Is Paypal Down? Why Yes, It Is

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If you have been frustrated trying to reach Paypal, well, you’re not alone. Countless people have been unable to access Paypal, and their Paypal accounts, as the giant went down this morning. Instead, they received this error:

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@paypal.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

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Apache/1.3.33 Server at www.paypal.com Port 443

Of course, millions of people rely on Paypal both as their Internet “bank” and, for business, to make sales. So this is very serious. How many millions of dollars worth of transactions will be lost before Paypal is back up?

And why are they down? Were they attacked? Did someone trip over a power cord?

Be sure to watch this space for further updates!

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118 thoughts on “Is Paypal Down? Why Yes, It Is

  1. So I get an email that says there is unusual activity on by PayPay account & to please contact them. I can’t because it is down. So how do I find out the “unusual activity” that is going on? Yikes!!!!!!!!!!!!! Help?????

    1. Suz, that email was almost *certainly* spam, and we’re guessing that you clicked through a link in the email – so be *glad* that the site was down, as it was an effort to phish your credentials. The real Paypal is not down.

  2. I cannot get onto PayPal or pay for an E-Bay item. I have tried finfing their contact telphone number but cannot find it, Can anyone give me the number? Thanks

  3. Very frustrating it was up last night and now they got this big idea to hold your money for 21days what kind of crap is that anyways! Can’t do anything right now! THIS is NOT GOOD for them.

  4. KNEW this crap would happen why? sit doen kids ill read u a story:: once upon a time paypal was smart and ad free, then they got greedy and hadded just a single ad to every page.. cause the ad placer person was smart about what they did, little did the baby paypal know about cross site scripting hacks and image spoofing.. and soon peoples passwords and transactions where… literally faxing right out the door!

    im an ethical hacker. i would have warned them, but of course.. they think they know what there doing and ignore advice form “your average user” and that was THEE END

  5. so does anyone know when it will be working again? All I get when I try to pay for something is a white page with writing on it.

  6. I’ve been experimenting this problem for the last few days. It had won a couple of things on eBay and could not pay for them through PayPal. What if the seller has no other way to pay for it? This is very painful. My PayPal was working fine until the other day. I tried Chrome and IE and get the same error message for both.

  7. Okay, I just now tried to pay for for something on EBay, using PayPal. But for some reason, I get this Page Cannot Be Displayed/Cannot Find Server error. Then, I tried going to paypal.com, but that didn’t work either. The PayPal site isn’t working for me at all…

    I hope they get this problem fixed soon.

  8. I have been trying to access paypal since last week and its been down. When I got in touch with their customer service, they wanted me to change my password and try again. I have tried across 5 different machines/3 browsers yet nothing is working;

  9. I have been experiencing this issue for the last few days. I had won a few things on eBay and have been unable to pay for them via PayPal. What do you do if the seller doesn’t have any other way to pay for it? This is very painful. My PayPal was working OK until the other day. I have tried Chrome and IE and get the same error message for both.

  10. Apparently, this problem goes back to 2007. However, I don’t see any resolution to the problem. The weird thing is that this is happening to me on one computer, but I don’t have any problem reaching the PayPal website on my laptop with a WiFi connection. The other computer is also using a WiFi connection and is using the same wireless router, so I can’t figure out what’s wrong. I’ve also cleared the cache on my browsers (IE 8 and Firefox 3.6.3) and I still can’t access PayPal. PayPal is no help whatsoever. They’re clueless to the problem.

  11. Frustrating! Internal Server Error with the API gateway URL! I really strated thinking to switch to some other gateway.

  12. I have a plastic business card company and am trying to process my transactions on Paypal now but it is down, I have tried 3 times over the past 5 minutes but I keep getting an “Internal Servier Error” message coming up on the broswer.

    Any one knows the ides?

