Closed My PayPal Account
As part of this on-going online security review I closed the PayPal account I've been using for years and year now. Perhaps I'm overly-paranoid but it always made my uneasy that they had Direct Debit access to both my personal and business bank accounts.
Until a couple of years ago it was a just a normal PayPal account, but then a customer insisted on paying me via PayPal, which meant converting it to a business-related account. Since then I've been accidentally buying things like kids pirate dressing up costumes off eBay through my company bank account. Not good. I'm hoping my accountant is going to write them off somehow or other.
So, now I've cancelled the account and logged in to both my personal and business bank accounts to cancel the Direct Debit arrangements as well.
I had no solid grounds for concern and have never been wronged by PayPal but I feel a whole lot safer now.
At the time I closed it I'd not purchased on eBay for a while and hadn't done any work for the PayPal-loving customer for a year or more, so it seemed ok to do so. But the very next day I bought a replacement laptop part and had to create a new PayPal account. Doh. This time though without linking it my actual bank account!
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Jake - I shear your thoughts on the "Direct Debit access ". but what i do is this - I need to buy some stuff - login, take my last 4 digits and put correct one there and save . When done go back and mix them up and save . Make me sleep alot better at nights. Paypal is coming to be the Next VISA
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I think you're talking about credit card numbers? Direct Debit is different. It's a UK thing (I assume) which gives them access to take money straight out of my bank account at any time.
It wouldn't be as easy as changing the numbers stored as they link to your account by *adding* a penny to the account with a reference number that you then validate the transaction with and the DD is setup. Scary!
They then use it to take money if you sell on ebay, which I rarely do nowadays, so I've cancelled it.
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I have to have an account because publishers tend to pay their piddling little payments for stories that way, but I've never been willing to connect it to any bank account. I could never convince myself that it was secure enough.
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What I have done is get a pre-paid credit card and use that for all of my online shopping, including Paypal. It's nice to know that I can never exceed the remaining balance on the card, and also if someone hacks my account I can't lose more than that balance.
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I use a standard credit card - but one I have set up expressly for internet use with a very low credit limit. As with Anura, I would never be at risk for any large sums of money. If I ever need to buy anything above the limit, I transfer funds into the account in advance.
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