Your Pay Pal experiences

[kaseyma]

Was it from a company in Indonesia? PT Tr* something?

No, someone here in SG was buying stuff from Zalora.

[marimil1975]

I have been using Paypal for a few years now and find it very useful, especially when it comes to international transactions

[djzoleta]

the only thing i hate in paypal is the charges i get when i'm doing transactions or when i got payment. I never the a full payment, they also charge like $5-10

but still using paypal since the most secure money transfer i've used.

[marimil1975]

...well, even then Paypal is often times a good solution. An international bank to bank transfer can be quite expensive with fees of 50$ and more...

[earthfriendly]

How do people get hacked? I may need to retire a laptop soon. Rather than tossing it out, I am thinking of keeping it and dedicating it for banking and accessing sensitive websites only. I would think these sites will not hack their own clients, right? Is that the best plan ever ?

And that would free my regular laptop to foray into the more adventurous and wilder sites.

[Strong Eagle]

How do people get hacked? I may need to retire a laptop soon. Rather than tossing it out, I am thinking of keeping it and dedicating it for banking and accessing sensitive websites only. I would think these sites will not hack their own clients, right? Is that the best plan ever ?

And that would free my regular laptop to foray into the more adventurous and wilder sites.

People's accounts get hacked in one of two ways. First, the company servers are compromised as happened with Target stores, Chase bank, and numerous others. There is nothing you can personally do since it was their security that was defeated.

The other way is that your personal PC is compromised. If you are using a router or a decent firewall (even Windows firewall), it is quite difficult for someone to simply break into your PC. Almost all compromised PC's happen because someone opened a virus infected document, clicked on a dodgy link, or was fooled into thinking a scam website was the real thing.

[earthfriendly]

Almost all compromised PC's happen because someone opened a virus infected document, clicked on a dodgy link, or was fooled into thinking a scam website was the real thing.

This is one of one of my fear. It can be difficult to tell weather it is legitimate, especially announcements reminding you to update your software.

[marimil1975]

The most dangerous thing are those pishing e-mails. There are quite a few fake e-mails that suggest changing your credentials and giving away many personal data. Never ever trust those e-mails!

[x9200]

Almost all compromised PC's happen because someone opened a virus infected document, clicked on a dodgy link, or was fooled into thinking a scam website was the real thing.

This is one of one of my fear. It can be difficult to tell weather it is legitimate, especially announcements reminding you to update your software.

A dedicated laptop is a good idea and if you want to improve your chances by a few orders of magnitude, ask somebody skilled and trusted to install a Linux distribution on it. Once installed, for the said applications, it is going to be no different in using from Windows. At the same time you will gain higher immunity for almost all the popular threats.

Of course, you will still need to stay vigilant because some problems are just common relying on cross-platform extension (mostly java and flash) but as of the current issues and web implementations if you only care to have java updated and not use the laptop (this specific account) for anything else, you should be pretty safe.

[x9200]

The most dangerous thing are those pishing e-mails. There are quite a few fake e-mails that suggest changing your credentials and giving away many personal data. Never ever trust those e-mails!

No bank will ever ask you to change your password or for any critical information (including software update) via e-mail. Memorise this and you will have the easy part solved. Easy, because it's just some common sense and no more difficult to stay safe from it than from Nigerian scam.

More challenging problem are e-mail attachments. Preferably don't open any including pictures and videos. Don't trust any e-mails even coming from your social circle. Preferably have a separate account for i-banking. This will not make you completely immune from opening emails on another account within the same computer, but the threat will be reduced.

[PNGMK]

I wish paypal had a regular payment or payment scheduler option.

[earthfriendly]

I am getting loads of useful information here. Thank you!

[marimil1975]

More challenging problem are e-mail attachments. Preferably don't open any including pictures and videos. Don't trust any e-mails even coming from your social circle. Preferably have a separate account for i-banking. This will not make you completely immune from opening emails on another account within the same computer, but the threat will be reduced.

yes, that is also a very good hint, thank you!

[sgstrait]

I use it fairly regularly here in Singapore, primarily for the following:

Foodpanda
EBay
Spotify subscription
Microsoft subscription

If there's an option to pay or subscribe to something on a reputable website then I will usually opt for that.

[earthfriendly]

Malware asking users to update their Android app.

http://www.straitstimes.com/tech/mobile ... tor=CS1-10