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PayPal discloses data breach that exposed user info for 6 months
- Insanity 8mo agoSo from the Article they claim: "PayPal has since rolled back the code change responsible for this error, which potentially exposed the PII. We have not delayed this notification as a result of any law enforcement investigation." That does little to explain the 2 month-ish delay in disclosing it. I presume they could have disclosed _at least_ that account data was leaked even if the underlying bug wasn’t yet closed? Obviously without disclosing the nature of the bug in that case.
- malfist 8mo agoIt's one of those "suspiciously specific denials" They didn't delay the release because of law enforcement investigation, it doesn't say they didn't delay the release. There's a whole host of reasons besides "law enforcement investigation" to delay an embarrassing release, including "I don't wanna"
- sidewndr46 8mo agoThe quote is: "We have not delayed this notification as a result of any law enforcement investigation" The obvious example here would be if the NSA or other agency that isn't law enforcement led the investigation. But further abuse of the English language reveals a different conclusion. This was not delayed as a result of any law enforcement investigation. It could have been delayed as a result of a specific law enforcement investigation. Furthermore, the word "result" implies that it is tied to the conclusion of said investigation(s). It could in fact have been delayed because of a pending law enforcement investigation.
- bstsb 8mo agoif they were trying to hide an investigation, they just wouldn’t mention it
- motbus3 8mo agoJust before Christmas? I doubt it
- cmehdy 8mo ago> The company now offers affected users two years of free three-bureau credit monitoring and identity restoration services through Equifax, which require enrollment by June 30, 2026. How tasteful.
- SilverElfin 8mo agoI think all companies just believe security doesn’t matter because the worst thing that can happen is they offer to pay for a credit monitoring. And the victims are powerless to pursue a meaningful lawsuit against them. Even when that happens, it results in a class action settlement where lawyers get a bunch of money and victims get very little.
- SoftTalker 8mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Equifax_data_breach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Equifax_data_breach
- flipped 8mo ago[flagged]
- _verandaguy 8mo agoThese are often undesirable features for SMEs that need to be accountable for a variety of reasons, including KYC regulations; besides, while blockchains provide protocol-level security, they fail in two ways that do matter to consumers: - They provide no meaningful consumer protections (since this necessarily requires an authority, which blockchains may not have) - They don't protect at all against meatspace vulnerabilities like scams and other deception-based attacks, which are by far the more common issue in banking. This is exacerbated by the lack of consumer protections. (To be clear: don't read my comment as being in support of PayPal. They have abused user trust for a while, and I haven't had an account there in over a year -- fuck 'em.)
- krunck 8mo agoCash has no consumer protections. I use it all the time. I don't expect to have any consumer protections from crypto either.
- looperhacks 8mo agoCash has the protection that I don't get my wallet cleared because some JavaScript library got supply-chained. Or less snarky: it's simply harder to steal something or defraud someone in meatspace than in the Internet, so less protection should be necessary.
- _verandaguy 8mo agoThis isn't the argument against traditional payment systems you seem to think it is. There's a reason most people in well-banked countries use plastic over cash these days, convenience and consumer protection are it; and even with cash, the barrier to entry for fraud is higher since at some point that cash will come into contact with the banking world, and will have to be accounted for. If your cash flow is suspicious enough, it'll be audited.
- josefritzishere 8mo agoThere should be legal penalties for failing to inform users in a timely fashion. A 6 month delay is ridiculous. They put all their users at risk.
- anonymous908213 8mo agoIrrelevant to the current breach, but at the end of the article... > In January 2023, PayPal notified customers of another data breach after a large-scale credential stuffing attack compromised 35,000 accounts between December 6 and December 8, 2022. > Two years later, in January 2025, New York State announced a $2,000,000 settlement with PayPal over charges that it failed to comply with the state's cybersecurity regulations, leading to the 2022 data breach. I didn't hear about this New York case. I'm the first to lament the incredibly sorry state of affairs of data security, to the extent that such security exists at all, but it is insane that you can get fined $2,000,000 for your customers re-using e-mail + password combinations between sites and becoming compromised as a result. I truly loathe mandatory 2FA with every fiber of my being and I guess New York would like to enforce it on the world? Sigh. Everything about the internet just gets worse and worse, continuously.
- chrneu 8mo agoI got like $230 from that paypal breach. Pretty rad.
- thunderfork 8mo agoYou don't have to do 2FA, but there's liability in being vulnerable to credential-stuffing, and 2FA is one of many ways to mitigate that.
- TitaRusell 8mo agoHopefully WERO will finally wipe out PayPal in Europe. Despite the ridiculous name.
- sevenzero 8mo agoDidn't see a single store i regularly buy from offer it yet unfortunately
- raron 8mo agoWero doesn't add any value over standard SEPA transfers, I don't see why does it even exists. PayPal at least has some customer protection scheme.
- Hikikomori 8mo agoIt's instant and much simpler than logging into your bank. Many EU countries already have their own alternatives like swish and vipps. Can pay with just knowing the phone number, scan qr code, even quite common in stores. No fee at all for private use, small merchants just need an app, no additional hardware.
