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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?
That's why I hide all of my money in a mattress.
Can somebody explain how this theft occurred. It's not clear to me from the post.
Do your research. I never donate if it's a paypal tip jar because of things like this and this. Paypal based donations are a disaster waiting to happen.
They actually tried to tell me that I couldn't accept a payment without bank details a couple of days ago. When I pressed the only button that didn't cancel the payment I was *then* given the option to accept without adding bank details.
PayPal is like the stock market -- don't put anything in that you can't afford to lose.
is that any business which faces any regulatory liability would not stand by their customers, esp. under a threat of letter writing campagns to congressmen who have the potential to do some real damage via congressional inquiries....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
For my part, I will personally write Paypal and tell them that I no longer feel that their service is secure enough for me and that their treatment of victims robbed through their service is rotten.
The question is, what other services are there in Internet space that does the same thing they do? Any banks trying to offer secure payment over the Internet?
Reminder: find a new sig
Frankly, I suspended my PayPal account months ago. This episode just confirms my doubts about their service. It's like your bank gets robbed and tells you sorry, your account is zero now... I think everyone who owns a Paypal account should write and eventually cancel their own account. It happened to Abiword but it could happen, and i -bet- it's happening, to anyone. They just targeted a substantial account, this time.. Ofcoures it's internet, its point and click, its insecure, bla bla bla but it's real money. People has to realize it's real money. It shouldnt make a difference if they rob my PayPal account or if they rob my house, but alas, it does. Internet has reached a critical mass of people years ago, but still when you do business there you feel like you are not in 21th century, but back in the far west...
I had a paypal account. As soon as I saw the site http://www.paypalwarning.com I deleted it. This was out of simple self preservation, everyone gets bad press, but that much, and to that degree?? I have shown everyone I know that uses paypal that site - I feel duty bound to do so. Veteran Netizens certainly have seen or heard of this site, yet AbiWord decided to use it as their merchant account. Well, you knew the risks didn't you...
Yes, it sucks. It is pretty terrible that donations where robbed. But common sence could have avoided it. You call for a boycott now - well hundreds have been saying this for some time and it was ignored... People have been attempting to get PayPal to have to live up to the same standards of a bank for a long time now. I am sure it is a shock when it is you that gets ripped off but it shouldn't shock you that much that PayPal is being less than helpful.
NR
I hate to jump to "lawsuit!", but this is an instance where a sternly-worded letter from a lawyer might at the very least get their attention. Unfortunately, you'll end up spending more than the stolen funds to pay said lawyer.
Any lawyers out there willing to help out AbiWord pro bono?
I, for one, cannot understand how paypal is allowed to get away with all this. People even suggested that things might change once eBay took them over, but apparently that hasn't happened yet. What a shame, I remember when PayPal was actually quite a helpful service. Now it just appears to be too much trouble, especially if something goes wrong.
---
"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
This truly sucks. As a maintainer of a few open source packages myself, who currently is using PayPal to keep the project websites, cvs, et al. bandwidth paid for, I'm at a loss to find any alternatives. Anyone else?
Due to the lack of details given about the fund being 'robbed', I'm going to guess that the password was compromised, as opposed to some sort of hack on paypal's servers. So... isn't it this guy's fault (at least as opposed to paypal's)? Paypal didn't do anything wrong.. sure maybe they could be a bit more helpful in trying to track down who did it, but they certainly aren't obligated to do so.
Isn't there an address that the camera seller has? If this is inter-state fraud doesn't that bring the FBI into the picture? Why rely on PayPal to give you justice?
Now of course, PayPal SHOULD have to be a bank to do what they do and should be responsible for the money entrusted to them that they allowed to be stolen, but just because they aren't I don't see how that is the end of it.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
One has to wonder if the Abi folks knew about PayPal's failings ahead of time. If so, then had they looked into other ways of obtaining donations? That is to say, if the Abi folks are saying "Look, we knew that PayPal sucked and was insecure, but we used them anyway, so please write them to tell them how much they suck" then it's a little harder to take their complaint seriously.
I've used PayPal for auction stuff. I was fortunate enough to get payments mostly through PayPal from a large USENET auction I held a while ago. But once that big chuck of money was in there (we're talking less than $1k) I had them cut me a check and send it to me so I could put the money somewhere I trusted...a real bank! Even now, I never keep more in the account than I could bear to lose, should something go wrong.
