PayPal Plug-in for Secure, Single-use Credit Card (or is it single-use?) [part 2]
ByWhen I wrote my PayPal post on May 22nd, little did I know a follow-up would be forthcoming (and necessary).
A past-time, turned passion of mine is listening to tech pod casts while taking daily walks with my dog, Duffy. I regularly listen to Security Now, with Steve Gibson and Leo LaPorte. (I listen to it, I only absorb about a third of it–very techie!) On episode #150, there was a discussion regarding the single-use PayPal credit card plug-in.
Seems Steve used the card for a purchase of one of those try-it-for-3o-days subscriptions-and-if-you-don’t-remember-to cancel-your-subscription,-we’ll charge-you-again! He thought the PayPal 1-time use card would be the way to go. However, he was surprised to find the 1-time use card was used again right before the expiration. Here’s an excerpt from the transcript of the show with the warning from Steve:
“….when I went to the Secure Cards tab under the PayPal Plug-in, it shows you all of your still live cards that you have, then the option of setting a checkbox to select them and manually close the card. So I wanted to inform our listeners that PayPal’s single-use cards are not single use. They stay alive for multiple uses until, presumably, the expiration date is passed. And so it is incumbent upon the user to manually shut down the card when they want it no longer to clear.”
PayPal – how can you do this? So for all of us who thought we truly had a “throw-away” card, not so fast! The ‘card’ generated by PayPal has an expiration of usually about a month. So in the future, take note of what the expiration is and after your purchase has cleared, log back in to PayPal and go to the Secure Cards tab as Steve indicated above and manually cancel or deactivate your card to protect yourself from unexpected and unauthorized charges.
