spammed while my Paypal account was hacked

So I woke up one normal day and checked my email. I was surprised to see thousands of new emails all spam. Like almost everyone, I get daily spam, but decently, like around thirty emails.

I had no idea what this is was all about, but it definitely looked odd.
Most of these emails were already in the bulk folder, but I like to double check, because legitimate stuff gets there occasionally.

So I start scrolling...
And after fifteen minutes, I've spotted something like "You have added a new credit card to your account". All of a sudden, I realised what was happening and I rushed to login into my Paypal. Surprise, surprise, some a few hundreds were missing as withdrawal on that new credit card.

Fortunately, I've reacted in time and Paypal was able to reverse the process so I got my cash back. Then they also helped with some logs and I've managed to investigate and find out how all this was possible:

Many years ago I have used on a forum the same email and password for creating an account. Yes, I know it was stupid, but I think that was even before having a Paypal account. Now it seems like someone hacked that forum(or maybe the admin/owner shared it on purpose who knows) and tried all those user/pass pairs on Paypal website. And at least on mine, it worked! So they wanted to grab quickly some cash, and they added their credit card. Then they spammed me. But the spammed itself triggered my alertness so I don't know if it was such a smart move.

E-gold claims process - Rust Consulting

So every couple of months, E-gold has news for us. On 5 July they announce:

The court approved Claims Administrator is Rust Consulting, Inc. Website: http://www.egoldclaimsprocess.com/

After reading everything there, things are still not clear.
Basically they thrown a couple of .pdf files and a FAQ section where they didn't bother to use new line tags or lists, making it very hard to read. To summarize, they are sending notifications to the first group now:

Rust is in the process of sending notices to the first group of people whose accounts appear to the Government to contain funds that were criminally derived.

So it's good if you don't receive a notification yet. After you receive a notification you have to send a claim and an answer, then after who knows how many more years, they will send a check or electronic funds transfer.

Good luck!

 

E-gold rejects identification documents

I am an E-gold user since many years.
It looked as a very stable system so I decided to keep most of my funds in the system, as a gold investment. Last year they had some troubles with the feds and changed their policy. They requested me to send some docs, I did and now when I login I get:

Photo ID permanently rejected.
Reason previous document was rejected: Refuse Service
Proof of Residence permanently rejected.
Reason previous document was rejected: Refuse Service

I asked for explanation, and they cited from the Terms of service that they reserve the right to reject any user for any reason.
I have no idea now how could I recover my money. It's sad, because I trusted both E-gold and Moneybookers and they both let me down. I was always suspicious about Paypal, but in many years, Paypal was the most stable and I had almost no problems with it.

Moneybookers locked account again

This is the 3rd time they do this.
So if I already sent them my documents two times, why don't they just look in my records?
Why the hell they keep asking for the same thing ?
I tried to explain them this by email but I get copy&pasted responses, like they don't even bother to read my message. So now I have to call them or just send again a copy of my ID.

Your account is locked for all transactions therefore we cannot complete this transaction. To unlock your account, you must send a VERIFIED copy of your passport or national identity card to the following address

Paypal withdrawal: 404 not found, click here to retry

Since a couple of weeks, I am trying to do a paypal withdraw on my VISA credit card and I always get this stupid message: 404 page not found - click here to retry.
I retried a couple of times but the error keeps repeating. I was using Mozilla Firefox. I tried from Opera and Internet Explorer, the same result. I decided to contact paypal about this. I got this reply:

Thank you for taking the time to contact us with your concerns. I am happy to assist you further.

I have reviewed your account and see that nothing is wrong with it. Please try withdrawing money again.

I contacted them again since this answer didn't please me and got this:

We are aware of this issue and I sincerely regret the inconvenience it has
caused you. Our technicians are working to resolve this matter. We
appreciate your patience and understanding.

Obviously I was getting nowhere with them. Anyway, I kept retrying and at some point I tried a withdrawal from my EURO balance instead of the USD one. Surprise! it worked like a charm. So it is some Paypal internal problem with currency exchanges. Or maybe they are just doing it on purpose to force you do exchanges and pay them the fees. But the error message is just stupid and not helpful at all, it should clearly say "you must do the currency exchange first" or something.

