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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?

#51

Post by rvba »

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.

I dont understand why the courts dont treat this as fencing, or wire fraud.

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

#52

Post by NikolaNovak »

rationalist wrote: post #46
NikolaNovak wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The email bothers me a little.

What bothers me a lot is that there's an active account attached to my email address with dozens of companies I did not choose to engage with. It as astonishing how few companies allow you to disavow an account created with your email (practically none. I don't have an instagram myself but my email account does.)

Marking their emails as spam just means I will no longer know what's being done "in my name" (with my email address). It doesn't aftually solve an issue in any real way.

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

#53

Post by NikolaNovak »

Eduard wrote: post #40
NikolaNovak wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Kinda weird, considering the whole idea of double opt-in is to only start spamming you once you actively consent via e-mail action

It's not just marketing emails. I get invoices, quotes, proposals, contracts, dating site messages, all sort of things. None of those designers / sysadmins / owners apparently feel email should be verified before sending that stuff. Why bother with verification emails then? I haven't a clue.

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

#54

Post by zoover2020 »

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

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

... In Europe there I? What's your point?

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

#55

Post by firstlink »

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…

> How are people getting their email address wrong so often?

Invalid generalization from the process of signing up for email itself. When I sign up for Gmail, I choose an identifier I don't control (and computer says no if I get it wrong). Then this becomes my identifier. Likewise for usernames. So if emails are now usernames, why would the same process not apply? I choose an identifier I don't control. I put "@gmail.com" because it says to use an email address and that's what email addresses end with. Computer doesn't say no so I must have done the right thing. Rinse and repeat.

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

#56

Post by genewitch »

mastax wrote: post #47
diordiderot wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not until FedNow in July, at least.

I don't know what that is, but i'll eat my hat if JP Morgan Chase Bank Manhattan switches from batch transfers to FedNow this ~~year~~ decade.

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

#57

Post by genewitch »

tlavoie wrote: post #42
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 e…

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpayment_scam

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

#58

Post by genewitch »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #53
Eduard wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda weird, considering the whole idea of double opt-in is to only start spamming you once you actively consent via e-mail action

It's not just marketing emails. I get invoices, quotes, proposals, contracts, dating site messages, all sort of things. None of those designers / sysadmins / owners apparently feel email should be verified before sending that stuff. Why bother with verification emails then? I haven't a clue.

not sending emails earns their companies $0. Sending emails ostensibly earns their companies greater than $0

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

#59

Post by hedora »

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

That’s less true than I used to think.

I once accidentally ACH debited the wrong person’s account at a different bank.

There was no real way for me to stop the transfer without doing extremely bad things involving having my bank report me to law enforcement.

So, I ended up sending the money back via a second transfer. That’s problematic, since the first transfer I performed was certainly unauthorized and could have been clawed back by my accidental victim (I trusted them, and I was 100% at fault, but that’s not the point.)

The whole experience was bad all around, and I thought ACH was designed to handle exactly this class of screw up.

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

#60

Post by hedora »

grepfru_it wrote: post #24
ano-ther wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. There must be quite an operation behind this then to make it viable. Input: stolen credit cards, email addresses to send to, email addresses for opening a PayPal account. Attrition: credit card gets blocked, PayPal email gets blocked, recipient doesn’t react or doesn’t send the money back, recipient won’t fall for it twice. 5 Euro per successful attempt — 200 successes per 1000 Euro (minus the cost for acquir…

Google “PayPal duplicate money trick”. People are actively sending money from their own account to PayPal, claiming it fraud and doubling their money. They don’t care if they get locked out if they make $500-$1000. Change the input from their own money to a stolen PayPal account. It’s a payday for them (that eventually comes back to haunt them)

But, why use a random person’s paypal account as the destination?
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