I have a security issue that I would like to send a secure message regarding, but there's no way to do that now. Under "Message Center" any attempt to create a new message just results in the worst AI spamming me and not shutting up while I navigate away. While there is still an option to access the message center in PayPal Credit any attempt to send a message that way results in an immediate error. I tried to "Report an Issue", but there's literally no option for anything security related.
What happened was simply this:
At 6 PM I got an SMS Message from PayPal with a PIN. Since I didn't request that I immediately checked my account security and viewed "Settings>Security>Manage your logins" and don't see any suspicious devices which likely means that someone just tried to change my password or something. They were of course unsuccessful and my account remains secure with no suspicious transactions, but the attempt alone is concerning. What I'd like to know is if that actually happened on my account and if so what the IP address was. I also wanted to know why an IP access log is missing from the history.
That's important because if it was a password change request it means my password hasn't been compromised, but if it wasn't it could suggest a larger problem like spoofed authentication cookies which I've dealt with before which once allowed a hacker to gain control over my Google account without needing my password. Lacking information about the nature of the request and the IP access logs keeps me from knowing if this is a random attempt I can safely ignore or if it's a more serious problem or if it was just a bug on PayPal's end and no attempt was made.
I attempted to reach out to PayPal about this, but I can't actually do so because you guys apparently don't like customers sending an email to get a response later. No, you want me to waste time with an AI that can't help anyone and won't shut up and keeps saying I have to try again later to talk to a real person when I don't even have time to talk to a live agent anyway hence why I just wanted to send an email.
I have been with PayPal for 20 years, but these are the kinds of changes that cause me to rethink the safety of using PayPal at all. If there's no way to send a secure email, and if there's no way to readily access security information about the account and report problems that makes PayPal risky. If I could, for example, report the IP address as the source of a hack attempt then even if they followed up with a SIM Swap attack to gain access to my account PayPal would be able to block access, as an example of what real security would look like, but lacking that just a way to contact someone to get information about what happened would be invaluable.
I don't think what I want is all that unreasonable. I'd really prefer the old days when communication via email was an option and I didn't have to mess with stupid AI bots.
P.S. - The "Fraud & Phishing" label doesn't apply, but I can't manually enter a label so picked the closest one.
