Payment I didn't make - worried

[CWOR]

Hi, I'm in a bit of a panic so just wanted to make sure I've done the right thing :

I had a notification email to say I had made a payment to a seller for a few hundred pounds - straight away alarm bells rang as I didn't make any payments.

i made sure I didn't click any links from the email instead I went directly to my account via my app and sure enough a completed transaction is there.

i rang my bank who have cancelled my card, however my bank account is linked to my PayPal account and this is how the money will be taken.

i have clicked to dispute the payment as being unauthorised and now it is sat in the resolution centre awaiting a response from the seller aka thief 😡

Is there anything else I need to do with PayPal ? I feel like I should be able to report it as an attempted thieft rather than just a dispute? 

Just after a bit of reassurance/guidance- thank you!

[PayPal_Olivia]

Hi @CWOR,

Thank you for your post! I'm sorry to hear about the unauthorized transaction. I'm glad to hear that you reported it right away, and I'm super glad that you make it a habit not to click any links in unexpected emails!

I wanted to help shed some light on what happens when a report of unauthorized activity is investigated.

When you report unauthorized activity, the whole situation is examined. It's not necessarily a safe assumption to make that the seller is the thief. It may possibly be that the seller is complicit in the fraud, which is something that we definitely look into and take appropriate actions if we determine that's the case. However, most of the time the seller is not a a participant in the fraud. Sometimes the seller is actually the person who takes the financial loss when the sending account is reimbursed, if the item that was sold is not covered by seller protection. 

The best thing that you can do in addition to opening the unauthorized activity investigation is make sure that you've chosen a good, strong password that is unique and not used anywhere else. If your old password was used anywhere else, make sure that you change the password there too, to something unique to that platform. It wouldn't hurt to run a virus scan just to be on the safe side, and make sure that any networks that you use to access PayPal are secure.

I hope this helps!

Olivia