VPN = Virtual Private Network
VIP = Very Important Person.
I received some nasty emails today which would have been avoided if I had turned on my VPN before performing a certain act on my PC.
It all started with the email from my credit card company Bank of America. The title of the the email was the following:
Credit Card Transaction outside the 50 states (U.S.)
So where the credit card used and who was the merchant?
Amount: $7.99
Country: NETHERLANDS
Merchant: PAYPAL NETFLIXINTE
As a result of recent peer pressure from other members on a Spanish Learning thread, I had reactivated my Netflix account. I had reactivated it in the past without any problems, but something had changed.
I then received an email from Paypal with the following heading:
Your bank declined your electronic funds transfer
The body of the messaged stated the following:
You recently attempted to transfer funds from your bank account to your PayPal account.
Your bank declined the funds transfer on Feb 23, 2017.
We have charged your credit card, which you choose as your backup funding source, to complete your payment to [email protected].
Then Paypal sends me the following email:
A recent transaction with your bank account ending in x-xx56 didn't go through.
As a result, we have removed this bank account from your PayPal account.
To re-add this bank account to your PayPal account, please confirm with your bank that all information is correct. Alternatively, you can add another bank account.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
In any case, while I haven't researched this issue too much yet, it appears my new bank Capital ONE 360 rejected this transaction possibly because it was foreign sourced. If I had turned on my VPN before renewing my subscription to Netflix, I would have avoided this problem since the transaction would have been sourced to the U.S. instead of the Netherlands . I will probably have to cancel my subscription with Netflix and then renew my subscription again with a VPN.