Paxful giving out information of its users to BTC vendors?

TL:DR

I made a trade with a guy on paxful. He accused me of scamming him. My account got banned, and then I start getting text messages from the guy threatening to dox me. Apparently he got my number simply due to the fact that my account was verified via my phone. Is Paxful willingly giving out the information of its users to sellers?

Okay, now for the long version

So a while ago, after deciding I wanted to purchase some BTC on Paxful using a couple of old giftcards I had laying around, I checked to make sure they were still valid, made an account, and then found someone to trade with. So I go through with the trade, the guy accepts, I give him the cards, get the BTC, and go. The next day I decide to check the balance on the giftcards and noticed they were both still full. So I'm thinking to myself, "I guess the guy never redeemed them or something, idk", so I decide to try and open a trade with the guy again to see if I can get more because, why not? After looking back on this, I see that this was probably a dumb idea, but at the time I was a little stoked I guess. Anyway, I go to trade with the dude again using the same cards which I believed at the time to have a full balance. He tells me they have already been redeemed and that I was trying to scam him. Obviously I was not, but he was very adamant that I was attempting to scam him for a whole $20 or something. So he calls in a moderator to review the trade, and the moderator sides with him. I end up getting my account banned, but I'm not too upset, because I had already transfered the original BTC I got to a different wallet. I decide whatever, I doubted that would have worked anyway, but hey, at least I got $20 or so from the original trade. So I'm not to worried and go on minding my own business. Now this is where things get weird. So about 30 or so minutes later I get a text on my phone from a random number. The guy starts saying shit like "Why did you scam me", "Give me my money back or I'm going to release all of your info", "I'm reporting you for fraud", etc. Basically threatening to dox me unless I give him his money back. Which let me be clear, I never stole anything from this dude. I had two interactions with him prior to this. One was a legit trade, and the other was when he denied the second trade and got me banned. So I'm wondering how tf he got my phone number when he then tells me he got it because my account was verified via text and email. So anyway, he continues to harass me for ~20-30 minutes before finally ending with a text where he tells me to "Expect reprocussions." (I never did face any "reprocussions" btw.) I don't say anything else, and neither does he. I was never too worried about this as I figured he was just trying to use scare tactics to make a quick buck.

So about 4 or 5 months later out of nowhere, I get a single text from the same number again, simply asking if I've been "scamming much" or something. I never responded, however, this did remind me of the whole thing and I started to think. Why did he have my phone number in the first place? The only way he could have gotten it was through Paxful themselves or a paxful moderator actually giving him the number that was used to confirm my account, right? So does Paxful just give out the information of anyone who uses their site to any seller simply because that person may or may not have scammed someone? There's no other way I could think of for how he could have gotten my number unless it was given to him by Paxful. This seems like a major security issue if Paxful is willing to just give out the info of any of its users to some dickhead so he can harass someone who he thinks stole $20 from him. Has anything like this happened to anyone else? I'm less concerned about this retard doing anything to me, but more about the fact that Paxful willingly gave him my private information.

Someone please let me know if I'm on to something here or if I'm just dumb and there was some other way he could have possibly obtained my phone number. I'm really curious as to how this could have happened.


Comments


[5 Points] pmagician:

So you tried to rip him off and the guy got your number? He got it from somewhere, odds are the vendors can see your contact information.

How about you don't try to scam people in the future?


[2 Points] Kritone:

Few months later I met a guy that work/worked (I lost contact) as mod on paxfull and the internal rule is to release all the info from scammer to seller including IP, name, ID (if you once traded using id).


[1 Points] _PrinterPam_:

To be honest, I stuck with the Tl;dr explanation (Thanks and sorry, I couldn't be bothered reading the whole thing)...but your main concern is that someone is threatening to 'dox' you over something that is, in and of itself, perfectly legal? Maybe the service is giving info out, or maybe the person is clever (and you--less so) in finding a way to correlate a username or something else on your paxful account to social media or something...I don't know. I guess that my opinion amounts to: So what?


[1 Points] Thelnvestor:

That’s super sketchy wtf. This should be further investigated.


[1 Points] ForLOLSerious:

What is the buyer account verification process on Paxful like?