Fix PayPal not logging you in when making payments

For a while know I have experienced a frustrating issue on PayPal that prevented me from logging in to the service to make payments when other services redirected me to it.
When you select PayPal as a payment method on third-party sites, you are usually redirected to the PayPal website where you are asked to sign in to your account before you get a chance to allow the transfer of funds to the third-party service.
This happens even if you are signed in to your PayPal account, for instance in another browser tab.
The issue that I experienced was that while authentication worked, PayPal would never leave the "logging you in" screen. It would simply display logging you in for several minutes before changing the part of the screen the message is displayed on to a blank page.
I thought at first that this was caused by a virtual private network that I was connected to but that was not the case as the procedure would stop at the same point when I disconnected from the VPN.
What made this even more frustrating was that payments worked at times, even for services that did not work before.
Fixing the issue
It took me a while to figure out how to repair the issue. I'm using security keys when authenticating with PayPal to improve security.
PayPal supports several options including receiving keys as messages on a mobile phone or using hardware that generates keys locally.
Anyway, I decided to disable these protective measures just for a test, to see if they were responsible for the issue that I was experiencing.
This was indeed the case. The payment that was stuck on the "logging you in" screen went through right away after disabling the security keys.
I decided then to enable the keys again, and test another payment to find out if it would go through. Surprisingly, it went through as well, and all payments that I made in the meantime did go through as well.
Here is how you manage the security keys on PayPal.
- Sign in to your PayPal account directly.
- Select profile (the cogwheel icon).
- On the next page, select Security underneath your name.
- Select "Security key" on the page that loads.
- This loads a page listing all security keys and their state.
- Select those that are active, and deactivate them. Note: To activate them again, you need to enter a key or multiple keys sent to the device or generated by it.
Then make a payment by following payment links on third-party sites to PayPal. The payment should go through in this case. If it does, go back to your security key management interface afterwards and enable one or multiple keys again.
Payments made afterwards should go through as well, at least that was the case on my end.

Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.