Lost PayPal Login Info

[Emporium]

I keep all of my login info on a google sheet as well as my email (stealth account sends its info to my main one) and also in notepad files on my computer.

All of my accounts are run off of VMs saved on my "indestructible" Panasonic cf-19 "Toughbook".

The account in question is about 2 years old. I went to log into Paypal one day last week and it said we noticed suspicious activity and would like you to change your password (I had sent $x,xxx to someone every other week for about 2 months so I imagine that's what brought it up). So I chose a random string of numbers/letters/symbols as my password and updated my notepad files as well as saved the password in the browser but I did not yet update gmail or google sheets.

So now yesterday I drop the "toughbook" from about 2 feet high and later that night it stops working altogether. I tried to restore windows 7 but it seems like a hard drive malfunction. I probably lost everything on there. Now to log into paypal I need to reset my password by verifying my phone (which I havent had for 2 years) or one of 2 credit cards (I have had 4 on the account and only have records of the 2 that they are not asking for).

I thought I was quite careful but now it's looking like a perfect storm where all of my mistakes are aligning. The account is doing about $700 per day in sales and I need to access that money ASAP to keep it going. Any suggestions? I called paypal about 1 year ago to turn on auto sweep and they insisted I first give them more information (public records type questions) so I hung up and hoped they wouldnt get suspicious. I'm worried if I call them they will say the same thing and I will put the account at risk.

What should I do?

[MM78]

Have you tried pulling the hard drive out and maybe see if you can connect it to a regular PC.

[nickopedia]

Remove the HDD and put in USB enclosure. This will probably be the least costly and trouble free option at this point. Those enclosures are really cheap, you go buy one at the local Walmart or Bestbuy for maybe $15 or $20.

[ouako]

Originally Posted by nickopedia

Remove the HDD and put in USB enclosure. This will probably be the least costly and trouble free option at this point. Those enclosures are really cheap, you go buy one at the local Walmart or Bestbuy for maybe $15 or $20.

This is a great idea. However, if it is still not accessible, DO NOT OPEN THE HARD DRIVE. There are data-recovery services that can sometimes get the data off the drive depending on what broke.

[nickopedia]

Originally Posted by ouako

This is a great idea. However, if it is still not accessible, DO NOT OPEN THE HARD DRIVE. There are data-recovery services that can sometimes get the data off the drive depending on what broke.

This is why people need to have a BACKUP of their important data.

I see far too many people get lazy with their data and take it for granted until there's a problem like the OP has.

[rsot]

Originally Posted by ouako

This is a great idea. However, if it is still not accessible, DO NOT OPEN THE HARD DRIVE. There are data-recovery services that can sometimes get the data off the drive depending on what broke.

I used a service like this in 2015 for a notebook of mine whose HD died all of a sudden.

[Emporium]

Just wanted to make an update on this. It turned out that I was unable to verify the credit cards or phone that PayPal was asking me to because they never existed. I am not sure where they got those numbers from.

I was able to call PayPal from google voice and tell them my original tracfone number from 2 years ago as well as the last 4 digits of the bank account that I withdraw to. That was enough for them to send an email to reset the password to my login email address.

So I am all set now and my password has been reset. I brought my toughbook to a computer repair place in the meantime to see whether they can fix it but either way it won't be a huge deal if there is nothing they can do.

[big tymer]

I guess it wasn't such a tough book after all.