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PayPal is one of the most popular payment services worldwide. So it’s no wonder millions of people in Germany also use the service. But a serious problem that can cost you hundreds of euros is spreading again, and the chances of protecting yourself are slim.
Fraudsters are exploiting PayPal guest accounts
Consumer protection experts warn: A function in PayPal’s offering known to be vulnerable for years is currently being increasingly exploited again. The option of processing payments via PayPal without having a PayPal account runs under the name “guest account” at PayPal and has attracted attention for some time because it is apparently susceptible to fraud.
In a document on the function, PayPal writes: “As a guest, you can pay with PayPal up to 3 times or up to a total amount of EUR 1,500.00 without opening an account.” Guest accounts can, therefore, be efficient if you don’t want to use a PayPal account in the long term but need one for a few occasions.
When using a guest account, PayPal deducts the amount from the specified account by direct debit and checks whether the account number, address and name of the person match by comparing the data from Schufa and eBay. PayPal has been doing this for years, and as things stand, it has apparently not changed.
The problem: anyone who knows this data from another person can use the actually practical PayPal function to make relatively easy purchases from various online providers at the expense of others. Thanks to major data leaks in which the data of hundreds of millions of people worldwide has been distributed in recent years, it is not too difficult for criminals to obtain the necessary information.
The fact that strangers are going on a shopping spree with your money is often only noticed when it has already happened, for example, through a debit notification email from PayPal. Most people dismiss these as spam. Wirtschaftswoche (WiWo), for example, reports on several cases in which unknown persons have made purchases, sometimes for several hundred euros, at the expense of their victims.
The perpetrators usually get their loot easily by sending it to pickup stations or redirecting parcels at a later date. The innocent PayPal users, on the other hand, have to prove that they did not order anything. That alone can be difficult. If you instruct your bank to reclaim the direct debit—which PayPal itself advises in such cases—you could still get into trouble with PayPal afterwards. This probably varies from case to case.
According to the German Federation of Consumer Organizations (VZBV), PayPal guest accounts are currently being increasingly exploited again—not least during the shopping season around Black Friday. “Consumers are repeatedly complaining to consumer advice centres about fraud with PayPal guest accounts,” says Heiko Fürst from the VZBV. They are also working on a report on problems with payment service providers. According to WiWo, PayPal is not the only one that plays a role; it is an important one.
What is particularly annoying is that it is apparently not enough to abolish PayPal’s guest account function. According to Wirtschaftswoche, this would contradict the GDPR. This is probably due to PayPal’s important position in the market. The data protection regulation imposes strict rules on such “gatekeepers.”
Fürst sums up the problem: “As payment services do not reliably check the payer’s identity, consumers cannot protect themselves against this fraud.”
- source: giga.de/picture: Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay
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