  13. Paypal is having another outage. They are unable to generate a secure card for me for the last 3 hours!

  14. Interesting reading years’ worth of comments about the problem I am having this morning: 500 error. Yikes! This is a serious problem. It would be like going to your bank during business hours to find they were all locked up. No money in, no money out. Many of my design clients use PayPal as their only means of accepting online payment. I am going to have to rethink this.

  15. This is unbelievable. I have been doing business with Paypal for years and it is astonishing to believe how big this company really is based on the poor service, management and customer service. Their site is antequated and is the same as it was years ago with no upgrades. Their service continually is like this and I lose thousands in business. There is no excuse for a billion dollar company like this to ever have outages. Things should be backed up and if a problem starts the back up should take over. I only wish reliable companies like google or MS would get into this business and take over. Let the pros handle my money and not these clowns.

  16. I was finishing with an order on Jan. 21, 2010 @ 10:50 PM when your internet server went down and I didn’t get the order complete.
    HTML allowed:

  17. I had an order almost finished on Nov. 7, 2009 @ 1:10 PM and your internet server went down and I didn’t get the order complete

  18. forgot to mention, if they really must do maintanance every day, why they cannot do-it at night between 3:00 and 5:00 am when most of the ppls are doing something else than bussiness. they are so fukcing lazy and must do this in the middle of the day, when most of the transactions take place ? not one time i lost transactions because of this.
    i hope that better services will take place of this ridiculous scam. paypal = ebay = thieves.

  19. seems that more often paypal screw up customers. they ask customers and sellers to be onest but how we can call them ? not to mention that last few months i saw every day that annoying message on their page which says that “we are doing maintanace between 14:00 and 16:00 and paypal service will not be available.” every day maintanace ? wtf computers they use ? refurbished from second world war ???? shame for a piece of shit service which take a loooot of comission just to dissapoint us when we need-it the most.

  20. This cost me the good will of a supplier because after not being able to complete a transaction on ebay, I bought it on another site and later I find the original transaction finally went through on my ebay site and now I have bought 2 of the items after trying to get out of the first transaction with the vendor.

  21. This is the first time I have tried to buy something and I have entered my paypal pass word many many times-am i payingfor the product many-many times?

  22. Paypal made a service announcement about this

    http://www.pdncommunity.com/t5/blogs/blogpage/blog-id/mts_updates

  23. Yep. It’s down again. Ridiculous….I’m pulling all my money out today and transferring it to my bank, then I’m taking the cash out and burying it in my yard like Randy Quaid’s character in National Lampoons Vegas Vacation….

  24. Well, this explains a lot.. I was trying to pay for items thru eBay, and was getting the, “Sorry, you’ve hit a speed bump!” msg, lol.

    Thanks for the link too!

  25. Paypal is down again. I don’t understand how such a huge company like this would go down. Don’t they have backup servers or something?

  26. first time I’ve encountered this problem have I done something wrong? 24/06/09 @10;17 am

  27. I hope this problem can be fixed soon, it is quite inconvenient when its supposed to be reliable.

  28. Thank GOD I am not alone on this.It kinda FREEKED me out seeing the ERROR Message but I see there are alot of us seeing the same thing.I hope they get this fixed quick.It may be an outside Hacker as there have ben lots of attempts this month to get us to give up our secure Info.Lets all hope PayPal is only down for Maint and it has gone into a longer fix.

  29. am trying to pay ebay items through pay pal but it says it got a error on server and to contact you

  30. Paypal down. Checking my account at 09.40 and could not access. Hope it’s for long.

  31. hi i can’t get in to my paypal it just say error and i really need to pay for something pleas get back to me thanks

  32. THE SITE IS DOWN TODAY AT 09:22 LONDDON TIME – NO TRANSACTIONS ARE POSSIBLE. I RANG UP PAYPAL WHO SAID THERE SYSTEMS ARE UPDATING??

  33. 2100hrs PST Unable to make payments via paypal.com. I tried while logged in and not logged in.

