Paypal is okay, I've not personally had any problems with it. Those emails you get supposedly from Paypal are just the same as the ones you get pretending to be from the Nat West or the Royal Bank of Scotland or someone in Nigeria that wants to borrow your bank account to put 23 million dollars in or whatever. But that doesn't make the NW and the RBS a scam does it? Just ignore the scam attempts, they are nothing to do with Paypal itself.
Chock