YugaTech | Philippines, Tech Reviews Blog

Barely over a month since my Paypal account was hacked and restored, I once again encountered a disastrous incident — this time, Paypal emailed me saying they have placed the account on Limited Access.

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In a recent announcement made last week, Xoom has finally ceased accepting Paypal-funded transactions to the Philippines.

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A reader emails in and points to a new site he accidentally stumbled while mis-typing Freindster instead of Friendster (a popular social networking site in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia).

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Marhgil pinged me about Xoom’s accounts being easily hacked (I think it’s more like cracked). He explained more about it here on his blog.

Since I have been a regular Xoom user, I was very curious on how this could be done. So, I tried the simple steps he outlined — figure out the login email, figure out the bank account number, and figure out the zip code. Let’s look into how easy it is to find the 3 required data to reset your password.

We’ll use a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the hardest to figure out and 10 being the easiest.

1) Email Address – if the Xoom Account owner has a webiste or a blog, chances are his or her email account is posted there. This is practically the easiest data to mine on the net. I’ll give this 8 points in the scale.

2) Bank Account Number – I’m not sure if the regular Xoom Account holder adds his or her bank account in their Xoom profile but what’s the likelihood that this person also publishes his or her account number online? Ok, maybe for people who have some sort of business and posts his bank account online, this could be a huge drawback. I’ll give this one just 2 points in the scale.

3) Zip Code – there a good chance you can find a person’s address online, depending on how much info he or she publishes on the internet. Say 5 points?

Adding up all three factors, we get something like 15 out of 30. That’s dead even. Actually, the critical information there is the bank account number. So, it really depends on the Xoom user and for people like me this sure does pose a huge security risk. I tried cracking into my account and was able to do so with Google in less than 5 minutes (without cheating!).

Now, let’s say someone cracked into your Xoom account. What can he do with it? Not much actually. he can change your password and profile but that’s about it. If you send money, you’ll still have to supply and verify your Paypal account ot credit card account.

So there, not a really huge deal for most but it’s all worthy to look into.

*Email dispatched to Xoom support.*

Sign up for Paypal in the Philippines!

Someone emailed me today asking some advice about Paypal. He wanted to ask how to sign-up for Paypal even if he’s in the Philippines.

Paypal will tell you — you can’t. Yuga will tell you — technically, you still can. I call it proxy registration.

If you have a relative or a friend who lives in a Paypal approved country. You can ask them to use your email account to sign-up with PayPal for you. They will also need to have a bank account to tie up the Paypal account and be verified.

Once application has been approved, usually a souple of days, you can now use that Paypal account to receive the send money to other Paypal account holders.

Please be reminded though not to use it right after registration as the IP addresses are being logged for authentication. In the first few weeks, ask your relative or friend to do the transactions for you.

After maybe a month or after several successful transactions thru Paypal, you may try logging in yourself. During login, you may get a warning that you are accessing Paypal from a country where it is not approved then you will be asked to verify or authenticate your account. It will ask for random information like your middle name or your US bank account number so be ready to have this information with you. If you cancel your login because you don’t have this information, your account me be flagged and eventually locked. Don’t use it too often, maybe just once a week. Let the system get used to you but not too much. It’s even better if you have a static IP so the system will at least remember you on that end.

The logic behind this is that you act as if you were in the US (or any Paypal approved country) when you signed-up for Paypal and then you just happen to visit the Philippines when you accessed your account. This is not a sure-fire alibi but at least you are consistent. There are other valid Paypal account holders who have had their account locked just because they accessed it from the Philippines.

And oh, if you are using Paypal just to received payments, do empty it or offload to the bank as often as you can (and you know why). Mind you, this is not a long-term solution but others get by (like me for example).

Update:
Forgot to tell you that this is not a legit method. It’s just a quick way around for you to get hold of a Paypal account.

I am sure that everyone has come across this topic at least once or twice but I suppose I’d like to add a few words of advise based from experience. Taking your personal desktop’s security in terms of malicious scripts or worms, viruses, keyloggers and other trojan apps should be taken seriously. With everyone connected to the net almost all the time and having to transact online is reason enough to be at least aware of the dangers it poses.

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