I too have used PayPal for 6 years now and I've never had a bad experience with it.
First and foremost! - The first thing you should do is go to your bank and open a seperate bank account, and tell your bank that you do
not WANT the new acount linked in any way to any of your other accounts, and make sure that your bank knows that your using it for a cyber account and the bank will flag it as a cyber account and take special security precautions.
This way if anyone ever hacks the PayPal database, or if PayPal ever loses a laptop, your household account is never at risk and no one can come in through your cyber-account and sweep all your other accounts.
Also sign up for your banks Online Banking option so you can manage how much you have in that account. You can check your balance, transfer money from one account to the other, and all from the comfort of your living room.
Once you set up this account you will need the bank name, account number and routing number to provide to PayPal to get a verified account. Once your PayPal account is verified, you can buy or sell on Ebay with no problem. You can keep a certain amount of money in the account (say $100.00) and sweep the rest into your household account where it's safe, then if it's ever hacked, you will only lose what is in the cyber account and not your life savings.
We have what we call an "E-Bay account" with a debit card. It's great because if we have any special banking needs (like a vacation) we can set aside just the money we want to spend and use that account.
When you pay for something you also have the option to use a direct draft (out of your verified bank account) OR use your credit or debit card. That way if there is not enough money in your cyber account to pay for a purchase, you can use your credit card to pay it and not overdraw your cyber-account.
Like I said, I've used my PayPal account extensivly for 6 years now and have never had a problem. I did overdraw my cyber account by 3 cents one time and my bank covered it without an additional charge but that's the only problem, and that was my fault.
~ Raven ~