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In Reply to: Re: More Paypal scamming -- DEFINTELY posted by ddriveman on October 17, 2005 at 07:43:42:
The fact that Paypal doesn't shut these scammers down reflects poorly on Paypal itself. It shows that Paypal has no concern for its customers beyond taking their money.
Follow Ups:
How do you expect PayPal to shut them down? And them - whom? Who are those scammers that need to be shut down? They can try to shut down a server. But... Even if you shut down one server, they will have another up and running in 5 minutes - that's Internet, don't forget about it. C'mon, PayPal can do things to try to solve the problem by educating people, but they don't even have an authority to SHUT them down. PayPal is a payment processor, not a law enforcement agency. ;)
Paypal should find out where these scammers are operating from, then contact whichever governmental agencies has purview over such activities to shut them down. Repeatedly, if necessary.Right now, Paypal is reacting exactly like the Chicago CTA spokesman a few years back who, when asked about the CTA's official attitude to a commuter who was mugged on one of their trains: 'Well, that's not our concern.' The resulting public outcry made the CTA see things very differently right after this insensistive response.
Hmmm. Find out where they are operating from? And how do you expect them to do that, may I ask you? Please understand that it is very difficult and almost impossible to do anything like that. Even if you are law enforcement agency. And PayPal, like I said, is NOT a law inforcement agency. They do not have an AUTHORITY to do things like that. They can report accidents of fraud to appropriate authorithies - and I believe they do. But besides that they are very limited.To give you a scope on the level of difficulty of the task you are asking them to do, let me give you a simple example. Let's assume I am a scammer. I buy anonimously a list of "private proxies" from someone on the Web - that's a list of somebody's machines infected with troyans that can work as proxies. Now I do all my scamming activity, say, from Moscos, via a CHAIN of those proxies, let's say, 5 in 5 different countries. Computer owners are not even aware that something is going on. Let's say I manage to get a bunch of suckers that click on the link in my scam emails and enter their real login/password info (of course I host the scammers website where I collect the data, on legitimate hosting provider, but I pay with a stolen credit card). I get to their accounts via this chain of proxies, and transfer the money to a separate account. Then I use one of automated e-currency exchanges to transfer the stuff to egold, then to something else, then to webmoney, and finally I get cash in Moscow from legitimate webmoney agent.
Now let's say PayPal has recorder the transaction and got the IP address of the last machine in the chain. It is a computer in Singapore. How do you expect them to find out the rest of the stuff - the computer owner is an innocent sucker who doesn't even know he's got a troyan. Besides, like I said, PayPal can not even APPROACH the person with a request to investigate anything - doesn't have an authority. PayPal files a case with law enforcement people. They finally manage via their colleagues in Singapore to find the sucker (computer owner whose machine was used to access PayPal) only to find out that he is just an innocent lover of free porn who got infected on one of free porn sites. Of course his computer doesn't have ANY logs - this type of troyans don't keep logs of activity, as you understand. Let's say by some sort of miracle they manage to get his ISP logs (most likey they were deleted months ago, but let's say they did manage to get an IP address of the machine that connected to sucker's computer).
Guess what? That's ANOTHER innocent sucker infected by troyan, this time from Chile. And there is 4 more in chain - in UK, France, Belorussia and Indonesia. And the initial connection was made from a computer on a dialup connection with a pre-paid cellular account (anonymous) and with prepaid internet card.
And if they try to investigate a website - it was, like I said, paid with a stolen card, and access to the hosting server where I put my scam site, was made through another chain of "private" proxies. ;)))
NOW you tell me how do you expect PayPal to find out WHO they are, Iam not even asking about shutting them down. The things you are asking are IMPOSSIBLE. They only thing PayPal can do is to report fraud to authorities, and try to educate their users.
Scammers do the same phishing thing with banks, too. Does this mean that banks should start playing detectives and try to "find out who are the scammers and shut them down"? No way. It is simply impossible. Technically and physically impossible.
I don't like PayPal myself (and their customer service do suck big time), but I look at the situaton realistically. There is NO WAY they can do anything. The only possibility (and very slight, by the way) to catch the scammers is to follow the money chain and see where it ends. However, with 1000's ways to get money out anonymously these days, it is almost impossible task. And definitely not what PayPal can do alone.
And while there are suckers, there will be scam. Always. It is a human nature and I don't think anything can be done about it. All you can do is to try to educate people around you, and educate yourself.
As for scammers - believe me, they will pay. Sooner or later, they will pay. And they will pay it all - that's universal law. Scammers are poor idiots, they just don't understand that they sign own death warrant. ;)
Thanks for the detailed explanation, but I don't really buy that intelligent applications of Sniffer type tools couldn't isolate and trace these spoofs from whatever network nodes that they pass through and eventually isolate the ISP, if not the particular user from which this abuse emanates.
It is next to impossible to trace due to the resources required & PayPal does not have those tools within the US. Our US Gov't does have the resources to find persons.As for overseas emails, PayPal is again helpless as the local gov't of authority usually does nothing. Parts Africa & all of Romania are good examples of gross lawlessness.
PayPal does nothing to protect sellers if just one of three details below are not correct regarding item never received claims. Per PayPal-
1- Must ship within seven days
2- Buyer must have confirmed address
3- Seller must prove shippingThe newer overseas (outside of US) trick is to buy fairly expensive items with an uncomfirmed PayPal address. If you miss one of the three items, you still lose. Be aware most overseas buyers have uncomfirmed PayPal addresses!
Of course, other PayPal fraud options exist beyond item not received.
A link would be just fine to a statistics of non-US buyers having confirmed vs. unconfirmed address. ;)))A lot of foreign buyers have a confirmed address. Besides, PayPal won't let you send more than a certain (rather small) amount of money UNLESS you confirm your address. So, paying with PayPal for an expensive item would be quite a problem...
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