PayPal Break-In

[Ñæ‡ÐØg]

I heard today that PayPal's database was broken into & a lot of credit/debit card account numbers were stolen. Is this true?

[John Koch-Northrup]

I didn't notice this forum post earlier - however, we talked about it in email to each other.... so here's what I said for anyone else interested in this:

I just did various searches about paypal on google news and couldn't find anything recent that was a major database hack. Tons of paypal articles - and some notes about them beefing up security. Also, plenty of situations where people have given over there information through email phishing to bad people who ripped them off. But that's normal everyday phishing (I'm getting about 20 emails a day telling me I've underpayed the U.S. Internal Revenue Service on my taxes... irritating...)

If you have an article - I'd love to read it!

On the other hand - there was a *massive* database break in for the major credit card processor - I think that was over the summer. Not the first time it's happened.

2nd message:

Cool - I don't think Paypal should be something that holds you back from purchasing. It's about as reliable as just about any other form of payment out there... I have a friend that works for Paypal and used to do web security programming for banks - I haven't heard about anything major.

Are you familiar with "phishing"? That's where someone sends you an email from your bank or credit card company or paypal or any other website - that asks you to log in and "confirm your account information" - unfortunately - it's not the real website and you're setting yourself up for identity theft or stolen cards. A really bad one is the Anti-Virus 2009 virus - it gets on your computer and then tries to get you to buy the software... once you pay for it... well - yeah - things go bad. I hate to say that my wife's cousin actually did that - and had her bank account drained because she used her debit card. Sad.

I'm rambling... I'll stop.

John

Note: I'm no longer part of AtmoWorks... but I have absolutely no problem answering questions or helping out when I can. I'll always forward on to John, Matt, or Geoff if I don't know the answer. And of course - I always love to talk about music.