FreeBSD Foundation accepting donations via Pay Pal

mbadolato writes: "From an email which was sent out to the freebsd announcements list: The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce that it is now accepting credit card donations via PayPal. Donations can be made via the Foundation's home page or direct from PayPal. The Foundation's account with PayPal is donations@freebsdfoundation.org. This is a great way to help support a great OS initiative. Funds we donate could be used to help offset the legal fees incurred whilst negotiating the inclusion of Java (as reported on /. recently)"

Comments

Paypal is criminal

[RGRistroph]

On Dec. 12th they sent me a letter telling me that they were going to not allow me to take money out of my account as of Dec 13th unless I "verified" my account.

I have had a paypal account for quite some time. I never connected it to a bank or credit card, because I didn't want to (I have canceled most of my credit cards for charging me "credit protection fees" I didn't want, there's only one left, and consumer banking is also a rip-em-off-by-small-fees industry, so I have to switch banks regularly too.) The manner in which I used paypal was I would wait until someone paid me for lunch or dinner via paypal, and then I would use the money mainly to donate to freenet and dyndns.org and other worthy places.

A roommate paid me rent via paypal one month, and so I was using that account to buy christmas stuff on ebay. I still had about $200 in there when they tried to steal it. Luckily I checked my email before the 24 hour notice was up, and transfered it to someone who had a verified account and I trusted to pay me later.

Paypal used to have a very nice business plan. You could verify or link your account if you wanted, but you didn't have to; there were no fees, and they earned money from the interest of what was in the accounts. I used to purposely keep a little money in there because I figured it would make sure they made money. I don't understand why they couldn't make that work. Instead, they appear to have abandoned that plan altogether, and are focusing on charging fees and becoming an online debit card.

Which would be fine, I suppose, but if you let people accumulate money on the presumption they can spend it, you can't freeze the money and keep it. The "service agreement" or whatever doesn't matter much here, there are certain things which are simply against the law.

For the dubious, here's the email from Paypal:

(MAIL HEADER DELETED TO GET AROUND LAMENESS FILTER)

Dear PayPal Member:

You are receiving this announcement because our records indicate
that:

(asterisk deleted to get around lameness) You have funds in your PayPal account

and

(asterisk deleted to get around lame ass) You do not have a credit card or confirmed bank account
associated with your PayPal account

We want to make sure you are aware of the following policy update,
which affects your PayPal account and was posted on PayPal\222s Policy
Updates web page November 29, 2001.

(LINE OF EQUALS SINGS DELETED IN ATTEMTP TO GET AROUND LAMENESS FILTER)

Date Posted: November 29, 2001
Effective Date: December 13, 2001

To increase the security of the PayPal system, effective December 13,
2001, members will be required to have a credit card or confirmed
bank account with PayPal before they can send any payments, even if
they have funds in their PayPal account.
(ANOTHER LINE OF EQUALS REMOVED. Jeez. How hard to I have to work to make a fucking post ?)

To spend the funds in your PayPal account you need to add a credit
card or a bank account. To add a credit card or bank account, log in
to your PayPal account and follow the simple steps in the Activate
Account box. (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_login- run).
We recommend that you add a bank account so you will be able to spend
the funds in your account and easily transfer funds between your
PayPal account and your bank account.

If you would like to withdraw funds from your PayPal account, the
easiest and fastest way to withdraw funds is to add a bank account.
To add a bank account, login to your PayPal account and follow the
steps in the Activate Account box
(https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_logi n- run). You may also
request a check by logging in to your PayPal account and clicking on
the Withdraw tab.

Thank you for using PayPal!

The PayPal Team

(LINE OF DASHES DELETED TO GET AROUND ROB MALDA'S ADMISSION THAT MODERATION DOESN'T WORK)

This PayPal notification was sent to rgristroph@yahoo.com because
your account is likely to be impacted by a recent change to our
service. PayPal reserves the right to contact members regarding
important product or policy announcements. To modify your
notification preferences, click here to login to your account.
Replies to this email will not be processed.