- raron 7mo agoThis is true for the official SEPA Instant Transfer and the standard EPC QR code format, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPC_QR_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPC_QR_code
- jimnotgym 8mo agoGreat, who from PayPal is going to jail over this?
- bloomingeek 8mo agoI've been thinking this way for several years now, what a fool I was! Corporations are the elite of society now. They can't fail, they pay off everyone of any importance, i.e., not you or I. The dog and pony show in congress involving FB is further proof they can do no wrong as long as they explain the law to the dolts in congress. (While being watched by SCOTUS, who are laughing their asses off.) The rule of the corporate thumbs for several decades now is: it's more profitable to pay a fine then follow the law. (And if congress isn't keeping up with current tech which needs new laws to protect consumers, who cares?)
- chrneu 8mo agoThey're people but also not people! Lol what an amazing con the oligarchs managed to pull. They get to reap all the rewards of their parasitic selfish behavior with basically none of the risk. Just make a corp.
- zer00eyz 8mo agoWow! Lets take the article at face value: "The financial technology company said it has reversed the code change that caused the incident, blocking attackers' access to the data one day after discovering the breach." Great thats your bug. Key word here being BUG. Your name next to the commit that caused this. Should you go to prison? Probably not. Tell me you never had a bug, a security hole, never took production down. Never made a mistake. Tell me that you want to go to jail for human error. Not intent, error.
- erremerre 8mo agoWhen a bridge falls, there is a case in the courts, and sometimes engineers go to prison. Why shall be different with code?
- elphinstone 8mo agoI recently tried to sign up for paypal, "tried" being the operative word since their garbage, broken processes couldn't verify me despite bank info, etc. After seeing their profound incompetence at customer acquisition, ineptitude on the security front is no surprise.
- ryandrake 8mo agoI think in general, it's getting harder and harder to 1. newly sign up for online services, and 2. come back to these services after long periods of inactivity. Everyone's got overly-aggressive automation that blocks you for no discernible reason, and endlessly requests more and more invasive "verification" schemes. I hardly ever use my Microsoft account. Probably haven't logged into it for years. But recently I wanted to give my kid a few bucks to spend on Minecraft micro transactions, and boy, just logging in was a nightmare of verifications and codes and resets. And then making a purchase? Instantly denied with a vague error message that directed me to contact what turned out to be their fraud department. Totally user-hostile, when I'm just trying to get them to take my money. The security tail seems to be wagging the dog at these companies.
- oxqbldpxo 8mo agoImagine when Palantir gets hacked.
- rickknowlton 8mo agoin a way the data can't really get into worse hands than palantir, can it? lol jk
- lurkercodemnky 8mo agoThe ignorance of a company like PayPal is obviously bad. That said, I think we need to have an equivalent of automated integration testing for security vulnerabilities. Even if PenTesters (or whatever they're called these days) do some testing and uncover some bugs, the applications under continuous development will inevitably introduce "bugs" not seen before.
- dheera 8mo agoThese kind of breaches are why I'm against KYC's current implementation. If the government wants to know who I am, that's fine, I'm not here to fight law. I however don't think it should be necessary to tell banks and private businesses where I physically sleep. That is more information than they need to operate, and every few months it seems someone has a data breach.
- sunshinekitty 8mo agoAt one point on the internet PayPal was the most trusted way to send and receive money - at least you are limiting sharing your personal payment information with random companies on the internet who may or may not be compliant. Lately though, with companies like Stripe and Plaid making it nearly frictionless to add payments to your website just as PP once did, and things like Google & Apple pay - why is there a need to use PayPal anymore? Their support is notoriously awful, the product is slow and dated, as a consumer at least I see no reason to not stop using PayPal (and their subsidies) entirely.
- SoftTalker 8mo agoWasn't PayPal at least at one time an easier way to support foreign transactions? Stripe was US-only last time I used it (which was years ago).
- rjmunro 8mo agoPeople in most countries can use Visa and Mastercard to pay across borders, and have been able to do so long before PayPal existed (at least back as far as the 1980s). But PayPal probably existed and was easier for merchants in more countries than other payment services at certain points.
- SoftTalker 8mo agoI guess what I meant was that with Stripe you had to have to a US bank account, at least that's what I remember last time I used it. Was that the case for PayPal?
- 0x1ch 8mo agoPaypal G&S generally always gets money back if something went wrong on a p2p transaction. I've been scammed once or twice, but I always use G&S and have received my money back in full. If you don't use that, then you're pretty much screwed with Paypal F&F, Zelle, Cashapp, Venmo etc. At least as far as I'm aware.
- _slih 8mo agolove the update at the bottom. 'our systems were not compromised' doing a lot of heavy lifting for 'a code change exposed SSNs to unauthorized individuals for six months.
- AngryData 8mo agoAlmost 20 years ago now paypal stole my $15 for no cause, I bought a videogame with it once off a major website, had $15 in it sitting around for 6 months, tried to use it to buy something off ebay and got locked out instantly. Then demanded all sorts of hoop jumping to get it back with notarized license and crap. Ive been saying screw them ever since, and not once have I regretted it. Every year there is some more shit showing that was the right move. How many millions of dollars have they seized without cause? I can't believe they are still going, I can only hope someday somebody with a bit of money can sue their pants off in court and get them shut down.
