Data
Security and Encryption
The
security of your information, transactions, and money is the core of
our business and our top priority at PayPal.
PayPal
automatically encrypts your confidential information in transit from
your computer to ours using the Secure Sockets Layer protocol (SSL)
with an encryption key length of 128-bits (the highest level commercially
available). Before you even register or log in to our site, our server
checks that you're using an approved browser - one that uses SSL 3.0
or higher.
FDIC
Pass-Through Insurance
Once
your information reaches us, it resides on a server that is heavily
guarded both physically and electronically. Our servers sit behind an
electronic firewall and are not directly connected to the Internet,
so your private information is available only to authorized computers.
You
do not need to keep funds with PayPal in order to use our service. If
you do hold a balance, you can do so in two ways: (1) PayPal, as your
agent, will place your funds in a pooled account at an unaffiliated
FDIC-insured bank or savings institution, which is eligible for pass-through
FDIC insurance coverage; or (2) you can elect to earn a return on your
funds by enrolling to invest all funds that you receive into the PayPal
Money Market Fund. The PayPal Money Market Fund is not FDIC insured,
not guaranteed by any bank and may lose value. PayPal keeps a record
of the amount of your balances, which you can check by logging in to
your account through the PayPal web site at any time.
If
you do not enroll in the Money Market Fund, then in the unlikely event
that an FDIC-insured bank in which we place your money fails, your balance
placed at the bank would be subject to FDIC pass-through deposit insurance
coverage, along with any other deposits you hold at that bank, up to
a total of $100,000. Pass-through deposit coverage is contingent upon
PayPal maintaining accurate records and on determinations of the FDIC
as receiver at the time of a future receivership of any bank at which
we place your funds. FDIC pass-through deposit insurance protects you
only against the failure of the bank at which PayPal places your funds,
and does NOT protect you against PayPal's insolvency. Through the terms
of our User Agreement, we believe that your funds will also be protected
from any claims of PayPal's creditors and will be returned to you even
in the unlikely event of a PayPal insolvency.
In order to operate the PayPal service and to reduce the risk of fraud,
PayPal Corp. (“PayPal” or “we”) must ask you
to provide us information about yourself and your credit card and/or
bank account. This Privacy Policy describes the information we collect
and how we use that information. PayPal takes the privacy of your personal
information very seriously and will use your information only in accordance
with the terms of this Privacy Policy. We will not sell or rent your
personally identifiable information or a list of our customers to third
parties. However, as described in more detail in Part C below, there
are limited circumstances in which some of your information will be
shared with third parties, under strict restrictions, so it is important
for you to review this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy applies to
all services that are hosted on the PayPal.com Web site, whether the
services are offered by PayPal, by its subsidiaries, or by the PayPal
Money Market Fund.
Your
privacy is important to us. By participating in the Council of Better
Business Bureau's BBBOnLine® Privacy Program we have made a commitment
to meet the program's strict requirements regarding how we treat your
information and have it verified by BBBOnLine. Further information about
this program is available at http://www.bbbonline.org
Additionally,
in order to enhance the protection of your privacy and our compliance
with this Privacy Policy, PayPal has agreed to disclose our information
practices and to have our practices reviewed for compliance by TRUSTe.
TRUSTe is an independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to
build users' trust and confidence in the Internet by promoting the use
of fair information practices. By displaying the TRUSTe trustmark, PayPal
has agreed to notify you of:
- What personally
identifiable information of yours is collected by PayPal.
- The organization
collecting the information.
- How the information
is used.
- With whom the
information may be shared.
- What choices
are available to you regarding collection, use and distribution
of the information.
- The kind of
security procedures that are in place to protect the loss, misuse
or alteration of information under PayPal's control.
- How you can
correct any inaccuracies in the information.
