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I never worked for PayPal, but I did for a competitor. Dealing with fraud is a red queen game: The fraudsters can keep trying until they find what gaps are the
by hibikir 1y ago
I never worked for PayPal, but I did for a competitor.
Dealing with fraud is a red queen game: The fraudsters can keep trying until they find what gaps are there in your system, and will sometimes communicate with each other: Part of our defense system involved infiltrating some of those spaces and seeing the guides that were being sold to try to commit fraud in our platform. Meanwhile you will still have a false positive rate, and getting it all the way to zero means crazy fraud. Most people just don't get to see how much fraud is stopped before they know it exists. This isn't just for financial institutions: You'd be surprised by how much credential stuffing is attempted at, say, any very large streaming site which charges a subscription.
Without looking in, it's hard for me to say exactly how successful their security team is, but being as big as they are, and having probably thousands of people whose only job is to do fraud on their platform, winning has to be pretty hard.
- freejazz 1y agoThe problem isn't the fraud, the problem is that they do not pay enough staff to deal with it which leads to legitimate accounts getting closed out and people not being able to do anything about it. Money seized, etc.
- calmbonsai 1y agoAmen.
- freejazz 1y agoIt's a constant theme with these internet companies. Oh Facebook is too big to police child predation on their platform? Am I supposed to be sorry about that? Whose fault could it be besides Facebook? They built it, the people came. Imagine running a Toys 'r' Us and telling parents that its not the store's fault that child predators loom in every corner... the notion that these business should not be held liable because of the principle that it would prevent them from scaling is an abomination on society.
- calmbonsai 1y agoMy issue with PayPal is they've always been that way. I've come close to deleting my account on 4 separate occasions. I've had one since shortly after their merger from the old X.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com_(bank) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com_(bank) . Per discussions on this thread, the singular reason people have tolerated their horrid service over the years they've been an effective monopoly in many locales.
- ronsor 1y ago> the singular reason people have tolerated their horrid service over the years they've been an effective monopoly in many locales. This is correct. For some reason, many people (merchants surprisingly!) love PayPal and only accept payments through it, especially those outside the US and UK. Sometimes "guest payments" aren't an option, and that means you either get a PayPal account or don't purchase the product/service.
- amluto 1y agoJust delete it. I used to have an account, and my experience using “guest payments” (which are usually, but not always, supported) is generally more reliable than logging in and paying.
- kevin_thibedeau 1y agoThis requires a bank that will issue one time use card numbers. PayPal is less friction for the benefit of proxying your credentials.
- amluto 1y agoOr you just put your regular credit card number into PayPal and tell it that you want to check out as guest. There's a little option that you need to uncheck so it doesn't try to make you an account.
- mihaaly 1y agoI did delete many years ago. They blocked me claiming suspicious activity occurred in my account (just a low traffic personal account). Ignoring me wanting to know what suspicious activity was it and if it needed, or actually already was, reported to the authorities. Unluckily this deletion does not hold well, occasionally with weird merchants only offering PayPal payment - credit card through PayPal - the paying fails using my old email used in the purchase and was used with PayPal before. They keep forcing me to log in. But can't! It is deleted! I did not trust their sloppy ways then, the feeling is stronger now.
- raincole 1y agoYeah. I had always thought these AML/KYC stuff were just governments/people in power expanding their arms into normal people's lives. I still think they mostly are, but after learning how much fraud is happening, I'm not sure what a better solution would look like.
- dcow 1y agoStrong digital credentialing—something the web has been surprisingly allergic to.
- rcbdev 1y agoIf you actually stop and consider the culture and ethos surrounding the advent and spreading of the Internet, it's not surprising at all.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 1y agoBecause we've seen that as soon as it exists, it quickly becomes required for ridiculous things that shouldn't require any kind of authentication, either by data-hungry companies that want to better exploit their users, or by control-hungry governments. Until that is solved, I'd argue that the benefits are not worth the costs.
- time0ut 1y agoThe average person has no idea how industrialized fraud has become. There are essentially entire companies with management, support staff, IT, and office buildings whose business is fraud. It is sad when you think about how many resources have been poured into it.
- perlgeek 1y agoIt's fine to have a non-zero false-positive rate, when you then have an effective way to appeal decisions based on these false positives. The lack of effective appeal seems to be the real problem with paypal.