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Ask HN: What’s the deal with random people sending me money over PayPal?

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Re: Ask HN: What’s the deal with random people sending me money over PayPal?

#41

Post by bravoetch »

Common scam format. Convince recipient to accept money, claim over-payment or accidental payment and ask for refund. Sender then claims account is hacked / check stolen etc and claims a clawback via bank or paypal etc.

The UK wedding photography industry has a version of this where a potential client sends a check for the deposit, and it far exceeds the amount required for the booking. They say the mistake is because they were supposed to book flowers etc and ask you to transfer the difference back asap. A year later it turns out the check was stolen or fake and the deposited funds vanish from your account and the culprit is long gone. It's fun to have them send the check, then pretend the police are now involved since you tried to deposit it.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the deal with random people sending me money over PayPal?

#42

Post by tlavoie »

Aulig wrote: post #8

I've read that the scam is that they will ask you to send the money back. If you do, you'll be out of the money because the money they sent you will disappear after a while because Paypal pulls it back (probably because they sent it to you from a stolen credit card or something like that)

We've had a variation of this attempted when trying to sell a vehicle online. The scam is not specific to the item being sold, because they have no intention of picking it up. Rather, you are sent a realistic Paypal money transfer notification, and are asked to put most of it (since the amount is higher than the purchase price) into some sort of Moneygram transfer "for the person who will pick it up."

Paypal has an email listed on their site, IIRC, where you can send these, and it will tell you if it really came through them. Ours had not.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the deal with random people sending me money over PayPal?

#43

Post by diordiderot »

ranger_danger wrote: post #36
Animats wrote: post #29

PayPal supposedly has a "refuse payment" button, but it works differently for "verified" and "unverified" accounts. Now, if this was a bank to bank ACH transfer, the recipient could just refuse the credit. There's an error code for this situation: R10: “Customer Advises Originator is Not Known to Receiver and/or Originator is Not Authorized by Receiver to Debit Receiver’s Account”.[1] You can contact your bank and re…

What if the recipient transfers the money to their bank account immediately?

In the USA there is no such thing as transferring money immediately between banks

Re: Ask HN: What’s the deal with random people sending me money over PayPal?

#44

Post by dabinat »

wyldfire wrote: post #7

In the past this has happened to me because I have a "givenname.surname@gmail.com" email address and a relatively common name. The other people frequently misspell or forget their email address and end up with mine. I get occasional money sent via paypal but also all kinds of other email. I get a pretty clear indication of which companies don't bother with an email verification step. At one time (may still be the cas…

I’m in the same boat, although it hasn’t happened with any financial transactions yet. I get numerous emails that appear to be genuine - my (non-existent) Subaru is apparently constantly in need of service, and I supposedly work for a school in a different country.

I eventually had to register for Instagram just to stop one person from constantly signing up with my email address.

It boggles the mind though, because I can’t recall an instance in which I’ve ever mistyped or forgotten my own email address. How are people getting their email address wrong so often?

Re: Ask HN: What’s the deal with random people sending me money over PayPal?

#45

Post by [deleted] »

shortcake27 wrote: post #30
wyldfire wrote: post #7

In the past this has happened to me because I have a "givenname.surname@gmail.com" email address and a relatively common name. The other people frequently misspell or forget their email address and end up with mine. I get occasional money sent via paypal but also all kinds of other email. I get a pretty clear indication of which companies don't bother with an email verification step. At one time (may still be the cas…

I have the same issue with Facebook - someone somehow is using my email address and I frequently receive login notifications. I contacted Facebook a few times and nothing happened. Now their contact form forces me to provide my DOB to submit a request. What does my date of birth have to do with someone using my email address? I’ve been considering logging in as this person to remove my email from their account, but I…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What’s the deal with random people sending me money over PayPal?

#46

Post by rationalist »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #26
wyldfire wrote: post #7

In the past this has happened to me because I have a "givenname.surname@gmail.com" email address and a relatively common name. The other people frequently misspell or forget their email address and end up with mine. I get occasional money sent via paypal but also all kinds of other email. I get a pretty clear indication of which companies don't bother with an email verification step. At one time (may still be the cas…

I'm a paranoid nerd enough that this was an actual conversation I had with my wife - should we give our kids a name combination unique / obscure enough to mitigate the risk? What drives me insane is that 99 % of companies send "please confirm your email address"... And then have NO link to say "that's not me!". You can click for positive confirmation but you can click for negative confirmation. And they keep the acco…

Sounds like spam, I would mark it as such.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the deal with random people sending me money over PayPal?

#47

Post by mastax »

diordiderot wrote: post #43
ranger_danger wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the recipient transfers the money to their bank account immediately?

In the USA there is no such thing as transferring money immediately between banks

Not until FedNow in July, at least.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the deal with random people sending me money over PayPal?

#48

Post by plagiarist »

shortcake27 wrote: post #27
Waterluvian wrote: post #20

I had a similar fraud that PayPal is somewhat complicit in because how how their system works: I get an official PayPal email. But it’s on behalf of a vendor who is asking for money. But they’ve carefully crafted the request to look like a receipt. As if I’ve already paid $300 for textbooks and this is my receipt. But just a few unwitting clicks and I’ll have accepted the transfer request.

I have been getting a few of these per week for the past couple of years. It’s really frustrating as the payment request comes from PayPal so won’t be flagged as spam, and there’s no way to “unsubscribe” because you get the email whether you have a PayPal account or not. I keep forwarding them to phishing@paypal.com and nothing happens. At this point, I would definitely consider PayPal to be complicit.

For every email, I would send an abuse complaint to the registrar on their whois lookup, which right now is Markmonitor [0]. I have done this to get one spammy website's emails shut off before, when they weren't including unsubscribe links. Of course they were back on their same bullshit weeks later, but I was able to unsubscribe successfully.

IDK, maybe PayPal is too powerful or whatever they're doing here is technically legal, but it is worth a shot.

[0] https://www.markmonitor.com/legal/abuse-policy

Re: Ask HN: What’s the deal with random people sending me money over PayPal?

#49

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

Waterluvian wrote: post #20

I had a similar fraud that PayPal is somewhat complicit in because how how their system works: I get an official PayPal email. But it’s on behalf of a vendor who is asking for money. But they’ve carefully crafted the request to look like a receipt. As if I’ve already paid $300 for textbooks and this is my receipt. But just a few unwitting clicks and I’ll have accepted the transfer request.

PayPal makes it absolutely simple for anyone to generate an invoice. I sent a package to my friend out of state, and I invoiced him for the shipping charges just as a lark, and he duly paid his bill. We'd pre-arranged it all, so everything was legitimate, but all I needed was his email address.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the deal with random people sending me money over PayPal?

#50

Post by plagiarist »

dabinat wrote: post #44
wyldfire wrote: post #7

In the past this has happened to me because I have a "givenname.surname@gmail.com" email address and a relatively common name. The other people frequently misspell or forget their email address and end up with mine. I get occasional money sent via paypal but also all kinds of other email. I get a pretty clear indication of which companies don't bother with an email verification step. At one time (may still be the cas…

I’m in the same boat, although it hasn’t happened with any financial transactions yet. I get numerous emails that appear to be genuine - my (non-existent) Subaru is apparently constantly in need of service, and I supposedly work for a school in a different country. I eventually had to register for Instagram just to stop one person from constantly signing up with my email address. It boggles the mind though, because I…

It's unfortunate that there's no legally required email confirmation before a company is allowed to spam you regarding someone else's transactions.
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