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A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks

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Re: A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks

#31

Post by alistairSH »

fweimer wrote: post #11
mtmail wrote: post #3

German, well West European, banks are slow in creating a competitor to Paypal, called Wero. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment) I'm not implying they block Paypal because of that. It's good to have more competition and I wished my bank would take part.

The existing giro system is the real Paypal competitor. Most Europeans had access to Paypal-style money transfers before they had email. Merchants probably want to rely on another party to maintain their integration, but there is no real need for another centralized service similar to Paypal. (The U.S. really is an outlier among developed nations in that its giro system is not widely used, and many residents would no…

The U.S. really is an outlier among developed nations in that its giro system is not widely used

I wasn't even aware such a thing existed? Or do you mean Zelle, which seems to be some sort of hybrid system... It's not quite a giro system as found in most of EU, more like "PayPal, but built by BofA and CapOne"

Re: A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks

#32

Post by ramesh31 »

calmbonsai wrote: post #7
ronsor wrote: post #2

PayPal security is amazing. It randomly locks people out of their accounts and randomly closes their accounts too, but actual fraudsters and criminals are never deterred.

Yup. My advice for using PayPal is do not unless you have no other choice. I just got my monthly account statement and, as usual, thankfully zero activity. Though extremely innovative (for its time), it's been a slipshod org since inception and slipshod is a property you decidedly do not want in a payments processor.

> My advice for using PayPal is do not unless you have no other choice.

This is literally their business model, which is why they are able to get away with so many shady practices. Until very recently they held a practical monopoly on web based international payments.

Re: A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks

#33

Post by cubefox »

BoredPositron wrote: post #9
mtmail wrote: post #3

German, well West European, banks are slow in creating a competitor to Paypal, called Wero. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment) I'm not implying they block Paypal because of that. It's good to have more competition and I wished my bank would take part.

It's like their 5th attempt and the naming gets worse every time.

Wero seems to be a more European solution, while previous attempts like GiroPay were national.

Re: A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks

#34

Post by dkga »

nancyminusone wrote: post #28
ronsor wrote: post #2

PayPal security is amazing. It randomly locks people out of their accounts and randomly closes their accounts too, but actual fraudsters and criminals are never deterred.

PayPal also appears to suffer data leaks more than anyone else. I use multiple email addresses for every service I sign up for. But of all all the spam email I get, 99% has my PayPal email on it, and I even have other email addresses posted publicly.

Perhaps those are not leaks, but outright data sales

Re: A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks

#35

Post by hibikir »

ronsor wrote: post #2

PayPal security is amazing. It randomly locks people out of their accounts and randomly closes their accounts too, but actual fraudsters and criminals are never deterred.

I never worked for PayPal, but I did for a competitor.

Dealing with fraud is a red queen game: The fraudsters can keep trying until they find what gaps are there in your system, and will sometimes communicate with each other: Part of our defense system involved infiltrating some of those spaces and seeing the guides that were being sold to try to commit fraud in our platform. Meanwhile you will still have a false positive rate, and getting it all the way to zero means crazy fraud. Most people just don't get to see how much fraud is stopped before they know it exists. This isn't just for financial institutions: You'd be surprised by how much credential stuffing is attempted at, say, any very large streaming site which charges a subscription.

Without looking in, it's hard for me to say exactly how successful their security team is, but being as big as they are, and having probably thousands of people whose only job is to do fraud on their platform, winning has to be pretty hard.

Re: A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks

#36

Post by buckle8017 »

nancyminusone wrote: post #28
ronsor wrote: post #2

PayPal security is amazing. It randomly locks people out of their accounts and randomly closes their accounts too, but actual fraudsters and criminals are never deterred.

PayPal also appears to suffer data leaks more than anyone else. I use multiple email addresses for every service I sign up for. But of all all the spam email I get, 99% has my PayPal email on it, and I even have other email addresses posted publicly.

Didn't PayPal transmit the email to the merchant for every transaction?

Merchants are definitely selling email lists.

Re: A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks

#37

Post by leipert »

tietjens wrote: post #25
tchalla wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German banks (and in general businesses) are amazing. They won't do anything until legally required to do so and even then will drag their feet. There has been instant bank transfers (transfers in 10 seconds) available for a while - launched in November 2017. German banks kept charging 1.5€ for this instant transfer or some didn't have them available at all. They didn't build any of these systems and yet this was the…

Care to name those banks?

One prominent example is DKB (easily in the top 10 consumer banks by size)

Re: A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks

#39

Post by rvnx »

mrweasel wrote: post #27
mtmail wrote: post #3

German, well West European, banks are slow in creating a competitor to Paypal, called Wero. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment) I'm not implying they block Paypal because of that. It's good to have more competition and I wished my bank would take part.

They never really had much of a reason to create a competitor. There where already plenty of alternatives once online shopping/payments became a thing. Here you could do "cash on delivery", credit/debit card, account transfers (yes even across banks, it not as big an issue as US banks makes it) or you could send stamps (not a popular options). There was never a need for PayPal or PayPal style services. These days it'…

The + of PayPal was in 2005 when you could use it to hide your card number from the merchant.

But now, you can generate one-time use cards, which are safer than assigning a card on your PayPal account.

The other thing, is that you can do chargebacks more easily, when you buy on eBay, but this comes at the cost of higher fees (which is basically insurance)

Other than that, it's a platform that cannot be trusted

Re: A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks

#40

Post by calmbonsai »

ramesh31 wrote: post #32
calmbonsai wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. My advice for using PayPal is do not unless you have no other choice. I just got my monthly account statement and, as usual, thankfully zero activity. Though extremely innovative (for its time), it's been a slipshod org since inception and slipshod is a property you decidedly do not want in a payments processor.

> My advice for using PayPal is do not unless you have no other choice. This is literally their business model, which is why they are able to get away with so many shady practices. Until very recently they held a practical monopoly on web based international payments.

I concur. Thankfully, that's changing and changing very rapidly. I really hope to delete my PayPal account sooner rather than later.
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