What's up with PayPal donation scammers?

[darkmagishin]

It's amazing how some 10 year old kid can get his parent's credit card and walk to his local public library to cause so much damage to a private server.


Example: scammer that PayPal can't detect.

This is the best way scammers chargeback. A scammer goes to his local library, then logs into his PayPal and donates to the WoW server $500 or so. For 3 months the scammer doesn't log into his PayPal at his house, and at the end of the 3 months the scammer does an UNAUTHORIZED chargeback. With this unauthorized chargeback, PayPal checks the ISP from where the payment was made and the ISP from where the unathorized chargeback claim was made, the ISPs will not match. The scammer will get 3 months to enjoy his donation items and 3 months after the payment was made, receive a full refund from PayPal.

You can all stop thinking about adding crummy terms of service, logs, and screen shots. PayPal will ALWAYS side with hacked victims, especially because PayPal can detect the best proxies.


What are private server owners suppose to do now with a scam like the one above. I guess the only option is to drop PayPal for good.

[Ballwinkle]

You get the option to appeal. Also deposit the money into a bank when u get it, so if u get charged back u just get -£10 or whatever.

[XatoA]

Never keep more than what is needed for the server in your paypal account.

[Dr. Livingstone]

The problem is that if you go negative for long enough PayPal will come knocking.

[Ballwinkle]

if your only negative a like £10-30 pounds they wont do anything. Ive got -£180 and ive had a letter and they havent done anything.

[whero]

Lol, owe money to a bank. Good one

[Dr. Livingstone]

It will normally work out fine. Just every once in awhile things go kinda wrong...

[Stabatha]

Would be great if more server owners were willing to work together rether then trying to steal ideas and your players as to where some sort of central database could be put together.. sorta like a RBL, listing info about players who have charged back... paypal e-mail, game account name (99.999% of players use same account name on all private servers they play) and IP address. Then other servers could deny their donation based on proven chargeback on another server.

[TheSpidey]

I actually had an idea similar to yours, Stabatha. It shouldn't be too hard to implement or administer either