Security Spotlight PayPal Questions

My friends at the Brews News noted glitches at PayPal in their blog earlier this week. The eBay boards have been in uproar about it since the morning of October 28th.

Well so far PayPal has not manually released my funds from my unclaimed eChecks, as they had promised. My Buyers are not happy, as they of course already see their funds cleared from their account.

I ask PayPal if they would as least send emails to the buyers affected to explain. They acted like, "why?". I had to explain it three times before they even understood how the buyers expect shipments after they pay. It's like they don't even understand how eBay works!

PayPal now has $1000 of mine on hold FOR NO REASON AT ALL, which makes it pretty hard to run a business. If they, for example, have only 2000 $250 'holds' at any time, that's half a million of our money they are earning interest on.

That is five days ago and co-incidentally the same morning John Canfield eBays' Senior Director for Fraud Prevention Policy made an announcement regarding eBays Shill Bidding Initiative

Based on the positive results we’ve seen by anonymizing bidder User IDs, as well as our commitment to protecting all bidders from becoming targets for fraudsters, we’ve decided to extend anonymized User IDs to winning bidders, as well. This change will be implemented sometime this week.

and the Trusted Selling with Identity Confirmation plan. That is the one where if you attempt to use eBay with a computer they have not seen before, they freeze your account and make an automated telephone call. If you are not home, or like me, do not have touch tone telephone service, you get to deal with Live Helpless. Hello hello!

But I digress!

I asked a question on eBayInkBlog several times this year to which

Richard Brewer-Hay was unable to get a sensible (to me) answer, although he did try. A post introducing Rich LaMagna this week offered an opportunity which I took. Much to my surprise Mr LaMagna responded. In fact, he responded to everyone who posted not just the cheerleaders. Positive Feedback to him.

Remember the minor news item earlier this year about fake Skype subscriptions being used to defraud PayPal accounts? Here is a well written complaint dating back to March 2008.

The Industry Standard, a San Francisco based publication, features news and analysis that covers emerging technologies and companies, venture funding, acquisitions, site launches, and other developments in the internet space. An article goes into great detail including many screenshots.

I am wondering if there is any connection to the 'glitch' above. What do you think?


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Links & Related Articles

The Industry Standard 10.28.2008

Orange County Register June 2007

Clueless

Worldwide on eBay sellers are wondering. In a word they are clueless and eBay is declining to give them a clue.

My friend Randy Smythe has an interesting post on his MyBlogUtopia!

"There is an interesting buzz coming out of San Jose these days, as rumors begin to fly, about impending layoffs at eBay."

I started to comment (and as these things do) it turned into this post. As you know, we are of the agricultural persuasion in our lifestyle here. As I sat on my porch swing this morning with my laptop and the marvelous first cup of tea, to greet the dawn I was struck by this thought:

eBay is like a horse that has been eating loco-weed.

Common symptoms include aimless wandering, altered gait, tremors, weakness and erratic behavior. Horses poisoned with locoweed may also have impaired vision and actually bump into things or try to jump imaginary objects. The unpredictable behavior of locoed horses makes them dangerous to work around or ride.

ALL of these symptoms can be seen quite clearly in eBay Management. Unfortunately there is no cure for severe locoweed poisoning.

In the United Kingdom Ed at Buildaskill Blog which is one of the best sources for cross-border or international trading information and resources, says

Sellers are protesting the lack of definitive answers to crucial questions regarding the August listing format and fee change announcements, that take effect on 24th September

Will, or will not, pre-existing sub-99p priced Shop Inventory Format (SIF) products be shown on the site when they migrate to new-BIN on September 24th? UK eBay staff are giving conflicting answers, and even the forum post by Community Manager James, last week, announcing no new listings under 99p start price, does not answer the question of what will happen to pre-existing listings on that date.

Sellers never did get an answer to the pre-existing listings under 99p ($2) question. They found out by doing, no listings are permitted BIN under 99p, this is truly an example of 'aimless wandering' insofar as running a business is concerned.

Almost 2 months ago I commented on an eBay Ink Blog post about phishing. Surely, I said,

The simplest, safest and most secure way to put an end to PayPal phishing would be for PayPal to cease putting clickable links in emails. Any customer communication requiring input from customers should be on the secure site: “You have a message from PayPal which requires response, please log in to your account to access it.”

I would bet money that corporate blogger Richard Brewer-Hay has asked that question on my behalf, but so far no answer is forthcoming.

Today has seen major PayPal outage, no access to transaction details and a page that loads and loads and loads before timing out. eBay Canada has checkout issues, it is down, period.

One seller who operates with an advanced internal network and servers has reported also that during PayPal UK’s never loading page cycle, there is code from PayPal being launched against their servers attempting to extract the seller’s LAN administrator user ID and Password. This begs the question whether PayPal have been hacked (again) and whether or not malicious code has been inserted.

There are persistent rumors about Skype. According to reports, there may be a back door built into Skype, which allows connections to be bugged. The company has declined to expressly deny the allegations.

All this from the company that wants to go paperless, swim against the web 2.0 tide by prohibiting any type of networking or links except paid advertising, and has no concept of customer service.

Those crazy noisy flea market vendors who boycotted PayBay and left earlier this year are beginning to look smarter by the minute.


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