Thanks to everyone else for the helpful information and suggestions. I also operate the website for a non-profit with a donations button and we have also suddenly begun receiving a number of suspicious donations in the last few weeks - always in amounts between 2 and 5 Euros. We have had a donations button on our webpage for two years now but just began receiving these strange donations about three weeks ago. Before that, we were lucky if we got two donations a year. I have noticed one common element for us: all of the donations are coming from people who use different currencies than we do (we are in Germany and use the Euro). The donations are coming from accounts in the USA (which would not normally be unusual for us), but also from accounts in Poland and the UK (there is no reason for people in these countries to send us money). This is pure speculation, but perhaps these donations are coming from bots or people who are engaging in currency speculation. They send us a donation if they think that the Euro is undervalued, in the hope that it will rise within a relatively short time. If it does rise, they request a refund, which is converted back into their own currency, but at a higher rate. Voila, they have made money on the deal. If they send 5 euros to 200 different accounts, they can effectively speculate with 1000 Euros. We do not have a captcha (going to add one ASAP) or a minimum donation amount (ditto), so in our case it could be bots making these transactions.
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