[Coco] PayPal

[David]

On Tue, Dec 30, 2003 at 11:01:12PM -0300, Richard E. Crislip wrote:
> Hello David
> 
> On 12/30/03, David wrote:
> > On Mon, Dec 29, 2003 at 07:57:12PM -0300, Richard E. Crislip wrote:
> >> Hello David
> >> 
> >> On 12/29/03, David wrote:
> >>>> On 29 Dec 2003, Neil Morrison wrote:
> > 
> >>> This doesn't make a lot of sense.  It looks like if entity X was
> >>> authorized to make a-w's, they could do so, and if they weren't
> >>> authorized, then they couldn't.  It seems to me that all I should have
> >>> had to do was go in and say, "CIS no longer is authorized to make
> >>> a-w's", and maybe sign something. But from the way they talked to me,
> >>> if I go in and authorize X to do a-w's and Y finds out about it,
> >>> then Y can come in and start taking money out for themselves.
> >>> 
> >>> Maybe I was just talking to someone who didn't know what they were
> >>> doing, or my bank isn't very knowledgable in these things, but if they
> >>> are on track, then this system doesn't sound very secure at all.
> >> 
> >> How long ago was that? Surely things have improved since then. It sounds
> >> like your experience was sometime ago.
> > 
> > It's been some time ago - probably 10 years.
> > 
> >> Please understand I'm not belittling
> >> or anything like that, I'm searching for clarification.
> > 
> > Not taken as such.  As I said before, I'm not sure it's accurate myself,
> > but this how it was told me by people who _should_ know.  And I could
> > have interpreted it all wrong, but it left me with serious doubts about
> > the security of such an arrangement.
> > 
> Thanks for taking the question in the spirit intended. I asked because I've
> have done considerable "wire transacting" including my pay going straight
> to my account. It was either allow that or find another job. I've also had
> life insurance paid that way as well as allowing PayPal to access it and a
> credit card. To date ( knock on wood) I've had zero problems doing that.

I'd say that as a general rule, it's pretty reliable.  Most major
institutions would probably not intentionally withdraw funds in excess
of their due.  My big concern would be, if I interpreted my bank's
explanation right, and I'm not saying it _IS_ necessarily correct, that
if authorizing any single automatic withdrawal opens your account up to
anyone who makes a claim to it, then you need to be very careful as to
who know about it and has that account number.

Wouldn't this be the only way crooks could withdraw money from your
account?  Right now, my account is _supposed_ to be closed to this, so
the only way they could get to mine would be to obtain some of my
checks - or they could order checks if they had the bank # and my acct.
#, I guess.

> BTW, I renamed the subject to more accuratly reflect what we are discussing.
> Hope nobody is offended by this.

I thought about changing it myself.  Actually, for my part in it, it
ought to be "Bank debits" or the like.  I have no idea whatsoever about
PayPal as to their integrity or security.