Wrong paypal email-- do i need to do anything?
June 30, 2019 11:29 PM Subscribe
i just got an email to a side account, that i had made a paypal account. i did not do so. i then got an email to confirm a transaction-- when i checked the transaction, the email the person making the transaction had provided was mysidemeail@differentemailhosting.com rather than mysidemeail@sidehost.com
given that it's just what appears to be a mistake, is there anything I need to do for security reasons?
i'm not interested in spending time on the phone with paypal if this is an error that doesn't otherwise affect me, and their other available methods of support suck.
the emails do appear to be genuinely from paypal, the site they lead to genuinely paypal, no personal info was requested.
what, if anything, do i need to be concerned about?
i'm not interested in spending time on the phone with paypal if this is an error that doesn't otherwise affect me, and their other available methods of support suck.
the emails do appear to be genuinely from paypal, the site they lead to genuinely paypal, no personal info was requested.
what, if anything, do i need to be concerned about?
Response by poster: a note of clarification:
the original email says to "contact them" if the email was sent in error with a link to their contact center. if you access paypal's contact page (for safety i did so not from the link in the email, just in case), it sends you through a menu of options, at the end of which you are informed that chat help is not available and calling them is recommended. So if it is true that "These companies wall themselves off from phone contact" then they are walling themselves off from contact, period.
a follow up email says:
Hello Similar Name to Mine,
You just changed your password.
If you didn’t change your password, give us a call right away at 402-935-7733.
I checked and this is indeed their fraudulent charger hotline, but no human was available to answer my call. the question of whether it is worth who knows how much of my time to call them remains.
the online help center expects me to eventually input login info, but the phone number associated with the account that i did no make is, naturally, not mine, and i do not know the password (of course).
i have changed the password to the email in question, and checked the security history, which doesn't show anyone else having logged in from another device.
posted by Cozybee at 5:17 AM on July 1, 2019
the original email says to "contact them" if the email was sent in error with a link to their contact center. if you access paypal's contact page (for safety i did so not from the link in the email, just in case), it sends you through a menu of options, at the end of which you are informed that chat help is not available and calling them is recommended. So if it is true that "These companies wall themselves off from phone contact" then they are walling themselves off from contact, period.
a follow up email says:
Hello Similar Name to Mine,
You just changed your password.
If you didn’t change your password, give us a call right away at 402-935-7733.
I checked and this is indeed their fraudulent charger hotline, but no human was available to answer my call. the question of whether it is worth who knows how much of my time to call them remains.
the online help center expects me to eventually input login info, but the phone number associated with the account that i did no make is, naturally, not mine, and i do not know the password (of course).
i have changed the password to the email in question, and checked the security history, which doesn't show anyone else having logged in from another device.
posted by Cozybee at 5:17 AM on July 1, 2019
For what it's worth, I recently had a phone conversation with a support person at PayPal. I think I was on hold for about five minutes before I was connected.
posted by JD Sockinger at 8:04 AM on July 1, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by JD Sockinger at 8:04 AM on July 1, 2019 [2 favorites]
Honestly, this sounds a lot like someone just typoed their email in setting up an account (and is now confused and trying to recover the password because they can't log in with their username).
posted by praemunire at 8:43 AM on July 1, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by praemunire at 8:43 AM on July 1, 2019 [1 favorite]
Assuming that this isn't the email address you use with a paypal account, I'd second paemunire and say this sounds like someone put in the wrong email address for setting up their account. They'll likely have a rough time using their account with an unverified email address, and you'll likely continue to get email from PayPal until either the account owner corrects the issue or you talk to PayPal informing them of the issue. That said, as long your payment information isn't being used on the account, it shouldn't affect you in the slightest, security-wise.
posted by Aleyn at 12:39 PM on July 1, 2019
posted by Aleyn at 12:39 PM on July 1, 2019
Best answer: A similar thing happened to me. A person with the same first initial as me and the same last name used my flast at gmail dot com address to set up a PayPal Australia account. I never verified the email address. Attempting to change the password gets stuck, because PayPal requires entering this other person's MasterCard details to proceed. I spent probably two hours on the phone with PayPal support, and every person I talked to refused to do anything that could remove my email from this other person's account. The claim was that every account must have a valid email address, and my pointing out that the account in question obviously does not have a valid email did nothing to deter them. I even tried tweeting paypal support, but that didn't get me anywhere, either.
End result: I use a side email account for times when I am forced to use PayPal for payments. PayPal continued to send emails to an unverified account, so I have a filter to auto-delete anything coming from @paypal.com.au.
posted by jraenar at 3:17 PM on July 1, 2019 [1 favorite]
End result: I use a side email account for times when I am forced to use PayPal for payments. PayPal continued to send emails to an unverified account, so I have a filter to auto-delete anything coming from @paypal.com.au.
posted by jraenar at 3:17 PM on July 1, 2019 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
This pattern of activity is not a mistake. Someone is deliberately using your identity to set up an account. The original email that notified you of the new account would probably tell you how to respond if you did not open it.
You will never "spend time on the phone" with Paypal, I predict. These companies wall themselves off from phone contact.
posted by megatherium at 2:59 AM on July 1, 2019 [4 favorites]