I know this has been covered over and over, but I always thought there must be more to the story when someones account was permanently banned. Well, it happened to me, one of the most plain and boring consumer users of PayPal ever.
I have used PayPal for over a decade, usually once or twice a month to make small purchases when buying something off Craigslist or Facebook marketplace. I also occasionally use it to split dinner with friends. I don't use it for business and I don't use it for anything sketchy.
I recently received an email from PayPal saying that my account had been permanently banned. No appeal, no reason given. I logged in separately to make sure this was a real email, at first I thought it must be phishing. It was real.
The only thing I can think of which might have precipitated this. I got a few invoice requests though PayPal a while ago from people/businesses I had never heard of. This is a well known and documented scam where they spam invoices en-masse and hope some people pay them accidentally (I did not pay them, but the PayPal UI makes this very easy to do and there is no way to decline or dismiss the requests).
Not a big deal for me since I don't use PayPal for anything critical, but I figured a reminder was in order in case anyone still thinks it won't happen to them. If it could happen to me, it can happen to anyone.
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