PayPal has become a world-wide famous payment method for people to utilize in order to prevent scams and fraud. But you may wonder is PayPal secure? Here we are going to list the security features that PayPal uses to protect their users’ information.
SSL Encryption
PayPal uses SSL encryption to ensure the data between user’s browser and their servers is safe. Additionally, they even encrypt the data in transit and all the stored ones on their servers to guarantee the safety of your personal and financial information.
Email authentication process
Since PayPal is a very popular platform, it happens to be frequently used to disguise any kind of phishing attacks. This is the main reason that PayPal decided to work together with major email providers like Gmail and Yahoo to enhance its authentication process through outgoing emails. Therefore, your email provider could identify emails coming from the true PayPal domain as legitimate and then allow them to pass directly to your inbox. Otherwise, any phishing emails from fake domains will be stopped and flagged as spam as alert.
However, you should always keep vigilant all the time and carefully check on sender’s name or email address as an extra step of self-protection before opening any email or file.
2FA: Two-factor authentication
PayPal uses the system of two-factor authentication (2FA) which requires an additional step of confirmation for user to complete. You need to begin with entering your account password as normal process and then a confirmation code will be instantly sent to your mobile device for the next step authentication. Such randomly generated code would be requested at the same time when you enter the password to make the process more complicate for any intended parties to sneak into your account because you are the only person can receive the code from your personal mobile phone. Therefore, make sure to follow PayPal’s step-by-step guide to enable the 2FA feature because this feature is not on by default.
3D passcode
PayPal also uses 3D passcode as an additional security requirement for online shops to complete the orders. This process of authentication could be varied depending on the bank and card issuer, but typically requires to enter an extra password or verification code when setting up. For example: Secure Code for Mastercard, Safekey for American Express and Verified-by-Visa for Visa cardholders.
Prepaid card
If you worry about data leaking, PayPal can offer you the option of Prepaid card for their users to feel safer with online shopping in case that some websites don’t have PayPal as their payment choice. It is definitely a very useful tool to reduce the risk of online fraud and identity thefts because prepaid cards contain very few personal data.
