People have mixed views and experiences with Paypal. All I'll say from mine is that I no longer have an account linked to anything (bank, credit/debit card, etc), the account hasn't been used in about 7yrs now and all my personal details have been altered enough to make them useless to anyone.
If you must have one, open a seperate bank account solely to use with paypal and other online transactions that are not regular things so you can keep an eye on money movements. Keep a close eye on paypal from the account direct login and not from following mail links, don't just check latest transactions, check the history on the account and deleted items if they still show those.
I'll skip the story, but a fraudulent transaction couldn't be sorted by paypal europe and all paperwork had to be sent by me to the US, who knocked everything back, Barclays fraud department had it sorted, transaction stopped and reversed back to my account with just one phone call and one form to sign.