A cautionary tail and some advice please.
Very briefly, I live in Spain and had problems transferring funds from my Paypal to my bank. The transfer failed several times because my UK bank kept refusing the withdrawal. This confused me as I was making a deposit so tried again. I then raised a support request with Paypal. I received a phone call from Xoom who said they handle Paypal international transfers and would assist. They asked to take control of my PC which they did. For 42 minutes, they faffed around, mostly behind a blank screen but I could see the mouse cursor moving and a running commentary. Anyway eventually they announced the transfer was accomplished.
Needless to say the money had vanished. That is the short version!
It has taken a month of onsite messages and emails to PayPal and Xoom to get to the point where Xoom confirmed I was scammed by the alleged Xoom support technician taking control. Indeed, I think the scam started at the point I tried to make the transfer in the first place, hence the withdrawal attempts. I blissfully unaware of any of this of course and hadn’t revealed my sign on credentials or passwords.
During those 42 minutes they had control, I suspect they were scouring my computer for information to use or sell-on.
What I’d like advice on is what steps i can take apart from the obvious of changing all my passwords. I’ve run a few scans to see if there is any malware but found none. I did find a remnant of the Teamviewer type software on my desktop though.
So any techy advice would be appreciated.
As for the fraud, it seems PayPal are blaming Xoom and Xoom are blaming me for allowing their technician to run my computer. In other words laying the groundwork for refusing to recompense me. I’d never heard of Xoom before. My contract was with PayPal and it was to PayPal Spain to whom I complained.
If my claim is refused I will escalate it through both the UK and the European Ombudsmen as it involves the UK and Spain, where I live.
I must add I had taken screenshots of emails, messages and website screen from both Xoom and Paypal. I am very dissapointed with Paypal as it has taken 4 weeks of pestering for them to escalate, let alone investigate. Very bad performance.