A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks
150 comments
·August 27, 2025Terr_
raphman
tietjens
Yes, I agree. At the time this was the only English link I found. The BBC is much better, and it's a European issue. I cannot edit the link or title.
altairprime
You can email the mods and ask them to do so. Footer contact link and mention “FP #x” somewhere in the subject.
hk__2
What’s "FP" for?
yalogin
Wow this headline is quite striking. I wonder what happened all of a sudden for their fraud checks to fail. This is exactly the kind of issues where we could use insight from some insider. I am somehow not super optimistic that PayPal will publicly respond to it
chatmasta
This article is useless. It seems like an English translation of some German blogspam (and the ads are even making it through my filter).
It says nothing other than PayPal is having some security failures and banks are blocking deposits from PayPal. What are these security failures? What is the mechanism of fraudulent activity that is being exploited?
I’m surprised this was upvoted so much… am I missing something? It seems to be a bunch of words saying basically nothing.
tpurves
Arbitraging fraud has always been PayPal's game. For the mass market of small-scale sellers there's a threshold, whre the cost of onboarding, verifying, underwriting and eating fraud exposure is greater than the revenues you could ever expect to make from them at their low volume. So these segments went un-served, same with many other segments of transactions or transactors. PayPal's model has always been to accept a higher risk tolerance, then to have just-enough compensating controls and/or liability-dodging to make that work. At least just well enough to have net-revenues bps exceed their fraud-loss bps.
And when that balance is working, it kinda works, but when it doesn't...
And incidentally, it's not just PayPal with the fraud problems these days. It's everybody in the banking and payments space. AI is so far quite asymmetrically helping the bad guys more. It's bad out there.
SchemaLoad
Maybe it's different by country, but I feel like fraud isn't a huge issue for the end user anymore. A couple times I've had random transactions on my account seemingly from database leaks / stolen card details, and every time the bank has either sent me a notification asking me to approve the suspicious transaction, or has refunded me the amount later.
As long as you don't initiate the transaction, you get your money back easily.
dev_l1x_be
Ebay and Paypal are full of scam. Simply it is thei best interest to keep this up because it generates revenue for them.
skybrian
That's a simplistic way of understanding "best interest."
The optimal amount of fraud is neither zero nor "let it all through." Their "best interest" is a balance between allowing legit transactions to get through and blocking enough fraudulent ones that fraud doesn't become too common.
adrr
This is an important concept. More you push to zero fraud, the more inconvenience you put on your customer. You can cut bunch of fraud if you only allow shipments to the billing address but then you inconvenience people who want to buy gifts, recently moved or have a vacation home. You can block all traffic from cloud providers but you'll end up blocking outbound proxies for people on military bases or corporate proxies.
arn3n
I believe you’re referencing Patrick McKenzie’s takes on fraud, which I agree with — but when he (and others) talk about the optimal amount of fraud they’re usually referring to fraud from “losing money from the company to customers”. This is not PayPal’s case; because PayPal isn’t the victim of fraud on its platform but makes money off its use, their optimal amount of fraud is “as much as they can permit without losing customers or regulators getting up their ass”.
Magi604
Recently I found out that one of my friends had his identity stolen, thousands and thousands drained from his bank accounts. After thorough investigation it was traced to a PayPal breach, and he had to fight hard to get them to admit it was their fault. He got everything back, eventually, but the whole process was a nightmare.
baxtr
Do you know how this exactly went down? How can a PayPal breach result in money being stolen from a bank account? Genuinely interested to understand
o11c
PayPal very strongly tries to make you give them your full bank info (remember that the banking system has absolutely no security as the computer world knows it - this is a feature required for checking to work - so this means anybody with access to your bank id numbers in PayPal's records can do arbitrary transactions to/from your bank account). When I last used it it was possible to avoid on the buyer end and just use a credit card, but I haven't used it for years and I think it was different on the seller end even then.
ryanjmo
Last week my PayPal account was "permanently disabled" this also happened to two of my friends at the same time. Is anyone else going through this right now? When I looked it up on Reddit it seemed like a widespread error that started last week. Could it be related to this? Are there any steps I should be taking to try to get my account back? Any help here would be really appreciated.