That the Abi folks weren't taking better care of their money hardly seems like PayPal's fault. Many people know PayPal has been difficult to deal with...it's no big secret and it's even been talked about on
I don't want to defend PayPal too much here. They're clearly sleazy sometimes (if not all the time). But that doesn't absolve the Abi folks from being more careful with their benefactors' cash.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
I remember viewing the eBay purchase of PayPal with some trepidation. Thinking, this just can't be in my (the consumer's) best interest. And while I'm sure there were problems before, the sort of heightened injustice in the light of a move that was supposed to benefit the defacto public online auction place, just fries me.
So, what are my choices (that's what we love to jump up and down about having)? Are there other online aucctions that even have a chance of being as large as eBay? Or other payment methods? I see the whole PayPal-as-part-of-Ebay, so much like the Microsoft having become the defacto desktop and then pushing it's web browser and subsequent internet policies on everyone.
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
He says, "...their system is notoriously insecure."
It seems to me that if the system is that insecure, the perps could have found something more lucrative to rob than the Abiword tip jar. I'm sure there are power sellers on ebay that do more business in a week than the tip jar sees in a year.
Perhaps his fund password was something like "abiword" or he responded to a scam e-mail...
Reading the complete post, I see "...Their silence implies to me that they are treating this matter as if I got mugged on the street, rather than as if someone walked into their bank and withdrew my money without my consent."
So it sounds as if it was not a hole but rather an error on Dom's part. I look forward to reading more about this to find out just how this happened.
Let's say you have ONE department store in your town. You heard that that department store screwed one of your friends. You hope it's an isolated incident, because there's really nowhere else to go. You continue to stop at that store, and you yourself get screwed. Is it your fault for shopping there even though your friend was ripped off?
Actually the correct version of that old tennessee saying, well I know it's in Texas it's probably in Tennessee is : 'Fool me once, shame on... shame on you.... A foolmuh canby foolduh gain'. See?
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Ask any merchant who doesn't accept VISA, MasterCard, Discover, Diner's Club, etc.. how many sales they have missed out on because they only accept cash... if you can find a merchant who doesn't accept VISA, MC, ...
Even if they do outsource their support to India, I'd bet they keep some sort of stats about emails and the issues covered...maybe if enough people complain and cancel their accounts someone will listen...unlikely but it's worth a hope.
-tcp
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...but I just closed my Paypal account and sent them an email expressing my disgust. I urge others to do the same.
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it is entirely possible that your thief did this very same process and used it to gain access.
if you go through the password retrieval process in a completely unsatisfactory way, it will present a telephone number for you to call. the wait on hold wasn't even that long. the human was nice, and its far more immediate than sending an email.
if you can't get through that way, i suggest calling ebay's fraud prevention and taking it up with them. ebay just bought paypal, remember?
hope this helps
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
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...just as soon as someone explains how the theft occured and why it is PayPal's fault. If the theft occured by someone hacking PayPal, then it is indeed their fault and I will cancel. But if the theft occured because Abiword had a simple to guess password, 47 people knew the password, or some other idiocy like that, then I have no sympathy...and I will continue to be a happy PayPal customer who has conducted thousands of dollars worth of transactions (both directions) and had no problems what so ever.
I do notice that the referenced note is long on inuendo and short on facts, and that in itself makes me suspicious.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
unless you consider trusting paypal.
I havent read the details yet, but I am a little curious as to how the money was stolen. If the password was "abiword", for example, I would not think less of PayPal if they laughed.
On the other hand, if a server was hacked or a rep socially engineered, PayPal should fire whoever didn't follow the security policy and give the money back no questions asked. Perhaps even slip in a little more money so that the robbed will keep quiet.
Like most people, I think governments should do something to keep PayPal in check (assuming this whole ordeal is their fault).
I saw previous posters say they closed their accounts after they found out about AbiWord theft, I closed my account as soon as I've read through posts on the site above.
How much money should someone be allowing to accumulate in a Paypal "donation" account? I ask because I think that anyone who lets the account grow too much (like beyond $100 or one transaction, whichever is greater) is begging for trouble. I know that there are transaction fees when you take money out of the account, so were the Abiword people being cheap by not withdrawing earlier?
For example, if there is a 2.9%+$0.30 charge to receive $100 from the account (see Paypal for details), that would be a charge of $3.20 leaving $96.80 in the check I assume they would send out. Even at $50, you're looking at $2.25 with $47.75 of actual money coming at you.
