Not that I care but...

[justinhill]

for the second time recently someone has placed an order and paid with Paypal but changed the payment amount from what it should be to 0.01.

There's no risk of me processing the order without noticing but it is tiresome. I assume this a crude buyer fraud?

Justin

[Duncan Rounding]

This is a common first step for fraud; a small initial test payment through the account.

[justinhill]

In other words the individual has 'stolen' the paypal account in question and is checking to see if the details are correct? I'd have thought it would be more subtle to have chosen something cheap to buy and then actually paid for it. Changing the amount to 0.01 immediately draws attention and seems more like an idiot 'having a laugh' to me.

Thing is, it hadn't occurred to me before now that the buyer could change the payment amount in Paypal checkout. I'll look at this the next time I make a Paypal payment. It's bad enough that just about every Google Checkout payment is a penny under; now I can't trust Paypal payments either.

[Mike Hughes]

I suspect your initial thoughts were correct. A crude scam to see if you maybe don't have any backend software that will check payment amounts. I'm sure there are / were probably a few sellers who processed everything manually and just looked for the paid email without checking the amounts.

I doubt anyone falls for this these days. Maybe 5 years ago it sometimes worked.

There's little point in testing a paypal account. If you can login to the acount then you know the details are correct. Might as well just try and buy a few things rather than run a fake 1p test.

Fake 1p tests were used in the past by scammers trying to work out / check stolen card details. Often by testing fake orders against a PSP using automatic software. Not sure this is still going on really.

Mike

[Darren B]

NO this is an attempt to obtain goods for nothing.

Actinic has a flaw in it, if you hijack the page as it bounces to paypal you can change the amount. This then continues to paypal and is authorised, actinic then gets the call back showing payment in full.

If you dont check your paypal account then you will never notice.

This was highlighted a couple of years ago but this is the first i have heard of it actualy happening.

[leehack]

This could be a lot deeper than is being discussed here, this could be an interception of the call to Paypal and changing the amount, i doubt this is linked to a Paypal account hack.