TheJoeMan
I filed a dispute with Paypal that a merchant ran off with my money… Paypal nuked my account. No idea if the support agent hit the wrong button but I’m done with Paypal, no explanation or recourse. Filed dispute with bank on the Paypal charge and immediately got my money back.
heisenbit
It is worth remembering that PayPal not only handles payments but also provides a degree of assurance to receive the goods. A pure payment system does not. From a customer perspective this can provide real value as filing a claim with PayPal gets merchants definitely to listen more closely.
mtmail
German, well West European, banks are slow in creating a competitor to Paypal, called Wero. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment) I'm not implying they block Paypal because of that. It's good to have more competition and I wished my bank would take part.
fweimer
The existing giro system is the real Paypal competitor. Most Europeans had access to Paypal-style money transfers before they had email. Merchants probably want to rely on another party to maintain their integration, but there is no real need for another centralized service similar to Paypal.
(The U.S. really is an outlier among developed nations in that its giro system is not widely used, and many residents would not even know how to access it. Hence Paypal's network effect can offer value there. Europe is very different.)
pbmonster
> The existing giro system is the real Paypal competitor. Most Europeans had access to Paypal-style money transfers before they had email.
Not at all, not even close! In most cases, that's wrong even today.
Want to sell something online? A book you wrote, a game you made? There's no way for people to pay you via giro and automatically receiving the good on the page where the payment process was initiated.
Giro is not instant, and almost no bank will offer an API that signals that a specific customer has transferred funds successfully. It always takes hours, and the confirmation process is almost always only semi-automatic for the seller.
Visa/MasterCard/PayPal/Twint/Tikkie/Wero have and will provide actual value. Giro was nice 15 years ago, but hasn't kept up.
And even for money transfers between two private individuals, giro is the inferior system - mainly because Euro banks fail at UX/UI. I don't know a single bank that offers an "address book" in their online banking app/website. If you want to send someone money, you better remember their IBAN yourself. And because the system comes with a degree of anonymity, you can't even send people money back! Their IBAN is not part of the metadata of an incoming transfer, the only way to send money back is to contact that person and have them send their IBAN.
korhojoa
I'm trying to think of any bank that I've used that would not have "address book"-like functionality, and I can't think of one. All of them have this, and have had the feature for as long as I've used their online banking. Perhaps the banks you're used to aren't very modern?
SEPA transfers are (at least mine have been) max. 1h until the transfer is complete (some limit this to "banking hours"). Instantaneous transfer is common.
It seems to me like there is great variety depending on what bank you use.
API's are common, and even the same between banks now with PSD2.
Tbh, a banking barcode (or EPC QR if you prefer) displayed on the seller's webpage with unique reference + reading it with your phone and making the payment is that internet payment method via giro. The webshop uses PSD2 open banking to get notified of new transactions and knows when it is transferred.
pantalaimon
> Giro is not instant, and almost no bank will offer an API that signals that a specific customer has transferred funds successfully.
And because of that we have leeches like Sofortüberweisung. They basically proxy the web interface of your bank and you'll give them full access to your account, so they do the transaction for you by scraping your banks web interface (and your transaction history) and report success to the vendor.
kuschku
SEPA Instant Credit Transfer allows instant sepa transfers, and soon all transactions will be required to be ict if possible.
Banks have APIs you can integrate with, which e.g. KDE's money app used to support in the past.
The actual underlying transaction system is extremely well designed and reliable, it's just missing the nice APIs that other payment systems have.
rcbdev
Austria has the state-run EPS system. It's very ubiquitous here, I use it for most online payments.
bratwurst3000
? IBAN transactions are instant and free.
All three of my banking apps offer adresse books.
why couldnt i sent money back? I see the sender and the IBAN
I can even in some cases cancell payments
where are you at?
me france germany italy and switzerland.
Are you from the states or canada? The parent talked about europe.
tnolet
ideal will handle that. But it’s only in NL.
red_trumpet
> Most Europeans had access to Paypal-style money transfers before they had email.
