Hey bcr: Kudos to you for apparently discovering this "trap" before fraud was perpetrated upon you! I was not as lucky. Someone hacked into my walmart.com account over this last weekend and because I had an "automatic payment" authorization resting in there from a random prior purchase some time ago (unbeknownst to me!) the fraudster was able to purchase and receive merchandise under my account! Paypal released funds accordingly days ago. The merchant would not help me because the merchandise was received by the criminal, shipping/tracking on my account confirmed the address delivered to (somewhere far away from me in another state)! I filed a case with Paypal today and they were LIGHTNING quick to respond and cover under my Zero-Fraud Liability Protection ( a standard feature I guess, but not sure (I actually wonder if Paypal just did me a complimentary favor in that? The fraud involved 2 transactions, same day, $79 total. So, could have been MUCH worse)! I immediately rummaged around in Paypal when noticing a button for "automatic payment" cancellation on this vendor when first looking into this matter.....and then saw, to my horror, scores of other such retailers over the years I have purchased from "once" that were also carrying the "automatic payment" authorization status!!!! I could not figure out any automated way to CANCEL ALL OF THESE authorizations at once, so had to go about the painstaking task of manually cancelling each and every one. And in the future I will be MUCH more careful to ascertain where and how I can "deactivate" this automated payment authorization when I make a Paypal purchase online.
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