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Abiword's PayPal Donation Fund Robbed
SabberFlapper writes "According to this Announcement to the developer list of Abiword the Abiword fund was robbed. Dom Lachowicz writes: 'I'm duty bound to let you all know that the AbiWord Fund/Tip Jar has
been robbed approximately three weeks ago. I'm telling you this now,
rather than sooner, since I believed that Paypal would do something
about my complaints during the interim, and that this would all be
resolved quietly. Today, 23 days later, this does not look like it will
happen. [..]
I do however, recommend doing several things:
1) Writing to Paypal, in letter, email, or fax form alerting them to
this travesty.
2) Calling Paypal on AbiWord's behalf.
3) Writing or calling your Congressman/woman, pointing out that Paypal
is acting like a bank, but not operating under formal banking laws.
4) Boycotting Paypal because of these reasons, and the fact that their
system is notoriously insecure, and encouraging others to do the same.'" Of all the groups to steal from -- AbiWord?
Narc.
Ha. Petty funny.
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RumorsDaily
A few facts (more or less) for the uninitiated:
- Banks are federally insured in most countries. That means that the funds you have on deposit are insured by the government up to a certain point. Even if the bank goes bankrupt, they will pay you.
- Credit cards offer fraud protection, often by contract, more often by law, usually by both.
- Paypal is not a bank. Paypal is just a company. They have contracts with you, but ultimately they are an unregulated clearinghouse. The service they provide is easy financial transactions at a higher than average price.
- It follows that if you leave any significant amount of money in your paypal account, you are asking for trouble.
- There are other methods of payment; anyone working with more than a small amount of money should look into getting a visa merchant account, and other business banking tools. Banks WILL help you with this.
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.