Bank transfers were not instant though, they usually took a work day. This is changing with the introduction of instant transfers, which become mandatory to support this year, and are also not allowed to be more expensive since this year also.
alistairSH
The U.S. really is an outlier among developed nations in that its giro system is not widely used
I wasn't even aware such a thing existed? Or do you mean Zelle, which seems to be some sort of hybrid system... It's not quite a giro system as found in most of EU, more like "PayPal, but built by BofA and CapOne"
fweimer
I don't do much banking in the U.S. system, but I'm assuming that ACH transfers get you pretty close to a giro system. Apparently, they are quite slow by SEPA's standards.
foxglacier
For merchants selling stuff internationally on the internet, none of those local systems are any use. You pretty much need to use Paypal or similar - or even wire transfers if you don't mind the delay and inconvenience to the customer.
tchalla
German banks (and in general businesses) are amazing. They won't do anything until legally required to do so and even then will drag their feet. There has been instant bank transfers (transfers in 10 seconds) available for a while - launched in November 2017. German banks kept charging 1.5€ for this instant transfer or some didn't have them available at all. They didn't build any of these systems and yet this was their stand.
On January 9 2025, EU made it compulsory to have receipt of transfers instant and in October 2025 - sending too should be available at the same cost as the normal transfer. There's nothing stopping from implementing bot send/receive instant transfers in January 2025. Yet, some of these banks only enabled instant receipts in January and will make the sending available exactly on 8th October 2025, 1 day before the deadline. What a business mindset to have!
scns
Have used them for a long time, never paid for them. GLS is a great bank, happy customer. The crappy ones like to keep your money in their books as long as possible.
the_duke
The resistance against instant payments mostly has to do with technicalities around bank balance sheets and inter-bank settlement systems.
It's a bit complex for a comment, but the TLDR is:
* funds in transit (called "positive float") are held in the banks account, and can be used by the bank to earn interest
* liquidity management - there are a bunch of considerations here, but the longer settlement periods enable banks to do "deferred net settlements" (just paying each other the difference between all transactions in a batched way) and also helps balance sheets in other ways, making it easier to meet reserve requirements, smoothing out intra-day liquidity, etc
The delay also means systems have more time to catch fraudulent transactions, and to block them before they happen.
tchalla
This comment is not towards you but there's always an excuse with the big German banks.
For example, during Covid when interest rates where negative - some major German banks like Commerzbank charged interest from customers when their balance exceeded an amount like 50000€. Now that the interest rates have gone up - they are not even close to passing on those high interest rates. The same Commerzbank now asks for 50000€ in assets otherwise they charge a 4.90€ subscription charge from their customers.
So yeah there might be technicalities but nothing stops those technicalities being addressed until the law does.
miduil
There is also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_euro in the making. I think that would then also supersede Wero?
Portugal got mbway, Austria used to have paybox, there is iDEAL, sofort.com and generally besides the local country systems with de-facto European banks you get "SEPA Instant Credit Transfer" nowadays - however IBAN is "harder" to share than lets say the phone number your friends already got.
mrweasel
They never really had much of a reason to create a competitor. There where already plenty of alternatives once online shopping/payments became a thing.
Here you could do "cash on delivery", credit/debit card, account transfers (yes even across banks, it not as big an issue as US banks makes it) or you could send stamps (not a popular options).
There was never a need for PayPal or PayPal style services. These days it's safe to assume that people have a debit card (or MobilePay in the case of Denmark).
rvnx
The + of PayPal was in 2005 when you could use it to hide your card number from the merchant.
But now, you can generate one-time use cards, which are safer than assigning a card on your PayPal account.
The other thing, is that you can do chargebacks more easily, when you buy on eBay, but this comes at the cost of higher fees (which is basically insurance)
Other than that, it's a platform that cannot be trusted
mrweasel
I can't speak to how other European countries did only payments, but you never gave your credit card number to the merchant in Denmark. It was always done via a 3rd. party payment provider, initially mostly DIBS, then came WorldPay and later many more.
Charge backs was also always fairly easily done via your bank. Though you did have to call them, so yes PayPal was/is easier. I don't know, the trust in PayPal was always really really low.
Vrondi
At the time PayPal rolled out, the single feature that made it popular in the USA is that it provided eBay sellers an easy/cheap way to receive credit card payments from buyers. That is all. Any person could set up a PayPal and instantly start receiving credit card payments without setting up a vendor account with a credit card company (which was not trivial at that time).
nicce
> There where already plenty of alternatives once online shopping/payments became a thing.
Let’s say direct bank transfers are not counted. What alternatives are not based on Visa/Mastercard on global scale?
tgsovlerkhgsel
The "global" is the problem here.
