entering ssn

[dready]

So I never had entered in my ssn to paypal before and it worked fine. Today I wanted to withdrawl money and it wouldn't let me. I noticed I hadn't enter my ssn and so I entered it and then my paypal worked. Now I have numerous people telling me I have somehow been scammed? I don't feel safe! Why didn't my accout work until I entered it? Also why would paypal want my ssn? For verification purposes... what else? It said something about contacting the IRS....? Sorry if this question is repetitive and whatnot. Please someone respond! And thank you.

[PayPal_Olivia]

Hi dready,

Welcome to the forums! 🙂

I definitely understand your concern. The SSN is an important piece of identifying information, and it's good to be cautious about where you use it! PayPal may require this information for identity verification as part of the process in a few situations. If you were presented with this request during the withdrawal process, it sounds like it is normal.

There are times to be cautious about supplying this information. While PayPal may challenge you for a piece of information to verify identity, we're not likely to need you to fill out a large amount of information all at once on one form. If you encounter this kind of challenge, you may want to stop and run a virus scan with the most updated version of your antivirus software available. If malware is detected, make sure that the threat is removed before using that computer to access PayPal.

If in doubt, you can also try accessing your account from a completely different computer and see if you're presented with the same challenge. The safest way to access your account is by typing "paypal.com" into the address bar of your browser, to avoid clicking any malicious links that might be disguised as legitimate ones.

I hope this helps! 🙂

Olivia