i'm using paypal take payments on website. 30% of ipns bail out following curl error. works fine other 70% of time. unknown ssl protocol error in connection www.paypal.com:443 i've tried using sslv3 no avail. here php curl settings, based on micah carrick's ipn listener script . <?php curl_setopt($ch, curlopt_ssl_verifypeer, true); curl_setopt($ch, curlopt_ssl_verifyhost, 2); curl_setopt($ch, curlopt_cainfo, dirname(__file__)."/cert/api_cert_chain.crt"); curl_setopt($ch, curlopt_url, 'https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr/' ); curl_setopt($ch, curlopt_post, true); curl_setopt($ch, curlopt_postfields, $encoded_data); curl_setopt($ch, curlopt_followlocation, false); curl_setopt($ch, curlopt_timeout, 45); curl_setopt($ch, curlopt_returntransfer, true); curl_setopt($ch, curlopt_header, true); not sure. we're not seeing on our end. can change 'curlopt_url' https://ipnpb.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr , try little bit?