Notification
of Changes
This
policy may be revised over time as new features are added to the PayPal
service or as we incorporate suggestions from our customers. If we are
going to use or disclose your personally identifiable information in
a manner materially different from that stated at the time we collected
the information, you will have a choice as to whether or not we use
or disclose your information in this new manner. Any material changes
will be effective only after we provide you by e-mail with at least
30 days’ notice of the amended Privacy Policy (if you have closed
your PayPal account, you will not be contacted to notify you of the
amended Policy and your personal information will not be used or disclosed
in this new manner).
We
will post the amended Privacy Policy prominently on our Web site so
that you can always review what information we gather, how we might
use that information, and whether we will disclose it to anyone. Please
check the PayPal Web site at www.paypal.com at any time for the most current version of our Privacy Policy.
PayPal
Shops and other pages on the PayPal Web site include links to third
party Web sites. These sites are governed by their own privacy statements,
and PayPal is not responsible for their operations, including but not
limited to their information practices. Users submitting information
to or through these third party Web sites should review the privacy
statement of these sites before providing them with personally identifiable
information.
Required
Information
To
open a PayPal account, you must provide your name, address, phone number,
and e-mail address. In order to make payments through PayPal, you must
provide credit card, debit card or bank account information (bank account
information is required to make payments totaling more than $1,000).
We also ask you to choose two different security questions to answer
(such as your city of birth or your pet’s name) This required
information is necessary for us to process transactions, issue a new
password if you forget or lose your password, protect you against credit
card fraud and checking account fraud, and to contact you should the
need arise in administering your account.
If
you enroll in the optional sweep of your funds into the PayPal Money
Market Fund, we are required to collect your Social Security Number
(“SSN”) or other Taxpayer Identification Number (“TIN”).
In order to comply with the Bank Secrecy Act, we will also require your
SSN or TIN if you send or receive certain high-value transactions or
high overall payment volumes through PayPal. If you choose to register
or apply for certain optional features or products offered through PayPal
Web sites, such as listing your business in PayPal Shops, or applying
for the PayPal Visa® credit card or the PayPal MasterCard® debit
card, you will be required to provide additional information to establish
that you qualify for such features or products.
Transaction
Information
When
you use PayPal to send money to someone else or request money from someone
else, we ask you to provide information related to each transaction,
including the amount of the transaction, the type of transaction (purchase
of goods, purchase of services, or simple money transfer (“quasi-cash”))
and the e-mail address of the third party. We retain this information
for each of your transactions through PayPal. We also collect the Internet
address (IP address) of the computer or device you use to access your
PayPal account, in order to help detect possible instances of unauthorized
transactions.
Information
About You From Third Parties
In
order to protect all our customers against potential fraud, we verify
with third parties the information you provide. In the course of such
verification, we receive personally identifiable information about you
from such services. In particular, if you register a credit card or
debit card with PayPal, we will use card authorization and fraud screening
services to verify that your card information and address matches the
information that you supplied to PayPal, and that the card has not been
reported as lost or stolen.
If
you register your online business with PayPal Shops or if you send or
receive high overall payment volumes through PayPal, in some circumstances
we will conduct a background check on your business by obtaining information
about you and your business from a credit bureau or a business information
service such as Dun & Bradstreet. If you incur a debt to PayPal,
we will generally conduct a credit check on you by obtaining additional
information about you from a credit bureau, to the extent permitted
by law.
Additional
Verification
If
we cannot verify the information that you provide, or if you request
a withdrawal by check to an address other than your verified credit
card billing address, we ask you to send us additional information by
fax (such as your drivers’ license, credit card statement, and/or
a recent utility bill or other information linking you to the applicable
address), or to answer additional questions online to help verify your
information.
Web
Site Traffic Information
Because
of the way that World Wide Web communication standards work, when you
arrive at or leave the PayPal Web site, we automatically receive the
Web address of the site that you came from or are going to. We also
collect information on which pages of our Web site you visit while you
are on the PayPal site, the type of browser you use and the times you
access our Web site. We use this information only to try to understand
our customers’ preferences better and to manage the load on our
servers, so as to improve our service and your experience with PayPal.
