Mysterious Skype charges pop up in PayPal accounts
A recent adopter of the application myself, Skype is a wonderful way to keep in contact with people across the globe via text, voice or video chat. Noting that the best thing about Skype is that it is free for most calls, there must be shennanigans afoot, as some users have been greeted with unexplained Skype charges in their PayPal accounts.
Skype only charges users for phone calls to non-Skype numbers, so you can imagine the readers of The Register were a bit confused when they were received Skype charges when their computers were off. One of the hapless readers, Neil Lucock, wrote, “”I doubt it’s a phishing attack…I download all email to a Linux box, don’t view mail as html, don’t click on links unless I’ve looked at the code to see where I’m going and turn the machine off unless I’m using it.”
The Skype charges in his PayPal account totaled £11.50. He was no doubt even more surprised to learn that he was not the only victim; when he contacted his bank about the charges, First Direct said the bank has been informed of multiple fraudulent charges on PayPal accounts due to Skype.
Yet another reader was hit with a stiff £93.12 in charges, and wrote The Register in hopes of spreading the word about the fraudulent activity.
So, if it isn’t phishing, what is it? My first instinct would have also turned to phishing as an explanation. Beyond that, there is the possibility that there was a breach in Skype’s security that the company has not admitted to. If someone hacked into Skype’s systems and stole user information, they could certainly run up Skype charges on PayPal.
Then again, why exactly would anyone invest the time that would take simply to cause a few UK users grief? There isn’t any profit being gained here, so the situation is beyond confusing.
Hopefully Skype and PayPal can work together to establish the cause of the charges before people start dropping PayPal and Skype. Wait…who am I trying to kid?
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October 24th, 2008
I have just been charged 3 times in one day from skype 89.95 euro twice and 3.95 euro in the third. I have never even used the skype account and did not have it linked to my paypal account…I checked the history on the skype transactions and there is nothing there so I am guessing they have hacked paypal and not skype because i have a different email on my skype than the one registered to paypal
November 1st, 2008
can it be Rajiv Dutta owns ebay, paypal and is president of skype. happened to me also.Maybe this can explain all the money comming into the election $650 millon.
November 1st, 2008
Oh and let’s not forget Josh Silverman
April 2nd, 2009
Dont Register you Paypal
in Skype
the data base is hacked
April 19th, 2010
and they are STILL at it. 5 transactions last week (April 2010) appeared in Paypal (and thus funds were debited from my bank account as there were not enough funds in paypal). The total value was 150 but as this didnt get credited to my skype account, and as skype luckily agreed to refund it immediately, I am unsure who benefitted or tried to benefit from this fraud. I would assume Skype are well aware of this activity otherwise I can not see them agreeing to refund it so fast. The only fraud now seems to be committed by Paypal and my bank. Money left my bank immediately last week to fund the unapproved paypal transations to skype, yet Paypal claim 10 days later that those funds still arent cleared from my bank and thus they cant issue a refund. And even when they DO decide to issue a refund it will go to my paypal account, so I will have to wait another week for it to transfer to my bank account. So I would have been without that money for 3 weeks in total whilst it is sitting in other people’s accounts the whole time. Perhaps these people just want to accrue the interest on my money by taking it away from me for those three weeks before returning it? I can see no other benefit to anyone other than paypal here.