As consumers look for more accessibility to our money through online platforms, scammers are finding loopholes within financial institutions and fintech platforms’ security. Recently, scammers have found a crack in PayPal’s security armor. Learn more about the PayPal Prenote scam and ways to protect yourself below.

What is the PayPal Prenote scam?

Reviews have been coming in that fraudsters have started to use PayPal accounts to withdraw money directly from unexpecting consumers’ bank accounts. First, the scammers build out a fraudulent PayPal account. Then, a prenote check is sent, which is a zero-dollar change sent to the bank to see if the information is valid. Once the bank information is validated, scammers start pulling money from the consumer bank account into their fake PayPal account.

In some cases, the prenote is a mandatory check to confirm that the information provided to the fintech matches the bank account information. If it does not match, no further transactions will occur. PayPal has not implemented a prenote check for their systems. Without this protection, scammers are able to create these fake accounts to steal money. Since you don’t need a social security number or name to open a PayPal account, some victims have not been able to get their money back because their financial institutions did not consider it identity theft. Some of these victims don’t have a PayPal account at all and are just caught in the scam.

How to protect your information?

The best way to protect yourself from any scam is to protect your information. When throwing away personal documents that you do not need anymore, make sure to shred them. Scammers go through trash to steal identities. Also, make sure to check your mailbox consistently, especially if your mailbox is open to the public. Scammers will steal your mail to get your information. On the other hand, to protect yourself on PayPal, set up two-factor authentication for an added level of security. Two-factor authentication is when the user must provide two pieces of identifying information. This is a great tool to help protect your information on any platform. Click here to learn more about protecting yourself from all types of scams.

Source: Market Realist