We do not track the Web sites that you visit before or after you leave
the PayPal site.
Our
Use of “Cookies”
”Cookies”
are small files of data that we send to your computer to allow us to
recognize you as a PayPal customer if you return to the PayPal site
using the same computer and browser. We send a "session cookie"
to your computer if and when you log in to your PayPal account by entering
your e-mail address and password. These cookies allow us to recognize
you if you visit multiple pages in our site during the same session,
so that you don’t need to re-enter your password multiple times.
Once you log out or close your browser, these session cookies expire
and no longer have any effect.
We
also use longer-lasting cookies to display your e-mail address on our
sign-in form, so that you don't have to retype the e-mail address each
time when you log in to your PayPal account. In addition, we use cookies
to process our referral program, described in Section C below. Our cookie
files are encoded so that your e-mail address and other information
can only be interpreted by PayPal. We may, however, share cookie information
regarding whether or not a certain user is already registered with PayPal
with certain merchants with whom we have an official co-marketing relationship.
Customer
Service Correspondence
If
you send us correspondence, including e-mails and faxes, we retain such
information in the records of your account. We will also retain customer
service correspondence and other correspondence from PayPal to you.
We retain these records in order to measure and improve our customer
service, and to investigate potential fraud and violations of our User
Agreement. We may, over time, delete these records if permitted by law.
Questionnaires,
Surveys and Profile Data
From
time to time, we offer optional questionnaires and surveys to our users
for such purposes as collecting demographic information or assessing
users' interests and needs. The use of the information collected will
be explained in detail in the survey itself. If we collect personally
identifiable information from our users in these questionnaires and
surveys, the users will be given notice of how the information will
be used prior to their participation in the survey or questionnaire.
Non-member
Recipients and Requests
When
a member either sends a payment to, or requests a payment from, an individual
who is not a registered member of PayPal, we will retain the information
that the member submits to us, including, for example, the other party's
email address and/or name, for the benefit of the member who is attempting
to contact the non-member, so that the member can see a complete record
of his or her transactions, including uncompleted transactions. Although
this information is stored indefinitely, we will not market to the non-member
in any way at any time. Additionally, these non-members have the same
rights to access and correct information about themselves (assuming
that their email addresses were correct enough to reach them) as anyone
else who uses PayPal.
Internal
Uses
We use the information we collect about you in order 1) to provide our
services and process your transactions, 2) to provide customer service,
3) to determine your eligibility to receive offers for special features
or products, such as the PayPal MasterCard® debit card, and 4) to
improve our products and services. At your option (as indicated in your
PayPal Profile settings), we use the information you provide to access
specific third party services on your behalf and perform the actions
that you request us to perform, such as invoicing winning bidders on
behalf of auction sellers.
We
give access to individually identifiable information about our users
only to those employees who require it to fulfill customer service requests.
Disclosure
to Other PayPal Customers
If
you are a registered PayPal user, your name, e-mail address, date of
sign-up, and whether you have verified control of a bank account are
displayed to other PayPal customers whom you have paid or who are attempting
to pay you through PayPal. If you are a Business account holder, we
will also display to other PayPal customers the Web site address (URL)
and customer service contact information that you provide us. However,
your credit card number, bank account and other financial information
will NEVER be revealed to anyone whom you have paid or who has paid
you through PayPal, except if we are required to do so pursuant to a
subpoena or other legal process.
If
you are buying goods or services and paying through PayPal, the seller
of the goods or services may request that you provide a mailing address
that PayPal has confirmed as matching the billing address in the credit
card system. You do not have to provide this information. If you do
not provide the information, however, the seller may choose not to accept
your PayPal payment and not to complete the transaction.
Beginning
in spring 2001, PayPal will also disclose to other PayPal customers
the number of payments you have received from Verified PayPal customers
(as defined in the User Agreement on the www.paypal.com site), or other
aggregate measures that provide an indication of your reputation with
other PayPal customers.