Each country had a local solution. Direct transfers, or better direct debit, was the common way in Germany. You literally just entered your bank account number and that was payment, the seller would debit it from your account. Zero authentication, and it worked - never had a fraud issue (in the background, I assume sellers checked the delivery address against some database before accepting this, as the seller would ultimately be on the hook for any fraud).
Aside from manual bank transfers (seller ships when the money arrives 1-3 business days later) there were also two systems based on direct bank transfers. One (Sofortüberweisung/Sofort) was essentially institutionalized phishing - you give a third party your banking credentials, they log into your account, snoop around a bit, wire the money to the merchant using your credentials and confirm to the merchant that your account has enough money and the wire is happening. The other was a similar service but by the banks, so you'd log in directly at your bank to authorize the transfer.
Most other European countries had other local systems that covered this need, but there was nothing global. Globally, your best bet for small amounts is unfortunately likely still PayPal unless your counterparty accepts crypto. For bigger amounts, there is Wise and similar services (note that I've had a horrible experience with Wise - KYC asking for things that didn't exist, luckily before they had my money to hold hostage). Wiring directly to accounts with Revolut also works reasonably well.
For transfers within the Euro zone, a regular SEPA bank transfer is easiest, with the only "downside" that you need to ask for the destination IBAN rather than just a phone number or similar that some of the other systems support.
bgnn
Global scale is different indeed.
EU scale there are tons of solutions: iDeal (expanding to EU from NL), Klarna, sofort..
thibaut_barrere
Wero is getting traction quite quickly in France (source: https://www.banque-france.fr/fr/a-votre-service/particuliers... + people around me).
arianvanp
Mostly German.
The predecessor of Wero (iDeal) has been in use in The Netherlands for almost two decades. Nobody has credit cards here and everyone does online shopping with iDeal
Cthulhu_
To add, on top of iDeal (I think they're on top anyway, they're digital payment whatsits anyway) there's an age verification system using a similar protocol - where a website gets a "yes this person is >18" signal, nothing else, from the user's bank. And there's "tikkie" (payment request), allowing people to request money through a link and people's own bank account - no need for everyone to use the same apps or services like paypal or cashapp.
tchalla
> where a website gets a "yes this person is >18" signal, nothing else, from the user's bank.
I am amazed on how this practical solution can't be implemented for age verification instead of all those ID uploads etc.
weinzierl
Wero looks very much like a bureaucratic paper tiger to me. I do not know a single person that uses it despite the massive advertising campaign they are running.
What really replaces Paypal in my everyday life is Revolut.
anal_reactor
Half of Europe has widely used national systems for instant payments, the other half does not. The idea behind Wero is to unify this to one single system, available across whole Europe. For reference, I use these systems for like 80% of my online payments.
Of course nobody's using Wero now because the whole thing isn't really online yet, just a pilot program on a few websites with a few banks.
tietjens
The product features sound nice. I'm all for anything that replaces Giropay.
null
bouke
Last week the Dutch bank Bunq was also victim of unauthorised PayPal withdrawals: https://tweakers.net/nieuws/238190/bunq-neemt-maatregelen-te....
ronsor
PayPal security is amazing. It randomly locks people out of their accounts and randomly closes their accounts too, but actual fraudsters and criminals are never deterred.
hibikir
I never worked for PayPal, but I did for a competitor.
Dealing with fraud is a red queen game: The fraudsters can keep trying until they find what gaps are there in your system, and will sometimes communicate with each other: Part of our defense system involved infiltrating some of those spaces and seeing the guides that were being sold to try to commit fraud in our platform. Meanwhile you will still have a false positive rate, and getting it all the way to zero means crazy fraud. Most people just don't get to see how much fraud is stopped before they know it exists. This isn't just for financial institutions: You'd be surprised by how much credential stuffing is attempted at, say, any very large streaming site which charges a subscription.
Without looking in, it's hard for me to say exactly how successful their security team is, but being as big as they are, and having probably thousands of people whose only job is to do fraud on their platform, winning has to be pretty hard.
time0ut
The average person has no idea how industrialized fraud has become. There are essentially entire companies with management, support staff, IT, and office buildings whose business is fraud. It is sad when you think about how many resources have been poured into it.
calmbonsai
My issue with PayPal is they've always been that way. I've come close to deleting my account on 4 separate occasions.