Clearly, were I running the deal I wouldn't be leaving money in this "fund" and I think that Mr. Lachowicz was a damned fool to do so, whether Paypal is generally believed to be a security risk or not.
Frankly, I have more sympathy for someone who loses $30 or $40 from their Paypal account because of this kind of fraud than I do in this case. Someone who loses such a small amount of money could have had some valid reason to have the money in their. Someone who leaves $800 sitting around, doing nothing (savings account interest rates are small, but Paypal interest rates, well, are nonexistant), probably needs a lesson taught to them.
Blaming Paypal alone would be a mistake.
Paypal should pay.
Paypals complaint resolution works like this:
File complaint
Paypal emails other party on your behalf
Paypal receives no response for other party after X number of days(duh)
Paypal deems your money unrecoverable (sorry)
Filed fraud w/ my CC company
CC company investigates (and when they finally stop laughing) remove charge from my CC (thank you!)
Recieve nastygram from PayPal for not initiating the charge back through Paypal for the 10 dollar fee instead of the free service my CC provides.. (dick heads!)
Luckily my CC company came through with no problem. But I was scammed on a PS2 system on Ebay (long story) the sad part is that there were about 20 of us that lost out on the ebay thing. A couple of them used paypal and got nothing! and since they didn't use a CC (which paypal would rather u use a straight bank transfer) they got screwed. Got nothing back. Sad.
Thank you. Drive through. (:wq)
So was the early subscriptions system a lure to get as many Slashdot fellow readers as possible into using PayPal ?
You're ignoring the fact that I said *merchant*, not *charity*. In addition, you cannot send cash through the mail. How do you get a donation to an out of city or out of country charity by using cash?
To close your paypal account follow that link. I just closed mine.
Then send them an e-mail explaining why. I'm going to now.
P.S. It seems to me the seller of the camera/PDA must have mailed the thing somewhere. Get that address. Contact local police. Contact EBay's fraud division. ETC. I'd be surprised if this money cannot be recovered. In the meantime, I hope Abiword is busy setting up a C2it account.
Like Digital Freedoms? Then donate to EFF before they're gone.
You're ignoring the fact that I said *merchant*, not *charity*.
The entire subject of this discussion is the tip jar for the Abiword project, a CHARITY. The parent poster is trying to stay on topic.
In addition, you cannot send cash through the mail. How do you get a donation to an out of city or out of country charity by using cash?
Okay, ignoring the fact that you can easily send cash through the mail, there are these things called CHECKS. I don't have anything against PayPal, but there are obviously alternatives - people weren't stupid and running around like chickens with there heads cut off from the dawn of recorded history until about 20 years ago. Somehow, people managed to get things done without credit cards for hundreds of years.
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
That really stinks. I wish Dom the best of luck getting his money back.
But, I'm not going to cancel my PayPal account over this just yet. I've had the account since the service began (remember when it was for Palm Pilots?). Never had a problem. I treat PayPal with kid gloves because they are not regulated the same way banks are (and they shouldn't be: they are a payment service, not a full-service bank), and they are a huge hacker's target.
Here what I do with my PayPal account (I use it quite a bit on eBay for buying and selling):
1) Set up a separate bank account for PayPal. I have a money market fund whose sole purpose in life is to transfer money between paypal and my regular savings account. I transfer the money out at least once a month or so.
2) never give PayPal any more information than they need. Give them one credit card (preferably exclusive to PayPal with a PO box billing address). Don't sign up for the piss-ant Money Market fund that requires giving them your Social Security Number. No extra emails, phone numbers, or mailing addresses. Change password often.
3) NEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES leave a balance in your PayPal account. Because it's PayPal's money, not yours, until you take it out (remember, it's not a bank). Withdraw immediately. Even if you need to pay for an auction later, use your bank/credit card to pay for it. (I use a Citibank card that gives a cash back bonus, so I actually get a small benefit from doing this.)
4) If they send you a free Debit card, cancel it. Don't sign up for the credit card either.
You have to keep in mind also, PayPal can freeze your money at any time. All that has to happen is someone file a complaint against you. They can lock your account. They can do various silly things.
I don't want to "blame the victim", but if your money is not in the PayPal account, it can't be stolen. And if there's a fraudulent charge on your credit card, it can be taken care of with a signed affidavit, or maybe just a letter, like any problem with your card. Your card has consumer protection laws associated with it, your PayPal account doesn't.