- righthand 8mo agoI tried to sign up for paypal to send money collected from coworkers for a pregnancy gift. I had to sign up, enter my bank info, then verify deposits went through to use the bank account. Once I did that my account was instantly locked, then I still couldn’t use my account until I called customer support and scanned in my ID. I called them to delete the account and just bought a digital gift card online.
- cj 8mo agoI thought companies can't profit off of unclaimed/abandoned money. Was under the impression that funds like that eventually get handed over to whatever state agency is responsible for dealing with unclaimed property. (If so, the cause might just be incompetence rather than greed or malice - not that incompetence is any better than malice when it comes to handling people's money)
- slumberlust 8mo agoIf there's no one enforcing said rules you most certainly can.
- nitwit005 8mo agoThey've faced a number of lawsuits for this, and paid out settlements. They are presumably not following the law.
- 8mo ago
- himata4113 8mo agopaypal is still around? I haven't seen any "accepts paypal" / paypal / checkout with paypal since around 2023 and the realization of it makes me unreasonably happy.
- yieldcrv 8mo agoyeah they power everything under different brand names, such as Venmo
- himata4113 8mo agounfortunate, it's such a hostile company that I don't really know why they're even relevant anymore.
- thisislife2 8mo agoI am still pissed at PayPal for stealing some money from me (this was probably a decade ago) - I opened a new PayPal account in India, and PayPal required me to add a Debit Card (Mastercard or Visa) to it. It also said that to verify the card, it would debit a dollar or two from it, and then refund it back. Bastards stole around Rs. 100 from me and never refunded it! (I was a broke student back then, so it hurt! :). In the midst of all that, India tightened its regulations on non-banking online transfers, and I don't remember exactly, but I think PayPal chose to partially exit the Indian market (because it couldn't compete and / or because it didn't want to abide by the regulations). Ebay also shut down in India around that time, if I remember right.
- lacoolj 8mo agoI think the paypal response at the bottom needs to be lifted to the top. It's way more terrifying to see "data breach" and "exposed data" when you don't know how many are affected and whether unauthorized access was part of the story or not.
- dmitrygr 8mo agoThey still exist!? I just don't use any merchant that lacks the "checkout with apple pay" or "checkout with amazon" button. Too much trouble.
- anonzzzies 8mo agoWho still uses PayPal? I never hear it mentioned here anymore. They always were a scammy company, but especially very bad for sellers as they always side with the buyers. Locking up money for months of startups without cause etc. They terminated my seller account because 'fraud', no dispute possible. Years later they terminated my buyer account for 'fraud' no dispute possible. Never participated in anything that even looks like fraud but to their AI. Wish them many bad press.
- gpvos 8mo agoI only use it when a seller doesn't offer any other way to pay, but there are still many, many sites that have it as the only option. A major one is Discogs; also quite a few artists on Bandcamp.
- t-writescode 8mo agoI use them pretty extensively. That way, whenever I need to rotate credit cards for whatever reason, I only need to update them in one location, rather than several. Also, I’m using a single, common storage of credit card information, rather than needing to track 100s of different websites with potentially even more lax security.
- jjmarr 8mo agoI've never used PayPal because someone signed up with my email to buy internet pornography before I could legally create an account at 18 years old. PayPal allows people to buy things without verifying the email, so now I'm stuck with it. I could create a separate email, but I don't want to. I could take over the account, but I'm also unwilling to commit financial fraud. I called PayPal, and they said they couldn't do anything. I've just used Stripe, Link, or directly used my credit card. Nothing bad has ever happened as a result. Any time I've had a dispute, I've been able to get a refund from my credit card company. I also live in Canada. We have had "e-Transfer" since 2003, meaning I can securely email or text money to friends and family with no fees. So I don't need PayPal for that, either.
- shog_hn 8mo agoYet another reason I deleted my main paypal account years back. Don't trust them.
- harry8 8mo agoWhen people want to make the case that Silicon Valley is evil, corrupt, awful and opposed to the welfare of people so should be obliterated with prejudice: example 1 will be PayPal. The poster child for “there Is not nearly enough regulation” I don’t agree with that so I’ve got to work out why paypal is such a total disgrace.
- stefandesu 8mo agoFinally deleted my PayPal account last summer and have not regretted it. Though I now live in Norway and everyone uses Vipps here anyway.
- anon_cow1111 8mo agoJust saw this and tried logging in and got locked out, "please reset you password", but then the page fails to load after completing a captcha. So now I'm completely locked out? good job paypal.
- dhayabaran 8mo ago[flagged]
- bicepjai 8mo agoAt this point, I just operate under the assumption that every bad actor out there already has my data. Six months of exposure is an eternity. It really makes you question the entire trade off: we hand over our personal information in exchange for ‘free’ or convenient services and this is what we get in return. The product-is-you model only works if the company holding your data actually bothers to protect it.