PayPal is a very convenient payment system for online shopping and sending money to friends and family. It is secure, and most of the time, there are very few issues.
However, they face the same threats as other financial institutions, and they post plenty of security guidelines to help users avoid online scams.
If you have or are about to open a PayPal account, here, you can learn a bit more about reporting scammers, and what to do if you are a victim.
How Do I Report a Scammer on PayPal?
PayPal use cookies, web beacons, and similar technologies for storing information to help provide an enhanced user experience.
What they won’t do is use any applications, tools or messaging for advertising purposes, that they send to a general email user. If you receive any such suspicious email, it is probably fake and one of the may PayPal scams going around.
If you receive any suspicious email (“phishing“) that tries to obtain your private, sensitive data, do the following:
- Forward the entire email to spoof@paypal.com
- Do not alter the subject line or forward the message as an attachment
Delete the suspicious email from your inbox
Can You Get Your Money Back from PayPal if You get Scammed?
It can vary how you think you are scammed to how you deal with a fraudulent transaction.
If you feel you are a victim of a scammer hacking your account, you do need to identify forged emails or uncertain activity. If this happens, then once you can confirm you are a victim, you will be reimbursed.
If you are a buyer and find a seller scams you, you can report a dispute on your PayPal dashboard. It can take around 5 to 10 days, and after an investigation, you should get your money back.
How Do I Report Someone on PayPal?
You have two other ways of reporting unscrupulous people. It can be from suspicious websites or a suspicious email.
If you think you have found spoof websites, they may look unusual or can be very good replicas.
However, if you spot the URL doesn’t sound right, this can give it right away. It is similar to the PayPal sites, services, applications, tools, or messaging that have a strange address and are copies.
If this is the case, copy the URL of the website, paste it into an email, and send it to spoof@paypal.com.
In the case of a suspicious text message, you can report this to your carrier by forwarding the text message to “7726.” However, some phone service providers may offer a different method to report a problem.
Does PayPal Investigate Fraud?
PayPal fraud is taken seriously, and they go to long lengths to protect their users. In most cases, the easiest way for PayPal scam reporting is to head to the Resolution Center, log into your account and click on the link at the bottom to “Report a Problem” to alert the customer service.
Securing Your PayPal Account
One way to help stamp out being a victim of fraud is to use browser extensions for privacy. The simple browser extensions can stop many suspicious sites and many other things that may use cookies to get your information.
However, one of the best ways to cut out a lot of this is to use a VPN for privacy, these encrypt all your data, so any hackers or cyber criminals can’t see where you connect, or what data you send, such as your login details to PayPal.
