Are Your Credit Cards Safe with PayPal?
Some Peace of Mind for PayPal Users
It's every PayPal user's worst nightmare - someone hacks into your PayPal account spending thousands of dollars on your credit cards and you're left to foot the bill. Not only is this scenario highly unlikely, it's almost impossible. If you've been afraid to use PayPal because you think your credit card information will be at risk, here are some things to consider.
Prevention Starts at Home
While PayPal does offer many tools to protect its customers, safeguarding your credit cards when you add them to a PayPal account is really something that starts with you. This means understanding how PayPal works, what "spoof" email is and what you can do to protect your information and account.
Fortunately, PayPal offers its users a number of informative tools and something called the "Identity Theft" challenge to help educate it's users about credit card and information safety.
In addition to reading PayPal's helpful informtion, make sure you only sign into PayPal by visiting the site directly. This means typing "www.paypal.com" into your browser directly and not following any outside links.
Added Layers of Protection
For those who have been afraid of using PayPal because they feel someone could get a hold of their password, you might be interested in PayPal's newer "security key" tool. This is an added layer of account protection that will help keep PayPal and your registered credit cards under lock and key.
For $5 PayPal will send you a little key chain that generates random numbers. When you log into your PayPal account, you have to use your email and password like every other use, but you also have to enter the random code generated by your security key. No key? No entry. It's that simple.
Credit Cards Have Built-In Protection Too
If, after all is said and done, someone does still manage to steal your PayPal account information (and I'm telling you this is very unlikely if you manage your account properly) you are further protected by your credit cards themselves. Most cards carry a $0 fraud liability policy, meaning you can dispute unauthorized charges and not be made responsible for them. Other cards carry just a $50 fraud liability, which means the most you'd be responsible for is $50 should your info fall into the wrong hands.
All in all, I feel PayPal is a wonderful resource for making online payments with credit cards. Those who have been afraid to do so can take comfort in the above information.