"Outstanding" on epassporte online statement

It happened to me twice. I went to the ATM with my epassporte card, entered PIN, selected amount, but instead of money I got some error like "temporary unavailable". I go home, login into my epassporte account and find that the amount I selected is missing from my balance. So I got no money from the ATM, but they are not in my balance, so where are they? I look better and notice something like "outstanding" near that transaction instead of "matched" like on other transactions. I contacted epassporte, they send me a form to complete and asked to fax it. I waited for about 1 month, then got my money back. But if they detected this(and they did since all good withdrawals were as matched, only this one as outstanding) then why did it take one month to return the money?

online ecurrency exchange(e-gold,paypal,moneybookers,wmz)

Many need at some point to exchange one type of e-currency to another. Personally I had e-gold and wanted to get moneybookers because it was easier to withdraw. I couldn't find a trustable site, so I tried a forum. I found some guy who was very old on the forum(2+ years) and had good reviews in reputation from previous exchanges. I was new in the forum so I had to send first. Everything went well and within 10 minutes, he sent me back the money in my moneybookers account. But surprise, after a few days, my moneybookers account was locked. Why? because the person I traded with, was using a 3rd party. He did not sent me the money from his own account, but he put someone else to do it, someone who was probably using questionable ways of getting those money. So, if you ever do online ecurrency exchanges, beware not only of getting ripped, but beware about having your account blocked/closed. This specially applies to paypal and moneybookers. In order to be safe you have to take these steps:

1) Find a reputable trusted person to trade with. If you find a site, check everything from domain whois, to domain age, user reviews, etc.

2) Ask the person you trade with if he will make the payment from his own account, otherwise refuse to do the transaction(a 3rd party may not be as honest or trusted as he is).

3) If you need moneybookers or paypal, make sure you have first withdrawn all your money from the account so in case it will be blocked/locked/closed, you don't use even more e-money beside those traded.

Online Payment Methods

A viable world wide online payment method is mandatory for any internet user who wants to do business. Credit cards are the first option when you do online shopping or buy services, but they are not a solution for b2b or user to user transactions. Checks are history due to posting delays and Western Union is just too pricy. I will list below some of the most used online payment methods:

1) Paypal. Although it may not be the best, it is the most popular so I decided to start with it.

Advantages: The biggest advantage is the high number of users who use it, specially from US and Europe. Pay pal is quite easy to use for both user2user transfers and shopping carts or payment buttons. You also can easily create donation buttons.
Disadvantages: It is still not available in many countries or it is only available for sending. Paypal is target #1 for scammers and fraud. Some accounts get frozen for no reason and it takes ages until they get back to function or they eventually remain frozen. Some blame the high fees, but I think they are reasonable.

2) Moneybookers.
Advantages: Very low fees. The system is quite secure. They move fast with the bank transfer when you decide to withdraw. Although they do lock accounts, if you are a legit user they will listen to you and do some verification and eventually you will regain the access to the account.
Disadvantages: Moneybookers delays non-European customers. For new customers the verifying process can take some days. When you have problems it may take weeks until they solve out, but they usually solve out.

3)E-gold
Advantages: It's backed up by gold, so it's like owning gold, therefore the balance in your account will always (almost) get higher without doing anything. It's very secure and they don't reverse transactions so once you get the money, it remain yours. It's worldwide available and you can create as many accounts as you like. Also it's completely anonymous.
Disadvantages: Sometimes hard to fund or hard to find trustable e-gold exchangers. The exchangers may have too high fees. The same when you have to withdraw.

4) Epassporte.
Advantages: You get a nice plastic ATM card which you can use to get your money out of your account very quickly. You can also do wire transfers. World-wide available.
Disadvantages: They don't actually have shopping cart options or payment buttons, making epassporte unusable for online shops like sites. It seem to be very popular among affiliate marketing, used to pay subaffiliates.

