gmail or paypal problem

[swill453]

I don't see that it's a technical problem in any way. The other person has used the wrong email address, simple as that. It's your address.

Normally I'd have thought the account wouldn't have been able to be opened without Paypal sending an email with a link to verify the email address. Which you would have received and alarm bells would/should have rung.

Scott.

[scotia]

I don't see that it's a technical problem in any way. The other person has used the wrong email address, simple as that. It's your address.

Normally I'd have thought the account wouldn't have been able to be opened without Paypal sending an email with a link to verify the email address. Which you would have received and alarm bells would/should have rung.

Scott.

That's exactly what has happened, and my immediate responses (repeated several times before I received any human paypal response) should have set the alarm bells ringing. This started on 26th March , but currently (2nd April) paypal seems to think that it is some technical issue with gmail!

[uspaul666]

Good grief. You need to either:
Obtain a new password for the other account by requesting a password reset and log in to their account and requesting account deletion. (Possibly illegal)
Or set up a gmail rule to delete any emails to the old account the instant they arrive.
The person who set up the account has probably already realised their mistake and has already created a new account.
In any case the important thing to realise is that the other account is not you.

[JonE]

Incidentally, on my old defunct email system (freeserve), my email address was p@q.freeserve.co.uk, where p and q were alphabetic strings. But this address seemed to work for any p

Yep - also applied to fsnet.co.uk and the rest of the family and very handy for instant, contact-specific email addresses. Without any preparation or admin at all one simply typed in a unique prefix/local-part when asked for an address by retailers or the like and one knew that only email from that contact would be sent to that address. Use of such an address by anyone else told you which organisation had leaked it - not that I've ever had anyone accept that they could possibly have leaked email addresses (though confirmation of a large-scale leakage has appeared in the press several months later in a couple of cases).

One could try to achieve the same by using gmail with a + element in the local-part prefix but I find that the plus symbol is all too often disallowed in the input field for email addresses. I haven't tested bracketed comments but don't hold much hope.

Cheers!

[swill453]

I don't see that it's a technical problem in any way. The other person has used the wrong email address, simple as that. It's your address.

Normally I'd have thought the account wouldn't have been able to be opened without Paypal sending an email with a link to verify the email address. Which you would have received and alarm bells would/should have rung.

That's exactly what has happened, and my immediate responses (repeated several times before I received any human paypal response) should have set the alarm bells ringing. This started on 26th March , but currently (2nd April) paypal seems to think that it is some technical issue with gmail!

No I meant alarm bells with you, not at Paypal. So since you didn't set up the account, don't confirm it and it won't complete. End of problem.

Scott.

[Infrasonic]

No I meant alarm bells with you, not at Paypal. So since you didn't set up the account, don't confirm it and it won't complete. End of problem.

Scott.

I agree with Scott, I think this is probably a genuine mistake, not some elaborate fraud/phishing attempt.

A colour coded Gmail filter/label can be set up for the rogue address if you want to keep an eye on it, but if there is no real bank account or CC associated with the PP account then at some point they'll probably just void/cancel it? (I've not had any PP accounts for years, I cancelled both of mine).

[mc2fool]

Yes - email from another non-gmail account to x.y@gmail.com and xy@gmail.com both arrive in my x.y@gmail.com inbox. And yes - I can see that one is addressed to x.y@gmail.com and the other is addressed to xy@gmail.com. I need to get a response from gmail as to whether this is a feature or is a flaw.

No need for that, it's definitely a feature. Here from the horse's mouth from 2008 https://gmail.googleblog.com/2008/03/2- ... -your.html

Thanks for the response - so its clearly a paypal problem

No, it is not a Paypal problem, it's a flawed gmail "feature". xy@anything and x.y@anything are different and separate email addresses and Paypal is acting correctly in treating them as such.

Are you going to say it's also a The Lemon Fool problem too? 'Cos if someone tries to sign up to TLF using your xy@gmail.com address you'll have exactly the same thing happening. Or the BBC, or CityWire, or the FT, or Trustnet, or Facebook, or Meetup.com, or any other site on the internet that uses an email address for the login credentials.

Normally I'd have thought the account wouldn't have been able to be opened without Paypal sending an email with a link to verify the email address. Which you would have received...Scott.

That's exactly what has happened

Ah, ok, and you did not click on the link to verify the email address, right?

Assuming not, then what's the problem? You simply ignore and delete the verification email. If it was just one, or a very few in short order and no more, then it was very likely just a mistype by someone genuinely trying to register a Paypal account.

[scotia]

Ah, ok, and you did not click on the link to verify the email address, right?
Assuming not, then what's the problem? You simply ignore and delete the verification email. If it was just one, or a very few in short order and no more, then it was very likely just a mistype by someone genuinely trying to register a Paypal account.

Well - if it had been a single email from paypal, and it ceased when I had not confirmed it, then perhaps it could be ignored. But here is the sequence of emails to this false account from service@paypal.com (none of which I confirmed)
26/3/19 "create a password to complete your Paypal account"
26/3/19 "you added your phone number to your account"
26/3/19 "welcome to PayPal One Touch TM"
26/3/19 "Receipt for Your Payment to Dingtone Communications Limited"
27/3/19 "Confirm your phone number for extra security"
Would you have simply ignored all of this traffic?
I started my repeated (6) responses to paypal on 26/3/19 via their Secure Messaging - after discovering that replies to service@paypal.com are ignored.
I have received two responses from human operators at PayPal (as summarised in my previous emails) on 28/3/19 and 1/4/19. Clearly they haven't a clue. Maybe it will eventually get passed up to someone who has a clue! But I'm afraid I cannot trust a payment system that carries on its business in this fashion.