I did have one of my other cards stolen once and used on PayPal (had nothing to do with my paypal account, the perp opened his own). I wrote them and received a response and an affidavit to fill out, the next day. In fact, all my PayPal customer service mails have been answered the next day. (I have a "premier" / "merchant rate" account, which gets better treatment, ymmv).
By this point, with all the horror stories out there, I'm surprised anyone would keep a balance in their PayPal account.
"...system is notoriously insecure"
Bullshit. How about "I had an insecure password", or "I responded to one of those emails from a scammer that claimed to be PayPal", or "Another system I use was compromised and I stupidly use the same password everywhere" instead?
I'm gonna guess one of those scenarios is more likely than any security failing on PayPal's part. Certainly if there was a security hole in PayPal itself, there are much bigger fish to go after -- any of eBay's Power Sellers, for instance, probably have much more than $500 or so in their accounts at any given moment.
NO CARRIER
1) Sue Ebay (who own Paypal)
2) Boycott Ebay.
3) Write Ebay's board of directors (it's a public company)
4) Find out where that money was transfered and bring a lawsuit.
5) Yeah, Paypal is beginning to look like a bank. And if it starts to reach a critical mass, don't worry about YOU having to contact your congressman, odds are your bank will, and they will make something happen.
...under US federal banking laws and this article from CNET explains why better than I could.
So contact "Jun Jiang", find out to where he shipped the camera and arrange a little "visit..." Looks like the perp also bought another camera so if Jun Jiang can't /won't provide the address (which he should 'cos he got money from "you") - then ask the other seller. Then arrange the "visit". I'm sure a number of folks would be only too happy to help with the "visit", especially those who contributed to the tip jar.
Rich people are eccentric. Poor people are strange. Me, I'd be happy with odd.
No, see, YOU put the locks on your place. The landlord made you put a lock on there, but you chose the lock. You decided if it was a stainless-steel master lock, or one of those crappy cord-looking bike locks that could be cut through with a pair of grade-school safety scissors. Paypal doesn't set your password, YOU DO.
In all seriousness, isn't the security of a password still sacred? I mean, you can log in to any server, anywhere, with nothing more than an absconded password; do you really expect Paypal to do more than that?
Yadda yadda yadda. I pay my landlord with Paypal, I pay Penny Arcade with Paypal, I accept credit cards for auctions via Paypal, I use Paypal to get a quick $10 cash off my roommate (live-with ATM!), and I use Paypal to pay for items which I buy from non-local people (both through auctions as well as other arrangements).
If I get burned through an eBay auction, I won't bitch about it. I'll try to resolve it, but as for "i'd rather buy from the worst blooksuckers on pricewatch," I buy from them too. Over the past 5 years I've saved many thousands of dollars by buying through eBay and pricewatch.
I'm not too worried, but I won't whine like a baby when something happens because I know the risks I'm taking.
To me, it's more than worth it, and Paypal is a wonderful thing. If you don't like taking such risks, don't use it.
It would be nice if you at least attempted to understand why some people do.
You can pay for your EBay stuff besides Paypal. IIRC you can pay electronic check, credit card, etc. Paypal only acts as an intermediary between seller and buyer, I think. It's been a while since I've sold/bought anything from there.
There isn't enough information in the announcement to tell if that's what happened here, but if PayPal failed to do their job (e.g., they didn't take reasonable security precautions in proportion to their responsibility), a lawsuit is exactly the right thing. In most (i.e., libertarian rather than anarchist) conceptions of the free market, it's part of the gummint's job to enforce contracts, and there's clearly a contract here, even if some parts are just implied by the nature of the relationship: "in exchange for a cut, we will hold onto your money for you" => "if we fuck up and cause you to lose your money, we'll pony up".
1. No, you shouldn't be worried about it, BUT you shouldn't be giving Paypal your bank account information. You should only be dealing with Paypal on the basis of a bank-issued credit (not debit) card.
2. If you have more than $50 in Paypal, you should take it out immediately. You shouldn't keep a balance with Paypal. If someone buys something from you and the money goes to Paypal, just take it out ASAP (though if they are small transactions, for convenience you might want to wait until you are up to $50 or so).
