Paypal’s Policies Support Scammers – And They Couldn’t Care Less

PayPal claims that it is the most secure way to send money. That’s not really true as it was reported last month that in 2021 alone, online payment fraud Users spent more than $20 billion on platforms like PayPal 

The service also now accounts for 10 percent of all money laundering by criminals.

While the latter figure is alarming, it doesn’t actually impact average Americans, who are increasingly being scammed on services such as PayPal.

Fell Victim

Just this week, this reporter – who has covered cybersecurity and online scams for over a decade – fell victim to what should have been an easy-to-detect scam. Fairness to the service, it happened because I was in a hurry and violated several of my own rules. 

PayPal is the only method I use to pay for items I purchase. I also try to learn as much as I can about the seller.

Simply put, both of these accounts were a failure. 

There’s no reason to. It was late at work and I was hurrying to finish a few things before going to the gym. Anyone should take this as a warning. Paying for goods digitally shouldn’t be so casual that we do it while multi-tasking. I intended to use the Goods/Services PayPal method, but the seller of the antique I was purchasing had removed those options. The Friends and Family method became the only way of payment.

For the record, PayPal’s customer service could not explain how this occurred, but it did. I was never offered the option to pay for goods and/or service, and I did not think that I could have paid via Friends and Family. That is how scammers work. I would have been more careful and not so rushed if I was.