This article will give you insights into the common PayPal hoaxes circulating these days. Additionally, you will learn how to keep your payment experience safe when using the popular service in question.

The undeliverable shipment stratagem

Crooks may try to defraud someone of money by reporting a delivery failure to PayPal. This hoax starts with someone ordering your goods on an eCommerce site. The ill-disposed person chooses to send the funds via PayPal rather than opt for credit card payment or COD (cash on delivery).

This seems like a run-of-the-mill deal so far, doesn’t it? The next move is trickier, though. The scammer will deliberately provide phony shipment information for the product he bought. After a number of futile delivery attempts, the shipping company will flag the goods as undeliverable in its system.

Having received notices from the shipping company about the unsuccessful delivery events, the culprit will replace the bogus delivery address with a real one. Predictably enough, the merchandise will finally reach its destination. Once the ne’er-do-well has it, he will contact PayPal and say he hasn’t received the goods he paid for.

When processing the complaint, PayPal will see that the original address wasn’t valid, and hence they will have no clear evidence that the delivery took place. Then, acting in compliance with the Purchase Protection policy, the service will decline the payment. In the aftermath of this whole ruse, the black hat will keep the goods and get his money back.

Using the F&F option to pay for goods? Bad idea

In case you didn’t know, F&F stands for “Friends and Family.” It’s an option within the PayPal network allowing relatives or friends to send and receive money with lower fees than in a regular payment scenario. Some people may be tempted to abuse this (Read more...)