I am always very careful when shopping online and tend to use Paypal rather than my debit card when visiting any unfamiliar websites. I was quite surprised then to find that my debit card has been compromised. On looking at my statements the other day I noticed a number of Paypal transactions which I had not made. The odd thing was that they didn’t show up in my Paypal account. Naturally the first thing I did was call Paypal who confirmed that I had not made the payments from my Paypal account. On doing a check against my debit card, however, they did find the transactions. It appears that someone has managed to obtain my debit card number and set up a Paypal account with it under a different name. Of course the payments they make come straight out of my bank account. Paypal are unable to give me any details regarding this other Paypal account and their best advice is that I should cancel my debit card. They say that the payments will eventually be refunded back to my account, (watch this space to see how I get on with this).
In the meantime I have called my bank and cancelled my debit card. This leaves me in a bit of a fix, as it is my only account. To withdraw any money I would have to go into the branch (there isn’t one in my town) and produce a passport or driving licence. I am also unable to carry out any transactions until my new debit card arrives which is most inconvenient, especially in the run up to Christmas. During my phone call to my bank they also had the cheek to try and sell me some sort of fraud protection cover for £6.99 a month. Personally I think it is the banks responsibility to protect your account details, I find it laughable they want to charge people for something that in my opinion they should be doing already. Anyway needless to say I didn’t take out this additional cover. I am still no wiser as to how my account has been compromised, whether it is the fault of Paypal, the bank or the result of me purchasing something from another website that has disclosed my details. One good thing that has come out of the whole mess is it has forced me to save money because I can’t get to it. On a trip to Tesco today I went into the store with £30, added the items up as I went round and spent £28. Usually I would go to the store needing just a few items, end up purchasing a lot more and finding I didn’t have enough cash, put the balance on my debit card.