[mc2fool]

Ah, ok, and you did not click on the link to verify the email address, right?
Assuming not, then what's the problem? You simply ignore and delete the verification email. If it was just one, or a very few in short order and no more, then it was very likely just a mistype by someone genuinely trying to register a Paypal account.

Well - if it had been a single email from paypal, and it ceased when I had not confirmed it, then perhaps it could be ignored. But here is the sequence of emails to this false account from service@paypal.com (none of which I confirmed)
26/3/19 "create a password to complete your Paypal account"
26/3/19 "you added your phone number to your account"
26/3/19 "welcome to PayPal One Touch TM"
26/3/19 "Receipt for Your Payment to Dingtone Communications Limited"
27/3/19 "Confirm your phone number for extra security"
Would you have simply ignored all of this traffic?

Ummm, but none of those appear to be an email address confirmation request message, and indeed from all after the first one it appears that the account is open and up and running, which is strange as I'd have thought that email confirmation would be the very first thing (but, as I say, it's many years since I signed up with Paypal).

I think at this point the thing I'd try is asking for a password reset on that account as a test to see if your xy address is still the one associated with the account (it may be the user has realised their error and corrected it already). Go to https://www.paypal.com/uk/signin and click on Having trouble logging in? which will take you to a Need help with your password? page where you can enter your xy@gmail.com address and click Next.

If there's still an account under that address then it'll go to a Quick security check page where it'll give you a choice to Receive a text/Have us call you/Receive an email/Answer your security questions, and if there isn't an account with that address it'll just stay on the Need help with your password? page with a red warning triangle.

If there is an account under that address then I'd simply report to Paypal that someone has opened an account using one of your email addresses. No need to confuse them with anything about gmail and dots; the simple fact is just that you own xy@gmail.com and someone else has opened an account under it.

Clearly they haven't a clue. Maybe it will eventually get passed up to someone who has a clue! But I'm afraid I cannot trust a payment system that carries on its business in this fashion.

Their responses do sound slow and shoddy ... unfortunately that's not so unusual for any customer service dept nowadays.....

[Infrasonic]

Their responses do sound slow and shoddy ... unfortunately that's not so unusual for any customer service dept nowadays.....

It's box tickers all the way until you can break through to someone with genuine technical knowledge, an increasingly difficult task.
I remember in the early days of Vodafone when you could ring up their helpline and speak to an actual engineer, find out what the problem was and generally get it fixed in about five minutes. There were so few handsets about they generally knew all those issues too.

[scotia]

Thanks for all the continuing responses.
I think I will stick to my aforementioned decision. To avoid further confusions, I'll leave my account and its password untouched - but I'll keep a lookout in my paypal account, and wait (a reasonable time) for a sensible response from paypal which convinces me that they have sorted out what appears to be a substantial security problem - e.g. would you be happy to be emailed details of a purchase by another paypal member? Then once I'm convinced that it is sorted I'll close my paypal account. Of course paypal may never get round to sorting the problem - in which case, I'll still close the account, and will seek to log the problem with an appropriate regulatory authority. Alternatively, publicising the problem on widely used social media may have a more expeditious effect.
Incidentally, in my emails to paypal via their secure message service, I chose the option "Report unauthorised access or unknown charges". But it appears that their response time to even such an obviously urgent message is a couple of days - and then the response would appear to be incorrect.
Maybe I'm a grouchy old man, but I find paypal's response to this issue incredibly incompetent. Given the few tranactions that I carry out with paypal, I think I can do without them.

[pochisoldi]

Thanks for all the continuing responses.
I think I will stick to my aforementioned decision. To avoid further confusions, I'll leave my account and its password untouched - but I'll keep a lookout in my paypal account, and wait (a reasonable time) for a sensible response from paypal which convinces me that they have sorted out what appears to be a substantial security problem - e.g. would you be happy to be emailed details of a purchase by another paypal member? Then once I'm convinced that it is sorted I'll close my paypal account. Of course paypal may never get round to sorting the problem - in which case, I'll still close the account, and will seek to log the problem with an appropriate regulatory authority. Alternatively, publicising the problem on widely used social media may have a more expeditious effect.
Incidentally, in my emails to paypal via their secure message service, I chose the option "Report unauthorised access or unknown charges". But it appears that their response time to even such an obviously urgent message is a couple of days - and then the response would appear to be incorrect.
Maybe I'm a grouchy old man, but I find paypal's response to this issue incredibly incompetent. Given the few tranactions that I carry out with paypal, I think I can do without them.

If Paypal are disclosing personal data, then an email to their data protection officer might move things along.

If that gets no response, next place to visit is the Information Commissioner's office - who can wield a much bigger stick than you or I.

[scotia]

The Saga Continues. In my email of April 2nd, I copied a portion of the last response from paypal concerning this problem which was dated 1/4/2019. To recap it stated " To further help you, I took the initiative to resend your account to our technical team so that we can implement fix. We will get back to you and send you a follow up email once we receive an update."
Well - they don't seem to be putting much effort into it, because today(4/4/2019) I received another email from paypal intended for the "other" (named) party. It was entitled "What would you like to do next?", and it was advertising blurb for all of the actions this "other" user can carry out with paypal:-
"Millions of online stores, Endless Possibilities" - with a button "Shop Now"
"Send in seconds. Receive quickly." - with a button "Send Now"
"Pay over time with PayPal Credit" - with a button "Apply Now"
I think this goes way beyond poor customer service. It indicates a complete disregard for account security, with no effort being made to correct the problem.