  34. Paypal ‘internal server error’ again on 2nd & 3rd May 2009.
    Why is this still happening?? Don’t they have a backup server??

  35. not sure whats going on would like to pay for my goods and not be messing the saler around why is this so hard to do.

  36. Can”t reach Paypal. Emailed webmaster@paypal.com and got a stupid autoresponse directing me to their website…GREAT. I pinged the site but can’t get by 152.63.146.82!!!

  37. I think the credit card registered has expired. I have been trying to enter the new number. Paypal will not allow me to do this. Please rectify. Thank you.

  38. trying to make a payment via paypal since 5pm 11/9/08 now 11.45am latest to come up internal error contact webmaster@paypal.com

  39. It seems paypal is down againh, wtf is going on with them. Hope II’ll see them operational soon.

  40. I hope this will be back soon I’m waiting for a couple of payments and if they try to pay what actually will happen if the site is down.

  41. Now (12.08.08. 11:55 Berlin) Payment from Germany works.
    Printing receipt function doesn’t work. Log off doesnt’t work. (Timeouts)

  42. 8th of August/9th of August
    Main Site works
    Payment from Ebay Germany doesn’t load
    Forget Password Function doesn’t work
    https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_forgot-password&from=PayPal

  43. Paypal is down now, not their main page, but if you try to login, on the next screen where it usually shows your balance, it now shows:-

    500 Internal Server Error

    Internal Server Error

    The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

    Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@paypal.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

    More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

    WTF?!

  44. Ed. Note: For those who don’t know, the last two comments above shows the results of what is known as a traceroute. It shows an attempt by the user’s local computer to connect to the Paypal computer, via the various Internet hops that it requires to get from Point A to Point B. (And it also shows that the commenters are more than slighly technically clued).

  45. traceroute to paypal.com (66.211.168.97), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
    1 Removed
    2 tpgi.com.au (10.20.20.213) 23.856 ms 24.585 ms 26.071 ms
    3 tpgi.com.au (202.7.183.199) 28.055 ms 28.292 ms 30.278 ms
    4 tpgi.com.au (202.7.183.193) 31.765 ms 32.749 ms 33.985 ms
    5 1.tpgi.com.au (202.7.162.41) 55.451 ms 57.181 ms 57.666 ms
    6 207.114.154.1 (207.114.154.1) 216.064 ms 212.624 ms 212.548 ms
    7 okld.twtelecom.net (66.192.250.123) 212.773 ms 201.286 ms 201.292 ms
    8 0.sprintlink.net (144.228.143.69) 201.247 ms 202.972 ms 204.209 ms
    9 1.sprintlink.net (144.232.4.212) 206.194 ms 207.930 ms 208.916 ms
    10 0.sprintlink.net (144.232.19.82) 211.901 ms * 214.358 ms
    11 144.223.252.6 (144.223.252.6) 216.094 ms 203.326 ms 202.218 ms
    12 10.8.1.182 (10.8.1.182) 208.431 ms 208.440 ms 208.639 ms
    13 * * *
    14 * * *
    15 * * *
    16 * * *
    17 * * *
    18 * * *
    19 * * *
    20 * * *
    21 * * *
    22 * * *
    23 * * *
    24 * * *
    25 * * *
    26 * * *
    27 * * *
    28 * * *
    29 * * *
    30 * * *

    Look at hop 12. Resolves to a DNS black hole!

  46. 1 24 192.168.1.1
    2 60 71.115.16.1 (SBNDIN.verizon-gni.net)
    3 69 130.81.36.194 (CHI01.verizon-gni.net)
    4 84 130.81.20.58 (CHI01.verizon-gni.net)
    5 143 152.63.0.193 (CHI2.ALTER.NET)
    6 1013 33 152.63.146.82 (SAC1.ALTER.NET)
    7 281 152.63.52.157 (SAC1.ALTER.NET)
    8 112 208.214.136.234 (customer.alter.net)
    9 * 100 0.0.0.0
    10 * 100 0.0.0.0
    11 * 100 0.0.0.0
    12 *100 Unable to reach 66.211.168.65 (paypal.com)

  47. server error paypal down. thats scary with all the money / persons depending on this. how is this possible?

