Boring progress report

[scyllacat]

I have attempted to call everyone involved: Paypal says they are trying to make sure that the pending charges (that I also disputed) are not going through, but says that the one charge may go through and take up to 10 business days to correct.

Since PayPal is linked to an old bank account (that has no money in it, that I only use for online payments) I called them (a credit union, actually) and they have charged me $28 to put a hold on the account. I thought having no money to give would protect me, but they reminded me that they (as a "courtesy") automatically pay out electronic payments. Since those are the payments with the most unreliable security, it makes perfect sense that THOSE would be the ones you would honor FOR NO APPARENT REASON, even if they overdraw the account. So, I went ahead and paid the $28, since at this point it's apparent it's ALL MY FAULT.

Yes, I put a drive up with music on it to share, but LimeWire accessed ALL the files, including files that had old account information. Most of which was out of date, because I'm a good girl and change things frequently. But NOT the paypal information (including the password) because there was NO MONEY attached to it and it hadn't been used in 5 months.

I called all three of the vendors, and one of them has put an alert on the account, and one of them said they were actually calling the warehouse to get them to put a stop on the order. The third one, Walgreen's of all people, says they can't do anything until AFTER the transaction has gone through. I'm like, ok, dude, it's not my money that's going away at this point.

And I guess I'm going to have to get off my butt in an hour to pay that bank stoppage fee before the holiday weekend.

Meanshile, I've gotten all of the reports for this week at least drafted (there's one left that's only in first draft stage, incomplete, most of the rest are even spellchecked), and the first 7 cranked through for correction. So the old lady might get home tonight.

Comments

[wyldemusick.livejournal.com]

LimeWire is one of the worst P2P programs you can use -- aside from the security issues with data thieves, you become susceptible to layers of spyware and it's pretty much an open book to the RIAA monitors (most of the lawsuits they file against people involve the use of Limewire and -- an even worse offender -- KaaZaa.)

As far as cleaning your computer of the stuff that caused the trouble, there's programs such as the free CCleaner (look on FileHippo), Spybot Search & Destroy, and Ad-Aware SE that should nail a good part of the crap.

I'm really sorry you got nailed like this. It's a huge pain in the ass.

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

The name "LimeWire" almost always makes me cringe these days. This, unfortunately, is not at all atypical of LimeWire stories. (http://community.livejournal.com/techsupport/1359014.html) "Then I saw it- the limewire shared folder. Oh, what horrors would lie within? I stealthfully trashed it, but I was caught. I played dumb and opened it up for her to see. Matthew, I saw, was cringing."

I've been less and less convinced that I need to do P2P file sharing as the pitfalls of it become clearer, and the risks become more obvious. It's harder to pull off hacks like that on a Mac than it is on a PC, but clients like LimeWire leave enough doors unlocked that it's not hard to hack even Macs through it. I just share files via email, or if they're too large for that, burn a CD or DVD .. :D

Sorry to hear about your PayPal getting cracked. It's amazing how much damage some people can do with access to that, and it's even more amazing how slow a lot of places are to work with you to head off a cracker who knows full well that the faster they move the more they can grab. People like that are yet another reason that I take a dim view of humanity in general these days, but they do exist and it's not quite legal to hunt them for sport ..

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

Remembered my other question .. Why the fsck would a bank pay out an automatic payment on an account you don't have any funds in, "as a courtesy"? (Unless it's not you they're being "courteous" to.) I've heard of a lot worse things happening as a result of this, someone hit a friend of mine from DFW recently and they didn't find out until the bank had sold the debt to a really sleazy collection agency who is now hounding her for it. (Steal someone's account info, go on a shopping spree, disappear, and have thugs with bad attitudes shake down your mark for the money .. sweel deal for the thief..)

I've had them pull this on me too, even on accounts I've purposely not funded to choke off the money flow to online stuff that sets up non-cancellable autorenewals for things I only want to pay for once. I have a prepaid debit card that's not linked to any of my real accounts specificially to avoid this, and some of them have even figured out how to suck that beyond dry.

I don't mind the principle of protecting people from their own screwups, but I wish banks that do this would allow people to opt out of it. That, and a few other things. (Remind me to tell you the story of almost being stranded in Tucson, AZ when my bank decided to flag and CANCEL my debit card, which took most of a day to straighten out and fortunately happened within a block of a local branch of the same bank, because they hadn't been notified that I was going to be travelling ..)

[morven.livejournal.com]

Just a stretch, but did the bank acct # you gave paypal go through your checking number or a VISA debit card number.

Visa is *all about* sweeping all fraud related incidents under the rug as fast as can be. If it went through them to your bank they might be able to reverse the fees etc. if you talk to fraud department.