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Updated by user Aug 23, 2016

I took another look at the email correspondence from PayPal to my email address concerning this fraudulent account. On May 22, 2016, PayPal did send an email asking the thief to confirm my email address as his, and even gave a confirmation code to enter on their site.

However, this was never done. On June 22, 2016, PayPal canceled the original transaction the fraudulent account was set up for because, according to PayPal, the account was not even set up, or was never confirmed. So, PayPal refuses to take my stolen email address off an account that, according to their own records, was never set up or never confirmed.

I consider this entire problem, at the very least, gross negligence, or even intentional conduct, on PayPal's part. I have posted an image of this communication from PayPal stating that the account fraudulently using my email was either never set up or never confirmed.

Original review posted by user Aug 23, 2016

PayPal allows anyone to open a PayPal account using any email address they want, even if it's not the person's email address, and PayPal will refuse to remove the stolen email address from the thief's account unless the thief allows them to do it. I live in the United States.

Somebody in England used my email address to open a bogus PayPal account. I received many emails at the stolen email address from PayPal about the bogus account and one transaction. The guy who stole my email address was never able to collect money from the transaction because he couldn't access my email. That transaction was canceled after a month, once again, because the thief could not access my email.

I have contacted PayPal numerous times about reclaiming my email address. I have always been told by PayPal that they are unable to remove my stolen email address from this fraudulent account without the permission of the person who created the fraudulent account. Even though I can absolutely prove that this is my email address, and even though the thief apparently cannot access the fraudulent PayPal account because I own the email address, PayPal still refuses to take my email address off this bogus account. I even filed a complaint with my state's Attorney General.

PayPal responded to that complaint with the same reply: they can't take my email address off this thief's bogus PayPal account without the thief's authorization. This is unreal. Businesses like facebook have a very simple provision for this problem: they send an email to the email address that was registered and ask if the owner of the email address signed up for the account...if not, then the account is canceled and the email address can be put on a do not use list. In fact, this is the way most businesses handle this problem.

You can't sign up for nearly everything on websites these days without validating your email address. Why can't PayPal do this? PayPal is living in the dark ages of the internet. How hard is this to figure out?

(Paypal has informed me that if I ever get my email address removed from this fraudulent account, I would have to open another PayPal account with that same email address in order for it not to be used again. So consumer friendly, aren't they?) Their "Executive Escalation" department just doesn't seem to understand the situation. I have asked repeatedly for their legal department, but so far PayPal has refused to have them contact me. Their legal department would most likely understand that PayPal is acting as an accomplice to identity theft in allowing anyone to open a PayPal account with anyone else's email address, and then refusing to right the wrong.

Let me repeat that once again: PayPal allows anyone to open a PayPal account using any email address they want, even if it's not the person's email address, even if the address and account is never used to collect a transaction, and PayPal will refuse to remove the stolen email address unless the original thief allows it to do so. This sounds like a class action/Attorneys General action to me.

Reason of review: Poor customer service.

PayPal Cons: Refusal to delete my email address from anothers account.

Location: Edison, New Jersey

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Machele Imf

Stop with the "class action" nonsense. You have read of this legal action much too much.

Just stop using that email address and/or go in to it's settings and re-set your password, etc.

Geez! This is not rocket science.

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reply icon Replying to comment of Machele Imf

Class actions and Attorneys General actions are sometimes the only way to bring about change such as this case apparently requires. I guess you know very little about them.

Fortunately, as an attorney, I have a great deal of experience with them. What would you do if someone stole your private email address and used it to set up an online, financial account. Would you simply stop just using that personal email address because of that? Or would you try to get a company like PayPal to do the right thing, cancel the fake account and release the email?

(Remember, the name of this site is Pissed Consumer, not We Bend Over And Take It (which is apparently what you would do).) Please post your personal email so that we all may open financial accounts in our names, but using your personal email address. Would that please you? Also, if you actually read and comprehended what is posted above, you would have noticed that the pissed consumer can get into his/her email account, but the person using his/her email address cannot. Do you understand what this means?

Changing the password to the user's email account would accomplish nothing. PayPal needs to take the pissed consumer's email address off the fraudulent account.

Maybe you should read the complaint again, and s-l-o-w-l-y this time. It's not rocket science.

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