I've had one since shortly after their merger from the old X.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com_(bank) .
Per discussions on this thread, the singular reason people have tolerated their horrid service over the years they've been an effective monopoly in many locales.
ronsor
> the singular reason people have tolerated their horrid service over the years they've been an effective monopoly in many locales.
This is correct. For some reason, many people (merchants surprisingly!) love PayPal and only accept payments through it, especially those outside the US and UK. Sometimes "guest payments" aren't an option, and that means you either get a PayPal account or don't purchase the product/service.
amluto
Just delete it. I used to have an account, and my experience using “guest payments” (which are usually, but not always, supported) is generally more reliable than logging in and paying.
mihaaly
I did delete many years ago.
They blocked me claiming suspicious activity occurred in my account (just a low traffic personal account). Ignoring me wanting to know what suspicious activity was it and if it needed, or actually already was, reported to the authorities.
Unluckily this deletion does not hold well, occasionally with weird merchants only offering PayPal payment - credit card through PayPal - the paying fails using my old email used in the purchase and was used with PayPal before. They keep forcing me to log in. But can't! It is deleted!
I did not trust their sloppy ways then, the feeling is stronger now.
raincole
Yeah. I had always thought these AML/KYC stuff were just governments/people in power expanding their arms into normal people's lives. I still think they mostly are, but after learning how much fraud is happening, I'm not sure what a better solution would look like.
jimnotgym
KYC is just box ticking by the bank, so they can claim to the government that they did try to stop money laundering.
dcow
Strong digital credentialing—something the web has been surprisingly allergic to.
lotsofpulp
>I'm not sure what a better solution would look like
Federal government provided electronic money accounts and transfer systems, along with federal government provided identity verification APIs, where the fraud requires defrauding the government. Basically, a government utility. They do it with passports, why not with digital travel?
Obviously, this has to go hand in hand with constitutional inalienable rights to protect people's access to electronic money accounts and identity verification.
freejazz
The problem isn't the fraud, the problem is that they do not pay enough staff to deal with it which leads to legitimate accounts getting closed out and people not being able to do anything about it. Money seized, etc.
calmbonsai
Amen.
calmbonsai
Yup. My advice for using PayPal is do not unless you have no other choice. I just got my monthly account statement and, as usual, thankfully zero activity.
Though extremely innovative (for its time), it's been a slipshod org since inception and slipshod is a property you decidedly do not want in a payments processor.
thevillagechief
My only use case for paypal is booking an internal flight in a country I visit annually because they do not accept my credit card, but will accept paypal. Literally the only reason I reluctantly got an account. The horror stories I've heard, I wouldn't put any serious money in there. And their drama during the heydays of censorship a few years ago, literally fining people $2500 for politically incorrect speech at the time, I couldn't believe sane people at the company thought that was an acceptable idea. I'd really like to know the inside story of that decision. We forget how crazy 2021-2022 was.
ramesh31
> My advice for using PayPal is do not unless you have no other choice.
This is literally their business model, which is why they are able to get away with so many shady practices. Until very recently they held a practical monopoly on web based international payments.
calmbonsai
I concur. Thankfully, that's changing and changing very rapidly. I really hope to delete my PayPal account sooner rather than later.
yogorenapan
Indeed. And it's not a recent phenomenon either. I lost my first ever paycheck to PayPal randomly freezing my account. Was never able to get it back. Never used it again
nancyminusone
PayPal also appears to suffer data leaks more than anyone else. I use multiple email addresses for every service I sign up for. But of all all the spam email I get, 99% has my PayPal email on it, and I even have other email addresses posted publicly.
j_seigh
It's worse than you think. I've closed PayPal accounts and opened new ones with a different email address and PayPal updates the merchants who've been spamming me with the new email address. There's no legitimate technical reason PayPal can't use a mail relay with transaction specific email addresses to control spam.
dkga
Perhaps those are not leaks, but outright data sales
glenneroo
Happened to me with Moneybookers a few years ago. Started getting spam from various casinos at a unique email address. I contacted support and spent a few weeks explaining that, nobody could have gotten this email address unless they were hacked or willingly sold my address. After sending full dumps of the emails and a minor threat to go public with the information, suddenly the spam stopped.
freedomben
Exactly. They're not leaks, they're sales
buckle8017
Didn't PayPal transmit the email to the merchant for every transaction?