3. There are indeed viable alternatives to Paypal. One example is Bidpay from Western Union. There's no account balance, you simply buy a Western Union money order (online, of course) and they send confirmation to the seller who can then be assured that their money is on the way. Each transaction is its own beast and nobody leaves any money hanging with them. Some of the above messages contain other alternatives.
4. I don't know if Paypal has to change. I think the consumer perception of them is the problem. Too many people think of them as a bank when they clearly are not. They can't even be confused with a bank if people would simply maintain ZERO balances with them and use them purely as the money middleperson as they were originally intended.
Of course, Paypal has a tendency to foster the impression that they're a bank, so their marketing can take some blame as well.
It's all about education. If somebody isn't giving you interest on money they're holding for you or isn't federally insured - i.e. credit unions, banks, savings and loans - you really need to either move your money elsewhere or, as in my case, SPEND IT.
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fencepost
just a little off
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Example: I start a bank account with online banking options. I then make the password "babbster" (or my real first name). If someone comes along and steals money from me, I *am* to blame. I may have some recourse (assuming that FDIC covers it) and someone else may go to jail for stealing the money BUT I am STILL to blame for being stupid.
As to your example of Enron: Yes, we should blame everyone who [stupidly] invested in a company whose true assets consisted almost entirely of their stock certificates. We can just as easily blame people for investing in Internet companies because they had some ephemeral idea and little else. It's less a question of government intervention than of consumer/investor responsibility:
If you throw money at a company by buying their stock, you are supposed to be doing so because you believe in their product and want them to be successful (which is why you are capitalizing the company). Unfortunately, people more likely buy a particular stock because they think that the value of the stock might go up. While this can be a benefit to the stockholder, investing in the stock market is SUPPOSED to be different than playing the lottery.
It's also way off-topic, but that'll happen sometimes. :)
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So, about a year ago I broke into 10+ accounts at paypal, and moved a couple of bucks (12k or so) around, didnt TAKE anything, just moved back and forth from accounts. After a good amount of time after that, I contacted paypal and told them how I was able to do it, and how EASY it was. I got in touch with someone, who, I presume is one of, if not the only security guy at PayPal. According to him, its not worth there time to impliment more security features as it makes it harder for the user to gain their access to the account. Plus, its not PayPals loss if they get hacked... so why pay money and lose users to not gain anything?
Bill
-Bill
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My wife opened a Paypal account for me, and one for herself, then transferred $6,000 from my account to hers. We didn't see that money again for three months, as they pretended to be "investigating" the transaction for possible fraud. Never mind that we talked to them many times on the telephone, and send proof of our ownership of the accounts several times, and pleaded with them to resolve this, as we needed the money.
The delay was beyond any point of being able to pretend that they actually made any effort to resolve the situation. It was in fact more than 10 days after we first contacted them before they would even open what they call an "investigation". They claim that their procedures are set up to combat fraud, but it's just a way of establishing deniability. That is, they pretend that they have no intention whatever of stringing me along as long as they can, while they collect interest on my money. (And no, they never did offer any compensation for the lost interest, let alone the many hours we were forced to spend pursuing them, to get our money back.)
You think mine is an isolated case? It is by no means. Just do a web search for paypal+complaint. See all the distressed people. See the lawsuits.
It's a transparent scam: by locking up the money of only a certain percentage of their customers, and treating the rest reasonably well, the people who claim that Pay Pal engages in a pattern of sleazy misconduct will never be believed, because they will always be outnumbered by customers who have never had a problem.
That doesn't make it right.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Bizarre isn't it :-;
:-(
Anyways, one can either expect that by Monday, PayPal will have made them "whole" or their PayPal account will be suspended and no longer work.
PayPal is a great idea, but it's a shame their customer service is so poor. Hopefully the eBay folks improve things with PayPal...otherwise PayPal could be end up being eBays's undoing
I'm not sure what others' experiences have been with this company, but I'm looking into getting it myself... A new company, called NetSpend (www.netspend.com) is offering reloadable MasterCards which you can either put money onto at any store or check cashing location that allows it, or get money deposited to via online transaction... The bonus, of course, is that you can access your money directly (while paying the average $1-$2 fee for ATM usage), and a paltry $20 per year charge to maintain your account...
The only apparent drawback of the program is that you can only transfer funds from one NetSpend account to another, so of course, your buyers/contributers need to have a card themselves... Considering that the fee is extremely low, and the fact that NetSpend is on the BBB, they seem a bit more straightforward than PayPal... Also, they don't need to pass any credit application procedures, or open a bank account (unlike secured credit cards), it can be extremely simple to obtain.
