[jacquesm]

> to trap you into an endless page reloads of "please enter your bank account" nonsense.

That pretty much describes what happened.

I will take your information to heart and get paypals access revoked and I'm going to close that account and open a new one just to be sure.

Thank you very much for the helpful info, I knew paypal was bad, I always thought the 'bad' limited itself to my balance on their end (which I made sure I never had).

This is a bit of a shocker really.

[jcroberts]

I wish it wasn't such an unpleasant shock for so many people, but very few people even think about how something actually works and the risk models being used. In the case of paypal Max Levchin (sp?) created a brilliant fraud detection (risk analysis) system, and also made sure to mitigate risks to his company by making sure someone else could be put on the hook when something goes wrong (i.e. why they press so hard for direct access to your bank accounts). Even though it is a brilliant design, and a profitable business, the entire company is dubious because it profits from putting normal people (users) at risk without ever informing them of the risks.

[cosmicray]

> I will take your information to heart and get paypals access revoked and I'm going to close that account and open a new one just to be sure.

To be fair, PayPal transactions to/from your bank account happen via ACH. ACH (automated clearing house) has been around long before PayPal existed. It is also used by various other entities for periodic payments (like insurance, utilties, etc).

I was once told that a common savings account can have inbound ACH (money sent to you) but not outbound (money sent from you). Might want to talk to your bank about this.