5) Payoneer.
Advantages: You get the ATM card the same as with epassporte. Available worldwide and you can use a variety of methods to fund your account: credit cards, paypal, wire.
Disadvantages: Can be used only for user to user or business to user payments. It's quite unpopular, few people know about or use payoneer.

6)Webmoney.
Advantages: Strong security with many options of preventing fraud. No reverse transactions, reasonable fees.
Disadvantages: Good support only for russians. Hard to withdraw for non-russians.

payoneer card and plimus

After I decided to use plimus as my payments processor, I logged in and took a look to some options. I was surprised to see how easy is to integrate payment buttons in a html page and how easy is to create recurring payments or templates. Also it's good that plimus give the option for a possible customer to use paypal as payment. Then I looked at payout options and saw the ATM card option: Payoneer. First I thought it's too good to be true. I ordered such card, it didn't cost me anything, it was quickly delivered then I was able to use it at the ATM to withdraw money. It is like epassporte somehow, but it is easier to get. More payments processors and even affiliate programs should start to use payoneer.

Adding money into e-gold.com account

E-gold is one of the oldest internet payment system. The idea behind it is brilliant, nothing comes out, nothing goes in, it's just virtual money covered by real gold. They have an amount of gold( which may change depending on their investitions and strategies) but from the user's point of view you virtually have just some part of that gold and you can send it to other users and get goods or services in exchange. Some users are exchangers and they give you real money for the e-gold.

So, if you need to buy something with e-gold and you signup for e-gold but your account is of course with 0 balance, what you do? Simply you must find an exchanger. You give him money or kind of emoney such as: webmoney, paypal, epassporte, moneybookers, stormpay. The most important thing for you is to research if the exchanger is really trusted and not a scammer. With virtual money and specially with those non-refundable such as e-gold, scamming is not uncommon.

How to get e-gold with a credit card? very easy. Although most exchangers don't accept CC payments due to high fraud rate, if you have a credit card, it means you have a bank account so you can make a bank tranfer. With bank transfer you are much more trusted so you will get your e-gold if the exchanger is also trusted. I recommend one exchanger which I tested and succeeded: klad.ee. There you can do wire <-> egold <-> WMZ <-> etc.

Epassporte good or bad?

At the first sight epassporte is a great service. The ATM card is a good idea, being one of the fastest way to send/get money around the world, specially in the countries where paypal is not accepted.
It seems to be very popular in the webmasters groups, many affiliate programs have epassporte payout options which makes them more atractible.
All is well until you get into troubles. The first and most common, is that your plastic card will arrive with delays or it will eventually get lost. Then you have to contact them and their customer support is not really horrible but is bad, they keep you waiting on the phone, which can be a nightmare for non-US people. Then eventually a new plastic card is mailed, it arrive and you set your PIN and are now able to get money from ATM.

But many users talk about other kind of problems such as fraud. I also had this kind of problem, when a big amount of money was fraudulenty transferred from my account. First when I contacted them, they were acting very lousy saying it's all my fault and that I lost the money. But after 2 weeks, they solved the problem very well.

Then once when retrieving from ATM, I got some error and they said transaction was unable to proceed, however when I got home and logged in into my epasporte account I saw that the requested balance was missing from my account. First I contacted the bank which owns the ATM, they said I have to contact my own bank in order to start the investigation. Epassporte was again very slow in this matter, I had to send several mails and make several phone calls until things started to move and after one or two weeks, my money were back.

Another common problem is when you login your account and find that "Information is required", account access restricted and you cannot make any operation. Unfortunately all this happens without any notification. And usually there is no real problem, just Epassporte needs some documents from you, but instead of telling you first and give you grace period until locking your account, they choose the abusive way and lock your account first. Then you have to go again through all contacting process(phones, emails, etc) and if you send the requested documents after some days your access to epassporte account is restored. Phew.

Overall epassporte handled well my problems but with very many delays. And although I said not just once that I will stop using them for having lousy answering time, I keep using them, maybe because there is no real competition on this area and they are hard to replace, ikobo was an option but not anymore.