Another added bonus is that the credit card acts as a secondary form of ID...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Granted, the easiest way to prevent this is to not use paypal, but up to this point, they haven't done me wrong, they've actually backed me up on an auction I won, and paid for, and the seller never shipped the product... Paypal got my money back for me within a week of submitting the dispute.
So, Paypal isn't ALL bad, granted their security should be a bit better, and perhaps they are a bit understaffed, because complaints do take quite awhile to respond to. (but *3* weeks?)
A nice alternative to paypal (for some purposes) is Yahoo's PayDirect.. paydirect.yahoo.com..
... since there have been enough paypal bashing for one day, how about folks kicking in a buck or two to raise some more funds for abiword?
Heck, if some nimwit in NYC can raise 20k to help pay off their credit card bill from donations, surely at least $600 can be raised to help abiword? Hell, maybe we can get some of that infamous Slashdot effect directed towards kicking a buck to their back account.
-Bill
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
Paypal does have phone support, but you only get it with their business/premier accounts. If you have a business account it trivial to find a 1-888 number for them. Now I have read it has been outsourced to India which doesn't sound great, but at least you can talk to someone if they are actually making money off you. They shave 2.2-3.9% + 30 cents off each of my incoming money. 2.2% + 30 cents is for Merchant accounts which have qualification requirements. 3.2% + 30 cents is merchant receiving money from someone outside the country. 2.9% + 30 cents is standard business caaounts receiving money and 3.9% + 30 cents is standard receiving money from outside the country.
The prices are like a form of sales tax, but at least they are better than c2it, western union, or bank wire. Checks would be cheaper in the US, but also less convientent. Not sure checks from out of the country would work.
Overall I am just going to require payments be charge + paypal sales tax. It makes me wonder if the government is going to get especially upset with ebay/paypal now they they have found a way to virtually collect a sales tax on the internet.
I am definitely use the methods mentioned above to protect myself and look for something better. So far I haven't found anything as cheap online.
Havoc Penington, the bane of my Linux desktop.
Can someone from the US explain what the advantages of PayPal are that are not solved by your regular bank?
In Sweden you can transfer money from your bank to a friends account using the internet, even if he has another bank. This is the way I use now to "pay a pal". I think it is also possible to attach a message to this transfer so that you can say "payment for tickets" or something like that.
There are limits for the transfer amount though, but it is in the 2500 dollar range.
I'm with this guy. I use Paypal to pay my child support. I live on one side of the country and my ex is on the other. Every other method I used caused problems of one kind or another. Checks get "held" for sometimes a week or more because they're interstate. Money orders get lost by the post office. Bank transfers are slow and unreliable -- his bank once lost a transfer for over a month and required me to jump through all kinds of hoops before they fixed the problem. So, now we use Paypal. I send the money and it's in his Paypal account instantly. He has some kind of Paypal debit card, so he gets instant access to the money, at no cost to me. We never have to worry that a check will bounce, or a bank will lose a wire transfer.
I looked over the c2it thing and I wasn't impressed. It just doesn't have the features that Paypal does.
I use PayPal, I've heard the stories. It's just too convenient not to.
I never leave a balance in my account, almost always pay via credit card, and am critical of those I send money to.
They do, however, have bank information for one of my main accounts. Opening a separate "PayPal" account is too much trouble.
Have there been any cases of PayPal actually going and taking money from your *bank account* without specific prior authorization? Do I have legal recourse (via my bank) if they do this?
I've kind of wondered about this in general -- what protections are there with ACH transactions? The routing/account number combo is at least as dangerous as a credit card, if not more so.
If a free-market society means I'd have to go to a lot of extra trouble, with no benefit to myself, just to not get ripped off all the time, then why would I want one?
5. NEVER give paypal your bank account information. If they have it now, then open a new bank account and transfer all your money to the new account. Then close the old account.
And keep in mind that you can lose money in your Paypal account without having done anything wrong and without your password even being involved.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Sure enough Paypal processed the payment to some individual for $6,009. Wife freaks. Writes to paypal, they tell her tough shit, they can't do a thing about it, please ensure she has money in her accounts to fund the transaction.
So the wife cancels her credit card, talks to bank to make sure they will bounce the draft, etc...