Disclosure
to Third Parties Other Than PayPal Customers
PayPal
will not sell or rent any of your personally identifiable information
to third parties. PayPal will not share any of your personally identifiable
information with third parties except in the limited circumstances described
below, or with your express permission (and to other PayPal customers
as described above). These third parties are limited by law or by contract
from using the information for secondary purposes beyond the purposes
for which the information is shared.
- We share information
with companies that help us process the transactions you request and
protect our customers’ transactions from fraud, such as sharing
your credit card number with a service that screens for lost and stolen
card numbers. See “Information About You From Third Parties”
in Section B above. Additionally, if you go into a negative balance
and owe us money, we may share information with processing companies
including collection agencies.
- We disclose the
information we collect, as described in Section B above, to companies
that perform marketing services on our behalf or to other financial
institutions with whom we have joint marketing agreements (for example,
we disclose information to Providian National Bank, which is the issuer
of PayPal Visa™ credit cards, so that Providian can determine
customers’ eligibility for the PayPal Visa credit card, and
so that PayPal and Providian can better match the products we offer
to our customers’ needs). These companies are subject to confidentiality
agreements with us and other legal restrictions that prohibit using
the information except to market the specified PayPal-related products
or services, unless you have affirmatively agreed or given your prior
permission for other uses.
- We disclose information
that we in good faith believe is appropriate to cooperate in investigations
of fraud or other illegal activity, or to conduct investigations of
violations of our User Agreement. Specifically, this means that if
we conduct a fraud investigation and conclude that one side has engaged
in deceptive practices, we can give that person or entity's contact
information (but not bank account or credit card information) to victims
who request it.
- We disclose information
in response to a subpoena, warrant, court order, levy, attachment,
order of a court-appointed receiver or other comparable legal process,
including subpoenas from private parties in a civil action.
- When a user signs
up for a co-branded version of PayPal (e.g. PayPal Evite) through
links on our co-branded partner's website, PayPal will share with
the co-branded partner that user's name, e-mail address and physical
address in order to provide enhanced integration between PayPal's
services and the services of our co-branded partner. When a user signs
up for a co-branded version of PayPal through Intuit's QuickBooks
software, PayPal will share with Intuit information on that user's
PayPal transactions so that the information can be automatically entered
by Intuit into the user's QuickBooks program. If a user does not want
his or her information shared with PayPal's co-branded partner, he
or she should not use this aspect of the site.
- If you choose
to invest in the PayPal Money Market Fund, we will share your information
with PayPal Funds, a Delaware business trust which is the issuer of
the Money Market Fund, and with PayPal Asset Management, Inc., a wholly-owned
subsidiary of PayPal that is the transfer agent for the Money Market
Fund, so that you can complete your investment more easily and can
move funds into and out of the Money Market Fund without re-entering
your personal information for every transaction.
-
We
disclose information to your agent or legal representative (such
as the holder of a power of attorney that you grant, or a guardian
appointed for you).
-
We
share aggregated statistical data with our business partners or
for public relations. For example, we may disclose that a specific
percentage of our users live in California. However, this aggregated
information is not tied to personally identifiable information.
-
As
with any other business, it is possible that PayPal in the future
could merge with or be acquired by another company. If such an acquisition
occurs, the successor company would have access to the information
maintained by PayPal, including customer account information, but
would continue to be bound by this Privacy Policy unless and until
it is amended as described in Section A above.
Our
Contacts with PayPal Customers
We
communicate with users on a regular basis via e-mail to provide requested
services, and we also communicate by phone to resolve customer complaints
or investigate suspicious transactions. We use your e-mail address to
confirm your opening of a PayPal account, to send you notice of payments
that you send or receive through PayPal (including referral payments
described below), to send information about important changes to our
products and services, and to send notices and other disclosures required
by law. Generally, users cannot opt out of these communications, but
they will be primarily informational in nature rather than promotional.
