Cause for concern today, as worryingly PayPal’s UK-based Twitter has been hacked into with the company logo tampered with and a series of mocking tweets made from the account. It’s not yet expected that the intrusion has gone so far as the payment accounts infrastructure.
As most will know, PayPal is an online method of transferring funds “easily and safely” between one party to another, most commonly between buyer and seller on eBay. Admittedly there are times when security on the site is a little questionable, with accounts getting locked for unusual activity and the endless frustrating hoops to jump through when establishing a bank account set-up.
The hackers altered PayPal’s company description and “censored” the banner, followed up by a series of tweets reading “OUR SECURITY IS SO GREAT, LOOK AT OUR TWITTER FEED AND SEE!!” and “Shop safely without paypal. paypalsucks.com”. This was followed by a tweet, presumably by the real PayPal, informally informing us that accounts were locked until they “clean up this mess”.
PayPalSucks.com is a website which declares itself as an anti paypal site exposing the nightmare of doing business “the paypal way” – however nobody has specifically claimed the hack.
PayPal has now managed to regain control of their Twitter account and remove the offending remarks, but doubt still lingers with many tweeters voicing concerns. Of course, we’d imagine the security of over 100million UK credit card details is much harder to access than a social network account – which requires only a correct username and password.
This could just be a morning’s work of a disgruntled customer. But it still throws a shadow of doubt on our safety through the online payment system. You hear the words “Paypal” and “Hacked” and what do you think? Is this as far as it goes? Let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment here on the Blog or sending your tweets and comments to the Official Gadget Helpline Twitter – as well as our Official Facebook page!
Source: The Guardian