Sure enough, next day, a draft for over six grand bounces, first $29 bank bounce charge fee. Pay pal autowrites her a nastygram saying to fund the account, that she MUST fund the account due to her paypal user agreement and they will try again in two days. Wife writes back, DON'T TRY AGAIN. Again, they say there is nothing they can do about it.
Again, another bounce, another $29 fee from bank. Finally, paypal gives up.
Some tips for all that she uses that saved her....
Like another posted said earlier, Paypal is like playing the stock market, don't put in what you can't afford to lose. Just in her case, it looked like she was going to lose much more than that for a while there.
The money belongs to PAYPAL! So the theft was from PAYPAL, not ABIWORD. So it's PAYPAL that should be calling up the FBI. Why haven't they? Because maybe they'd end up being investigated for their shoddy business practices.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
" ... 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"
So I'm wondering... why did they have that account there in the first place?
First off I'll say I like AbiWord and use it and wish their project well.. that being said.. on with my rant..
Every time someone has a problem with PayPal they whine that it is actting like a bank without being a bank. Obviously they must be stupid because PayPal states clearly that it is not a bank and has no federal insurance. Somehow they think being a bank would make it better. IMO banks suck. They've ripped me off countless times. I don't want PayPal to be a bank. They've never done me wrong and they give me freedoms a bank wouldn't be able to. If you want a bank go open a bank account. If you want a PayPal account open a PayPal account. If your not bright enough to know the difference than spare us the cry story.
I've had very good customer support from PayPal. They were a little slow but no worse than the banks I've dealt with and at least they didn't give me the run around like banks usually do. If a security flaw in PayPal allowed your money to be stolen I'd suspect they'll be willing to refund your money. If you just picked the name of your dog as a password and some bozo guessed it then I'd say tough luck. If you pissed off an ex-girlfriend and she took your money then again tough luck.
If you are smart you won't leave very large funds all in one place in PayPal, a bank, under your bed, or anywhere. This is common sense. PayPal makes it easy to transfer your money back into the bank account of your choice. If you wanted to do this you had the option open to you.
So try contacting them again. It's not that difficult to do. Make sure you have a good password on your account. Frequently empty your account into one or more bank accounts, PayPal accounts, or coffee cans (Whatever you like) so that you don't have a giant honeypot tempting all the bees. Just stop whining about them not being a bank. Hope ya get your money back.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I second this proposal. I love a good troll, but all too often the best stuff is modded down to -1 before I get a chance to read it. Also, quite often, posts that are on-topic and *not* trolls, but merely espouse an unpopular point of view, are modded to -1. Now this is an abuse of moderation - just because you disagree with something, doesn't mean it's a troll, or off-topic, or over-rated. It just means it's different from what you think, and if you're small-minded to mod it down, *you* are the one at fault.
:-)
/. culture, and should be left in peace. If you're stupid enough to click on them, so be it...
Getting back to it, I'd love to be able to mod the crapflooders below -1, so I can enjoy the -1 posts in peace. Page-wideners don't really affect me, because I'm one of those l337 open-sores Mozilla users
The option to mod a layout-breaker (let's use that term to include page-wideners, crapflooders, and all the other obnoxious behaviour) would have to detect whether or not the post actually had questionable markup. Now, this would differ from actually filtering at the time of posting by allowing the post to actually be made - how many times have you had links broken, or lines of code rejected as "ASCII art"? This would allow a real live human to decide that the post was aimed at breaking layout and mod down to -2. Incidentally, ASCII Goatse.cx guy posts and indeed goatse.cx links, while they may be trolls, are part of accepted
Taco, please hear our cry!
BTW - Yes, this is offtopic. I've got more karma than I know what to do with.
Actually, a lot of customers I deal with (large satellite tv company) like to pay monthly by credit card, because they get airmiles and stuff when they use their cards. They don't get that if they set up direct debit. Now normally, they set up a continuous credit card payment mandate, but quite a few people prefer to just ring up and pay. Why should it cost them extra?
It seems paypal equates to a warehouse with lots of lockboxes full of money. Money comes in or moves from lockbox to lockbox, and then goes out. However, there's no attendant, so the only thing between your money and a thief is just a key (bare with me on the bank info part, it just makes things more complicated) and a lockbox number. When a thief breaks into a lockbox, in a warehouse, normally we would call the police. But this warehouse is electronic, the lockboxes are electronic, the money, well, you get the idea.
