reverse anything. I didn’t know any of this had happened until I checked my email this evening. Then, of course, I was on the phone with my parents telling them what had apparently happened and that they should go ahead and call the bank (USAA in this case) and probably cancel that card. So I’ve managed to make life more difficult for them thanks to my own stupidity, even if all they have to do is get a new credit card sent a bit sooner than normal (they told me it’s supposed to expire at the end of August anyway.)
I’m going to call the bank my checking account is with tomorrow and make sure everything is okay there as well. It looks okay online and I don’t see the failed attempt, but I just want to make sure. So I’ve done all I can do and it looks like everything will be all right, but I’m fucking pissed off at myself for somehow making such a thing possible in the first place.