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More PayPal woes
Tuesday June 11 10:14 PM EDT
PayPal Faces Lawsuit Over Internet Account
By Sue Kwon
The largest online payment service is based in the Bay Area, and boasts 16 million customers -- but as business transactions on the Internet grow, so can the problems.
Jim White, a Springfield, Missouri customer, registered his complaints about Mountain View-based PayPal on the Internet. He claimed that someone hacked his online payment account and stole $1600 dollars. PayPal insisted no such crime occurred, and froze White's account. So Tuesday, White filed a lawsuit against Paypal in a Missouri district court.
"I've made 58 phone calls and exchanged more than 60 emails," White said. "I've spent 21 days with little sleep."
White said he took matters into his own hands, hunting down the source of the security breech with no help from PayPal. Then, White said, the story took a turn across borders.
"It's an international group of hackers called "Hackers Inc." in the Netherlands," White said. "PayPal's secure layer is not secure all the time ...They caught my user name and password and compromised my account."
PayPal says in these cases, the customers must have allowed their passwords to be stolen, because it insists that the company's system has never been compromised or "hacked."
"We take their information and store it in a secure server using military-grade encryption," said PayPal's Vince Sollitto.
In a sense, PayPal passes the blame back to the customer, saying White must have somehow given up his password in a common email scam. Improbable? Well, it wouldn't be the first time if PayPal's theory is for real.
Mike Syiek uses PayPal to sell computer supplies.
"I received an email that looked exactly like PayPal, and it asked me to provide my company name and password, which I did," Syiek said. "The person who got my name and password was able to withdraw money from my PayPal account."
Tuesday, after Channel 5 called PayPal, Mike Syiek resolved his case, and the company unfroze Jim White's account.
PayPal Faces Lawsuit Over Internet Account
By Sue Kwon
The largest online payment service is based in the Bay Area, and boasts 16 million customers -- but as business transactions on the Internet grow, so can the problems.
Jim White, a Springfield, Missouri customer, registered his complaints about Mountain View-based PayPal on the Internet. He claimed that someone hacked his online payment account and stole $1600 dollars. PayPal insisted no such crime occurred, and froze White's account. So Tuesday, White filed a lawsuit against Paypal in a Missouri district court.
"I've made 58 phone calls and exchanged more than 60 emails," White said. "I've spent 21 days with little sleep."
White said he took matters into his own hands, hunting down the source of the security breech with no help from PayPal. Then, White said, the story took a turn across borders.
"It's an international group of hackers called "Hackers Inc." in the Netherlands," White said. "PayPal's secure layer is not secure all the time ...They caught my user name and password and compromised my account."
PayPal says in these cases, the customers must have allowed their passwords to be stolen, because it insists that the company's system has never been compromised or "hacked."
"We take their information and store it in a secure server using military-grade encryption," said PayPal's Vince Sollitto.
In a sense, PayPal passes the blame back to the customer, saying White must have somehow given up his password in a common email scam. Improbable? Well, it wouldn't be the first time if PayPal's theory is for real.
Mike Syiek uses PayPal to sell computer supplies.
"I received an email that looked exactly like PayPal, and it asked me to provide my company name and password, which I did," Syiek said. "The person who got my name and password was able to withdraw money from my PayPal account."
Tuesday, after Channel 5 called PayPal, Mike Syiek resolved his case, and the company unfroze Jim White's account.
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