PayPal president hacked, credit card details stolen

11 Feb 2014

David Marcus, president of PayPal

Irony was not lost on David Marcus as president of PayPal, the online secure payment service – he has been hacked and had his credit-card details stolen while in London.

When you’re the head of a company with a focus on protecting people’s financial security, you may almost be able to feel the sense of expectation that the thing you have been protecting yourself and others against for years would eventually happen to you.

Upon finding that his credit-card bill had dozens of peculiar transactions, Marcus went to Twitter to air his grievances.

“My card (with EMV chip) got skimmed while in the UK. Ton of fraudulent txns [transactions]. Wouldn’t have happened if merchant accepted PayPal …”

The EMV chip in credit and debit cards that many of us would be familiar with has had a slow up-take in the United States, with a number of companies still using the older, and less secure, magnetic strip.

Marcus confirmed that while he mentioned the EMV chip, he still believes it was the magnetic strip that was cloned.

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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