Is Paypal Safe?

[Hotrod32487]

Im about to make a transaction using paypal and i want to know if its safe. A person is buying something from me, i dont know them, and i just want to make sure theres no way they could make it look like they paid then a week later bank says fraud or something. Any suggestions? (Besides "use cash")

[purplesprite]

ive used it prolly more than a hundred times with no problems.the only thing is give the payment time to clear into your account.oh and the fees suck of course!be sure to add that extra 3% I think it is,maybe someone could follow up with that.HTH
-jorge

[Hotrod32487]

So if i were selling something for $100 i would tell them to pay me $103? And about how long would it take for it to clear in my account?

[Texreefer]

the only thing i am leary about is using my bank account linked to it ,, i generally have a credit card .. i'm sure it is fine but who knows

[jessinator752]

paypal has a customer service department that is really good at looking into fraud or getting your payments back if you have problems with someone you bought from. i've had to pull my payment back due to someone not sending after i made the payment. if i remember right it ended up taking 3-4 weeks for the investigation, but i got my refund.

they do not hand out any of your personal account information to anyone. in my opinion it is very secure. i use it a lot with ebay, both buying and selling.

the payment to you is instant, but it takes 3-4 business days to clear from your paypal account to your bank account. you have several options that you can choose from to withdraw your money from your paypal account, or you can leave it there and use it to pay for other things through paypal later. i hope that makes sense.

[cpreefguy]

Safe? Depends on what you mean.
I have had 3 people fraudulently sell me items, Paypal found the claims in my favor but were "Unable to recover any funds" from the seller, so use it at your own risk.

[brewercm]

I've been using it for almost ten years now without any problems. I did get burned one time, and make sure you ignore any emails from a site that will look like paypal asking you to click here to sign into your account for whatever reason. There are many people out there sending these out that once you click on it the next window will ask for your userid and password which they person now has access to your account. It looks very official but paypal will never send you anything like that.

[BioCube14]

no problems here but paypal does take a cut from money coming in. I try to use paypal with people i can trust such as on ebay good feedback means they are probably good people. Like everyone says though use at your own risk.

[Willow]

Safe? Depends on what you mean.
I have had 3 people fraudulently sell me items, Paypal found the claims in my favor but were "Unable to recover any funds" from the seller, so use it at your own risk.
same thing happened to me...

the sellers pulled the cash out of Paypal as soon as it was available.. once they pulled the funds out; Paypal couldn't get them back.

[captexas]

Yeah, just watch out for fake emails. They are "fishing" for you to get you to enter your personal info. It's not just a Paypal deal, I get Ebay fakes as well. If it sounds wierd or talks about something you know you haven't done, then forward the email to them at their fraud/customer service address and they will be able to tell you if it's real or not.

[erikharrison]

Chris is EXACTLY correct. None of that garbage is real. Phishing is becoming an increasingly used thing, and does not look like it will be going away. ANY emails concerning anything such as clicking a link, etc, should be taken with GREAT caution. I think last week our company had over 40,000 SPAM emails of which 2,000 were from phishing. Also, a good rule of thumb is to make sure that if you are ordering ANYTHING off the web that it goes through secure shell. You will know it is a secure site (not necessarily a non-fraudulent site) if the site has HTTPS instead of HTTP. When you proceed to "checkout" it will usually direct you to a secured site first. If you all have any questions, feel free to email me.

[tony]

i think you mean SSL and simply making sure it is an https connection wont work since anyone can create their own cert key

best rule to protect yourself is to just never click a link in an email period. but to verify a site is secure and authentic just double click the picture of the pad lock on your browser (on a secure sight). ensure the cert key was issued by a trusted agent, ie verisign, etc . . . and issued to the site you are on,or, if it is a self issued cert make sure you trust them enough to do business with them. you will also want to make sure they are using at least 256 bit encryption and preferrably AES.

[erikharrison]

bah I did. lol. SSL not SSH ha ha. It's too close to Friday!

[tony]

here is a free website we provide our members with tips/trick for computer security and preventing online fraud, anyone can use it though and there are several handy modules that will give the basics

http://team.digitaldefense.net/index.php?var=748db8b95c9bfb1af3702915055663c6&pag e=5

if anyone has any questions or want to know how things work drop me a line