  48. I was browsing their basic website and it no longer loads. Their help forums still work, but none of their main pages…

  49. I have been having problems for the past 2 weeks, literally 8 out of 10 times Paypal will not load at all, sometimes I get wierd errors and sometimes it just works. No other websites are doing this.. Makes it hard to do business when I cannot check transaction details 80% of the time!!!

  50. They were down Monday 30th June 2008, then yesterday (2nd) and today (3rd) July, every time I tried to log-in (from the UK) I got “Page Not Found” – WTF is up with this? It’s getting beyond a joke!

  51. june-17-2008 …I’m getting that paypal error message now like what you have printed on your website but can’t find any more info on it!!! My money is locked down!!!

  52. This is unbelievable we relay on paypal and have never considered they could be down, now it appears they are down very week?

  53. it’s sunday 8 june and paypal is dead again, this is relaly cistomg me money

  54. Maybe if they go down long enough, and hold up enough money/transactions congress will finally take the time to investigate a company that lives between the law. Might bring some legitimacy to this type of thing. Then again google is stepping up as of late so…

  55. whoopty-fucking-do, paypal is back up, it really is a fickle little bastard

  56. WHAT THE FUCK – WHY IS IT DOWN AGAIN?

    I invest TONS OF MONEY INTO THESE FUCK HEADS

  57. Paypal is down and I have a limited amount of time to pay for my purchase!!HELP!!!!!!!!

  58. I have had problems paying my paypal bill online for the last 3 months.I finally called to pay over the phone.This is screwed up!!!!!!!!!!!!

  59. gawd – what a whiney bunch of little choads! get over it. you think you got problems??? hahahaha

    you have no idea.

  60. How often does this happen? This is a first for me and it had really unconvinced myself and I’m sure the seller as well.

  61. I just sold something on eBay that required PayPal immediate purchase. Since PayPal is down, that really screws things up, & the buyer did not (could not) send payment. If PayPal was a bank, the Feds would step in.

  62. I haven’t had any trouble with Pay Pal at all this week and I just went to the site and was able to sign in with no problem. . . Just wanted to let you know that it is working for me.

  63. “PS. For a site that is about spam, you sure have a lot of annoying ads and layout for ads.”
    Eh? Oh. I use Firefox with Adblock Plus. Otherwise, ads will be very annoying!

  64. Here in El Salvador, we have 6:02PM, and PayPal is working perfectly, I login intro my account without problems. I think they´re back again.

  65. Pay pal down no wonder i have recieved several con letters from a fake paypal, that why theyre down

  66. Pay pal down no wonder i have recieved several con letters from a face paypal, that why theyre down

  67. On the System Announcements page at eBay, there’s the following message:

    June 01, 2007 | 10:25AM PST/PT

    Members may be experiencing errors when attempting to log in or make payments through PayPal. We are aware of the issue and are working to fix it as quickly as possible.

  68. As of 10:33 AM PDT, I’m able to get to the login page, but then receive Error 3004.

    PS. For a site that is about spam, you sure have a lot of annoying ads and layout for ads.

  69. I was getting ready to post this very thing. I know yesterday there was a message on my account stating they would be down, but that was yesterday. Hope all is okay with our money.

  70. Yes, this is bad form on PayPal’s part. I would like to verify payment before shipping…but I promised I would ship today. Hopefully they won’t lose any data and get it sorted out soon.

  71. I just got a bit afraid as I tried following a link to verify a payment…But then I saw that it’s for the whole site. Although I receive an Error Message which is displayed nicely within the Paypal Layout itself, not just a plain Apache Message. So may this be an progress about this problem?
    Hopefully they will be back soon.
    BTW: when was Paypal becoming a Bank?

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