We
also use your e-mail address to send you other types of communications
that you can control, including the PayPal Periodical newsletter, auction
tips, customer surveys and notice of special third-party promotions.
You can choose whether to receive some, all or none of these communications
when you complete the registration process, or at any time thereafter,
by logging in to your account on the PayPal Web site and changing your
preferences in the Profile page of the My Account tab. You can also
change your choices at any time through the same procedure.
In
connection with independent audits of our financial statements and operations,
the auditors may seek to contact a sample of our customers to confirm
that our records are accurate. However, these auditors cannot use personally
identifiable information for any secondary purposes.
Internet
Address Information
We
use IP addresses, browser types and access times to analyze trends,
administer the site, improve site performance and gather broad demographic
information for aggregate use.
PayPal
is committed to handling your customer information with high standards
of information security. Your credit card and bank account information
are stored only in encrypted form on computers that are not connected
to the Internet. We restrict access to your personally identifiable
information to employees who need to know that information in order
to provide products or services to you. We maintain physical, electronic
and procedural safeguards that comply with federal regulations to guard
your nonpublic personal information. We test our security systems regularly
and also contract with outside companies to audit our security systems
and processes. For more information on PayPal’s security practices,
please visit the PayPal
Security Center
The
security of your PayPal account also relies on your protection of your
PayPal password. We strongly urge that you never share your PayPal password
with anyone. PayPal representatives will never ask you for your password,
so any e-mail or other communication requesting your password should
be treated as unauthorized and suspicious. If you do share your PayPal
password with a third party for any reason, including because the third
party has promised to provide you additional services such as account
aggregation, the third party will have access to your account and your
personal information, and you may be responsible for actions taken using
your password. If you believe someone else has obtained access to your
password, please change it immediately by logging in to your account
at www.paypal.com and changing your Profile settings, and also contact us right away as
described in Section F below.
Verification
What
does it mean to be Verified?
A
Verified member maintains a confirmed bank account on our site. Because
International members cannot use our verification system, no International
member will have a Verified status.
Why
does PayPal ask its members to become Verified?
PayPal
encourages members to become Verified (in order to become Verified,
a PayPal Member must provide us with proof that he or she has a checking
account. This tells us that you have passed the screening process of
a financial institution. That increases security in the PayPal network,
lowers our risk, and enables us to let you spend more through the system!)
to increase trust and safety in our community. Because financial institutions
are required by law to screen account holders, PayPal's verification
process increases security when you pay parties you do not know. Please
note that PayPal's verification system does not constitute an endorsement
of a member, nor a guarantee of a member's business practices. You should
always consider other indicators when evaluating members, including
length of PayPal membership and reputation scores (on eBay or other
auction sites, if applicable).
Do
I have to become Verified?
Once
you have sent $2,000 with your PayPal account, you must become Verified
to continue sending money with our service. International accounts are
subject to different limits.
How
does verification benefit me?
Verification
gives you more information about the people with whom you transact through
PayPal, so you may make more informed decisions. PayPal encourages members
to become Verified to build trust in our community. Please remember
that verification is currently available only to our U.S. members, and
a status of International simply means that we are unable to ascertain
more about the member at this time.
How
do I take advantage of PayPal's verification process?
There
are several ways to take advantage of PayPal's verification process
and decrease your fraud risks:
- When you receive
a payment: Log in to your account and go to the "History"
subtab of the "My Account" tab. Find the payment in question
and choose the status link (e.g. "Pending") in the Status
column. This will take you to a payment details page. Next to the
sender's name, you will find their verification status (Verified,
Unverified, or International).
- When you send
a payment: As you are sending a payment, on the "Send Money -
check the details of your payment" page, a reputation link is
provided where you may view the recipient's status (Verified, Unverified,
International).
Note: PayPal's verification system does not constitute an endorsement of a
member, nor a guarantee of a member's business practices. You should
always consider other indicators when evaluating members, including
length of PayPal membership and reputation scores (on eBay or other
auction sites, if applicable).
