Anyone who’s been trading on eBay and used PayPal for any length of time might be excused for thinking account takeovers are a fairly prevelant occurance. In fact trawling eBay’s community forums will soon reveal complaints from users either who have had their account hijacked, or had a purchase or payment from a buyer who has.
In reality it appears that PayPal’s security is pretty good, and compared to a US bank account or ISP account ranks as one of the lowest risks. Hiese Online reveals that “eBay/PayPal came near the bottom of the list at 0.83 per cent of the total complaints“, with banks and ISPs more likely to lose your data.
If you’re worried about ID fraud PayPal should be the least of your concerns, other financial institutions you deal with may be much more likely to expose you to identity theft and fraudulent transactions.
