For the past several days, I have received several monetary donations through PayPal for exactly 1 US dollar. Several hours after the donation is received, I also receive a notification from PayPal that they are "investigating a payment reversal," as "an unauthorized account activity claim was recently filed" against the transaction.
I've got to believe this is a scammer at work, but I can't figure out what attack vector they're trying. All of the emails I've received are legitimate; I've clicked no links in any of the emails, and manually logging into PayPal via their https address does indeed show these transactions in my history.
Is this someone testing out credit card numbers they've stolen? Are they probing my account somehow to see if there's money available to be had?
My PayPal account is not tied to my banking account, but I do have a credit card associated with it. I've seen no strange outgoing transactions; it's always a single dollar coming in, then being reversed.
Has anyone else seen this? What can / should I do?
Update 1: Some additional information in case anyone wonders about it.
- I changed my password this morning, just in case.
- My website has a PayPal donate button on it, which is possibly where whoever is doing this got my information.
Update 2: I did indeed contact PayPal after receiving these emails, and they agreed that things looked fishy. They recommended changing my password (which, as I mentioned before, I did), and they immediately closed out the questionable transactions. Since I took that action, however, I've gotten 2 or 3 more of these "donations" (though I have yet to see them be disputed). I should note that the person who submits the donation is ultimately the one who pays the PayPal fee (so, I end up with less than $1 for a $1 donation). This is a very strange situation to say the least...