PayPal throws stickies at buyers

By Vivek | January 15th, 2007 at 03:08 pm ET         

Last week PayPal upped its Buyer Protection to $2,000 for qualified transactions on eBay.com. Previously PayPal had limited this protection amount to $1000. This protection from PayPal applies to non-delivery of items, and for the delivery of items that are significantly not as described. Keywords to note in out here are “transactions on eBay.com”. As compared to PayPal, Google Checkout ensures that buyers will not be charged for unauthorized purchases made with their Google Account on any of the merchant sites. However, Google does not declare a upper limit to which buyers can get reimbursed on fraudulent purchases.

In another buyer oriented move, PayPal has finally introduced password-generated key fob to thwart data thieves and phishing scams. The device, which I assume works like RSA Secure ID, uses VeriSign technology to generate a unique six-digit security code about every 30 seconds, which you will have to use to login to PayPal along with regular login credentials. eBay business customers will get the device for free, while personal users will have to pay $5. Before you logon to the site to order one, remember that the service is currently in beta and will be launching within next 2 months across United States, Germany, and Australia.

I think we need similar device for our accounts located on Google. Especially extensive use of Gmail, Docs&Spreadsheets,  Google Apps, Google Talk, any phishing scams targeted at Google or developer errors can prove to be very costly for users. I am okay either way - Paying $5 or Google putting 30 sec refresh Adsense on these key fobs.

Related:
Google Checkout and PayPal fee war escalates