Merchants are definitely selling email lists.
throw7
Venmos's security is also A++. I made an account, sent some money, then my account was immediately flagged and closed for fraud. Nice.
tnolet
Off topic: Venmo does not exist (?) in Europe land. What’s its appeal compared to PayPal or regular credit cards or even debit?
overdrive110
The Nordic countries all have bank-backed apps for instant transfers from a checking account indexed by phone numbers. It basically replaces every peer to peer transaction that would be cash in other countries (paying back a friend, buying something at a flea market, chipping in for a gift at the office...)
jklinger410
> but actual fraudsters and criminals are never deterred.
When my argument is kinda weak I love throwing in some hyperbole to spice it up.
thinkingtoilet
The article is about $10 billion dollars in fraudulent transactions that PayPal has allowed that the banks had to catch themselves. Given that, it's hard to say the OP is speaking in hyperbole.
jklinger410
I would imagine that fraudsters are deterred sometimes.
nancyminusone
How do you know they aren't one of the actual fraudsters or criminals?
cultofmetatron
> It randomly locks people out of their accounts and randomly closes their accounts too,
yup, my paypal got locked after using it for over 20 years. Customer service refused to help and wouldn't even tell me why it was locked. I still get messages from paypal that they "couldn't get process subscription for X." won't delete my data either.
Scummy behavior from them on multiple levels.
Cthulhu_
Thank you for the reminder to move money out of Paypal, I get some money every month through Patreon to pay for server costs but keep forgetting about it.
Findecanor
A few years ago when they suddenly switched on flawed mandatory TFA in my country, it took them nine months before they started to man phone support so people could get in. At about the same time they also implemented a policy to charge for having money left in your balance — when you couldn't access it! Add to that that hey had started with cryptocurrency. I cancelled my account (17 years) as soon as I could.
climb_stealth
What, you don't remember random details from all this time ago? I got locked out of mine as well and the questions to restore were ridiculous. How the hell would I know what transactions I did 15 years ago? And other stupid things like that.
Gave up on it after a while and now try to avoid it as much as I can. Good riddance.
hirako2000
What's so specific to German banks ?
n1b0m
PayPal is the most important online payment service in the German market, with nearly 30% of online purchases made using the platform.
The sheer volume of PayPal and direct debit transactions in Germany magnified the impact of the outage compared to other markets.
With millions of potentially fraudulent debit requests appearing simultaneously, German banks chose to freeze all incoming PayPal direct debit payments. This was a necessary step to protect their customers from what appeared to be a massive, systemic fraud event.
tgsovlerkhgsel
Also protect themselves (or rather, PayPal's bank). These were almost certainly SEPA debits. Consumers could reverse unauthorized transactions (think "chargeback" but on steroids - customer says to revert, it gets reverted, no discussion) and their bank would then have to try to get the money from PayPal's bank, which would then have to get it back from PayPal.
galleywest200
The article is from a German publication, which is probably why the focus is on German banks.
seb1204
Germany seems to actively resist to modernize on all electronic fronts. Banks still charge you for transactions and they take 24hrs plus while in other countries they are free for private accounts and within seconds. This lack on the market has made unregulated services such as PayPal big.
kuschku
I'm not sure which bank you're using, but even Sparkasse and Commerzbank have long supported free SEPA ICT (and it's becoming mandatory at the end of the year).
hirako2000
Thank you. I'm not in Germany but could not withdraw to any (UK) banks for days. From Paypal that is. It is now restored but no entry in the list would show like it normally does.
Makes sense Germany would be particularly impacted, seems like the UK to agree was as well. It is restored now though.
In this case I think it's justified [0] to offer an alternate reporting: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj6y42jggdyo
> European banks have seen widespread unauthorised direct debits from PayPal accounts, the German Savings Banks Association (DSGV) says.
> The German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) says payments worth in the region of 10 billion euros (£8.6bn) have had to be blocked, after PayPal's fraud-checking system failed.
[0] I was impeded by cookie popups and adblock/privacy-mode blockers in another language, and neither are direct reports or superior details.