My Account Suddenly Became Chinese...

[willowywicca]

As the title says, upon logging in today I found that my many-year old paypal account has somehow been automatically changed to be entirely in chinese now. Please revert it back to english so that I can properly use it again. All login screens, pages within the account etc are all in chinese. My previous payment was to a chinese person, but I've a long history of payments to non-chinese destinations so it seems a bit silly that it would change my language based solely on that..

Anyways, any help in reverting my account to English settings would be greatly appreciated. I did try going through all menu options with google translate but couldn't find any mention of language settings anywhere at all..

Also, is this a sign that my account was hacked? There doesnt seem to be any transactions made which makes me suspect not, but a little concerned nonetheless..

[kernowlass]

Sometimes you'll visit a webpage that the encoding is in another language (Chinese, Spanish, French, etc.).  Depending on your internet preferences, that webpage will leave a cookie with the language.

 When you visit PayPal (and other sites sometimes) the system will read that cookie and change the language on your account without anyone actually logging in and changing things. 

Best solution would be to clear cache and cookies, close all of your browser windows, and reboot your computer.  Most of the time this will delete everything the system is looking at; then you can go in and change the language back.

[willowywicca]

It is not related to that. I tried logging in from a different laptop, and from an ipad and it also is now in chinese on both of those. It is something on Paypal's side, not local to my machine(s).

[willowywicca · Accepted solution]

This has now been resolved by Paypal support.

[AJ_In_SFBay]

I have the exact same problem as the user experienced above. I have logged in from several different types of equipment. Every time I log in, it changes my language preferences to some type of foreign characters, perhaps Chinese. I once successfully guessed on how to change it back, and then when I went and logged back in, it reverted again to the foreign characters.

I had forwarded the last e-mail to "spoof@paypal.com" and had a standard reply of reciept of the message, but nothing else beyond that.

Please help. It feels like my account has been hacked!

Many thanks.

[AJ_In_SFBay]

Still no help. My account has DEFINITELY BEEN HACKED. I recieved and e-mail that I have a negative balance and I can't login to my account. I have sent e-mails to PayPal directly, but no resolution. PLEASE HELP.

[PayPal_Rachael]

Hi AJ_In_SFBay,

I'm very sorry to hear that this has happened in your account. In a case like this it is a much better idea to give us a call. You can report unauthorised activity on our website like this http://ow.ly/R5FpI but to be sure that everything is back the way you want it it's best to call. When you call we can also verify you on the phone and discuss any issues. 

To find our number click 'contact' at the bottom of any PayPal page then call us. 

I hope we can get this sorted quickly for you. 

Rachael

[TKwill]

That would be great but the phone number is in chinese; however I did find the phone number only to find out they are only open on weekdays.

[hartrick]

To you, and all the others who keep having Paypal do this to you, I've found I can right-click the page (in Chrome, at least) and it gives the option to translate to English. Unlike Paypal, Google is smart enough to know that you are not Chinese.  

At that point you can go to the gear icon, then change the default language, then log out & back in.  The repeat every time they do it again. 

Paypal is neat, huh- hours of entertainment.

[mpas59]

Thank You for your wonderful suggestion! You saved my sanity and your advice worked like a charm.