My Merchant Account Blog - People Sending One Cent via Paypal

People Sending One Cent via Paypal

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Some people have reported receiving a $0.01 (one cent) deposit to their Paypal account. The sender could be verified or not. The sender could be from the United States or not. The question is, do you want to accept this payment? While finding a penny lying on the ground may be considered good luck, finding a penny in your Paypal account may not be so lucky. Chances are that you do NOT want to accept this payment because the sender is probably trying to verify your e-mail address and / or establish a business relationship with you so they can sell your email address to spammers.

Verifying Your E-Mail

Once the person has verified your e-mail address, he or she can now add it to their list of valid email addresses and then sell the list to spammers. Never accept money from someone that you do not know. If you are like me and use a particular e-mail address for Paypal, you do not want anyone else having that. This helps to prevent those phishing e-mails.

Establishing a Business Relationship

By accepting money from someone, you are establishing a business relationship with that person which helps to bypass any of the laws that are in place to help prevent some types of spam, junk mail, and junk faxes.

So before accepting that one cent, ask yourself how much is your e-mail address and / or business relationship is worth?