PayPal Digital Gifts Hacked?
PayPal is a word that always brings out a great range of emotions among people in this community. Most people can’t stand the company, but we all put up with them for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons is their gift card arm called PayPal Digital Gifts. This company often sells discounted gift cards on eBay and on their own site as well.
One of the biggest issues people have with PayPal Digital Gifts is their strange rules. Over the years they have enacted strange security protections and purchase limits that are frustrating to say the least. The one positive I can say is that they have continued to code as 5X with Ink, which has made purchasing their discounted cards attractive during certain promotions.
Compromised iTunes Cards
One such promotion recently was for discounted iTunes gift cards. A company that I sell cards to even upped their buy price to encourage their bulk sellers to purchase the cards. I purchased my limit and sold them and I am sure others did as well. The company knows I am a blogger and I recently received the following message from one of the higher ups:
A slew of bad iTunes cards in the past few days that we’re all purchased from PPDG. We are putting together data points to confirm it, but we now think their outage was related to a hack.
Outage? What outage? Well, if you hadn’t heard, PayPal Digital Gifts went away for awhile in August. No notice, they just shut down their website and eBay store. Now we might know why. They might have had a security issue. Of course this is just speculation, but we do know that many of the cards were compromised and we now know one more thing…
Gift Card Codes via Google Search
This morning Doctor of Credit posted this Google search link on Twitter along with an accompanying article. If you clicked the link then you no doubt saw that some poor person’s codes have been indexed by Google and are available via public search. Based on this info and the email I received, I wonder if someone figured this out awhile ago and began cleaning out iTunes and perhaps other cards.
My Thoughts
I really don’t know what to think here. If PayPal Digital Gifts was compromised they owe it to their customers to let them know what happened. At the very least we know that their security allowed certain codes to be indexed which indicates a compromise on some level. This is a company that makes it so hard to do business with them that you would think they would care enough about customers to proactively tell them something is going on. Then again, it is PayPal.
Based on the fact that their site is back up and that there are now only a very limited number of codes available via Google Search, my hope is that things have been fixed, but we don’t know what happened nor do we know what they have done to prevent this from happening again. As someone who has purchase a lot of gift cards from this company, I am a bit hesitant to buy more for now, but we’ll see.
What are your thoughts? Is this all a coincidence? Do you know something about this that I haven’t mentioned here? Let us know in the comments.
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I have three $100 staples gift card bought from ppdg last year, also one $100 sears gift card and one $25 bestbuy gift card and $50 ebay gift card.
their value is all $0 for me without spending any of that money at all !
PPDG is terrible !
I have had two payment taken from my account of £100 each. Paypal say they are legit bit this is the first time I have heard of this company.
Since this is a fraud, Police and British banking authority have been informed
What if you sold your PPDG gift cards to resale sites? Ugh — it’s going to be a cluster! Has anyone spoken to ABC/CC or Cardpool, GCZ or Saveya?
I am short over $800 of best buy cards.
My 3x $25 BestBuy GCs were stolen as well. All currently have a balance of $0.00 and I never bought anything from BestBuy or used the GCs after purchasing them.
Hi Guys, my Bestbuy GC I bought from paypal_digital_gifts was stolen on Sep 13. I bought it about half a year ago, so probably cannot even open a case on ebay.
Any advise?
I messaged the seller, but doubt they will bother, since it was quite a while ago.
Lets share any progress on this matter here. Alone we wan’t be able to get our money back;)
Any luck? I contacted PayPal and they said it was too late, over 180 days from the purchase. I don’t see how the timeframe should matter if private data was compromised. This is a very frustrating situation.
Here are instructions on how to proceed
https://slickdeals.net/f/9095623-psa-check-your-balance-for-paypal-digital-gifts-bought-from-ebay-your-digital-gift-cards-might-have-been-comprimised-and-have-an-0-balance
From what I see, there is lots and lots of people affected.
Filed my complaint with BBB (I know, they have no claws). Really, this hack is deserving of media coverage. PayPal is extraordinarily irresponsible in their handling of this theft.
I bought $100 Bestbuy GC in June of last year, tried to use it yesterday was drained to 0.00. I went to Best buy to see if they can trace who used it, I got a print out of the receipt it was used to buy iTunes GC. I filed a claim and got my $100 immediately
So, what resolution are you guys getting from Paypal? I am on hold to reach right department but was relieved to know this was issue on paypal side & I am not alone. My 2 $100 BB gift cards bought on Aug 3rd were stolen and were used in MA, I live in TX.
[…] Was PayPal Digital Gifts Hacked?!? Is It Safe to Buy Gift Cards From Them? […]
This is a little bit off topic.
I have $90 worth of physical ITunes Gift cards Id like to sell.
Can anyone suggest a good place to do that ? I know ebay, but its 12%+ in fees.
I have 3 three packs of $10 cards and I have no need for them.
Thanks.
Not soliciting buyers as much as soliciting advice as to reputable buyers. Id hate to send the $90 worth of cards and get nothing.
Is $80-82 a reasonable goal net to me ?
Email is willjeffers2@gmail dot com.
Bought 8 iTunes and all 8 were redeemed before I could sell them. Just filed a case with eBay
IMO, the Google search thing is totally separate. Those results were from only THREE people and they likely inadvertently posted their redemption link somewhere public
Is there a way to check if the iTunes card has been redeemed without actually redeeming it? Thanks.
I had 2 Best Buy gift cards with the value stolen.
Numerous forums are having people report that they have had gift cards bought from PPDG that now have a balance of $0. I myself had 2 $100 Best Buy gift cards that were purchased on 8/3 and was used by someone in a store in California on 9/4 (I live in New Jersey and was not in California on 9/4). When I was at Best Buy yesterday, the lady at customer service told me they already had 2 people come into the store and try to use gift cards purchased from PPDG and find that the balance was at $0. This definitely was a hack at Paypal.
I bought 2 $100 Best Buy gift cards through them on 8/3 and both were used in a California store 5,000 miles away from my house on 9/4. I went into the store today and had them transfer my $850 in gift cards which hadn’t been stolen onto new cards, and the lady in the store told me they already had 2 people today come in and try to use gift cards bought from PPDG which had a $0 balance. there are also numerous reports from different deals forums on the net that people are finding out their cards have a $0 balance.
There seems to be no doubt that the PPDG system was hacked in August. As to why Paypal is not notifying anyone, I honestly am flabbergasted.
Have u file charge back via ur cc company if u run into issue with ppdg?
I may have to file 1 soon, please share ur experience w/ Citi, chase and Amex, thx a lot