Copyright@ 2001 PayPal Inc. All rights reserved. Designated
trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners.

--
Happy Happy Joy Joy, I love the lameness filter. Can I post now ? nope. Maybe I should past some random crap in here to bring the average up. Or put every character on a separate line like the page-lengthening guy. Please rob, goddamn I just wanna post this. Maybe that is enough. No it is not. Perhaps I should just give up on including the mail header in the post, but I think it gives more authenticity. Probably no one will question the accuracy of my post, except of course the lameness filter. Does not the bugtracker on sourceforge have all kinds of bugs related to the lameness filter ? Perhaps everytime we hit it, we should just mail the post to the slashdot editors and ask them to record it as a bug. Ok, delete some shit and add more text down here. Ratio ok yet ? No it is not. Somebody help me, I'm lame ! Jesus H. Christ in a horse manger, what does it take ?

Re:Paypal is criminal

[cperciva]

You're blaming the wrong people here, unfortunately. I very much doubt that Paypal wanted to do this -- they really don't gain much as far as stopping fraud goes.

The people you should be complaining about are the various US law enforcement agencies. They've said many times that they want to shut down terrorist financing, and that they want to be able to find out how and when every dollar changes hands around the world in order to do so.

Unverified accounts on Paypal, where people move funds in and out without ever providing any more identification than an IP address, are exactly the sort of "money laundering" target the FBI are going to shut down.

In any case, I fail to understand why you don't want to link a bank account. If you change banks later, it won't matter... as long as you've linked a bank account once (and thereby proved your identity) they'll be happy.

Don't forget your tinfoil hat.

[duffbeer703]

The problem here isn't Paypal, banks, credit card companies, or the government.

It's you.

If you read your credit card statement carefully, you would have noticed that the "Credit Protection Service" is an option that you have to sign or initial for. You could have easily not signed and/or initialed and you would not have had to pay the fee.

It also sounds like you don't have a bank account so that you can avoid being "ripped off" by the banking industry. I suppose it is easier and cheaper to pay someone a fee to cash your paycheck and buy money orders to pay your bills.

I can understand your complaints about various fees levied by paypal against it's users. Complaining about PayPal's desire to know who it is doing business with, on the other hand, is sheer lunacy.

How can you operate a money-transfer operation without knowing whom you are transferring money to? The sheer paranoia you display by refusing such a sensical and basic request is pretty frightening. Feel free to contact me via email where I can refer you to a mental health provider.

Get real.

[mindstrm]

So what if he doesn't have a bank account? Is it mandatory? No. it's not.

As for 'fees'... let me tell you a few things.
1) You can walk into the branch of the bank that the cheque is written against, and provide ID, and take ALL your money, they cannot charge you fees. You do not need an account. By law, they are bound to honor the cheque (which is simply an insturment instructing the bank to pay you the money)

2) He has a legit complaint against paypal. They should NOT need to know who they are doing business with; that is not a requirement of business.

3) How can you operate a money trasnfer operation? Through security. How do you think anonymous swiss numbered accounts work? Same thing here. The account belongs to whoever has that paypal ID and password... get it?

4) It's not a basic request. Paypal has screwed up before; Why should paypal require either his credit card number or my bank account number if I never plan to use either with them? WHat he's saying is that they do not NEED either of these things to provide him with the service he wants. He doesn't use them. Furthermore, if paypal merely wants to verify who he is, there are other ways to do this other than requesting his bank account/credit card.

You, sir, are the perfect consumer.

Re:Get real.

[duffbeer703]

There is no reason why someone with a real job should have a bank account. If you find it too onerous to have one becuase of fees, then you probaly have a screw or two loose.

Organizations that handle monetary transfers do have a need to establish the basic identity of their clients. They face stiff fines when their clients turn out to be drug dealers, money launderers and other criminal types.