Hell, I would probably feel safer giving my money to a backwoods county fair carney. Least I can try to kick his ass if he loses it, and would have some knowlege of who stole it from him, if he were robbed.
| - | - |
This is not entirely true.
Visa now requires (if you are processing a card without being able to swipe the actual plate) a zip code for the account holder as well as the card exp date.
This catches alot of would be number swipers off guard. No zip, No charge. End of Line.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
I have only used PayPal to make donations in the past. From now on I will only donate to organisations that don't put *my* remaining funds at risk. I used my visa check card as the payment source at PP and any screw-up or complaint and PP could have frozen or captured all of my readily available funds. If even a small fraction of the stories on the forums are completely true, I can't justify supporting their business.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
it's a convenient way to transfer money from an account to another or to pay off a credit card bill. Not all credit cards offer online payment. And if the credit card is not in your name you cant even begin. Not all banks offer online banking and even if they did you might not want to set them up when you already have pay pal. In the early days pay pal did not have fees so this was a very handy meta-banking system.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I think you're only serving to muddy the waters by comparing this to people who invested in Enron. People who invested in Enron knew (or should reasonably have known) that share prices can fall. People who put their money in Ebay can reasonably assume that their money won't be stolen.
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
Shouldn't this be moderated +1, Ironic ?
Don't even bother with Paypal customer service, they have been stonewalling everyone for years. Try talking to Ebay customer service,... and try to talkyou way up to amore senior Manager or someone else who has the authority to call up the Paypal losers and demand "whats going on here?" Hopefully Ebay doesn't want to risk its reputation going gown the tubes as quickly as Paypal's did a few years back.
Character from Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged. Throughout much of the first part, it was a widespread fad to ask "who is John Galt?" whenever one didn't know the answer to a difficult question.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
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After all, they bought them: Cnet
?sp
So this Jun character bought the camera with stolen money. What I don't get is this. As soon as that transaction went through, abiword should have contacted all parties involved in the transaction and told them to stop. In other words, don't ship the camera, by explaining to the seller that it is being paid for fraudulently. This shifts the burden.
Then, was this money left in the Paypal account, or was paypal just used as a conduit to rip off the bank?
I have to agree with a lot of others, who say to not leave much money in the account. There's just no upside, unless they were saving up to pay a seller who wouldn't take credit card payments.
Finally, to further protect yourself if you need to se Paypal: 1) sweep your account daily, 2) contact your bank and tell them to not allow transfers to Paypal, or 3) attach a bank account to Paypal that has a low balance.
Paypal is not a bank, they don't claim to be. And you can sue Paypal, as a judge ruled their arbitration process was unreasonable , more or less.
Good luck recovering those funds. Go after the transaction endusers, as they have some liability here for receiving stolen goods/ property.
because google is not a discussion forum. Although it would provide better, more accurate and more detailed information, the sense of friendship and camaraderie developed by 'chatting' with your slashdot buddies is priceless!
Your
Better yet, get a dedicated bank account, and make sure you move money out of Paypal's reach *promptly*. That means both out of your Paypal account, AND out of the dedicated bank account (which should be used solely as a buffer, not for keeping real money in).
This incident is not the first time Paypal has been hacked, and there have been cases where personal bank accounts have been depleted as well, via their Paypal connexion. So you do NOT want your Paypal account pointing at your regular bank account!!
I have a 2nd bank account just for Paypal. This account has a token $20 in it. Don't know about other banks, but at Washington Mutual, this costs me nothing (no fees of any sort). Because it's at the same bank and branch as my regular account, it's simple to transfer funds out of the "online account" ASAP.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
By the way, to close out the account, log into PayPal, go to "My Account", then to "Profile", then click on "Close account." You'll be asked to confirm your credit card number, but other than that, there's no hassle.
Sigh. . . Slashdot says "Blender needs money!" So I open a PayPal account. Slashdot says, "PayPal is evil!" So I close my PayPal account. I guess I'll be tuning in again tomorrow for further marching orders.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Last week I completed a transaction using PayPal which I explicitly indicated that I wanted 100% of the funds to come from my registered credit card. I even got the confirmation email stating that it would come from that credit card, so I could keep a balance in my PayPal account.
What they ended up doing was debiting my PayPal balance to $0.00, and deducting the remainder of the transaction from my credit card.
PayPal saved me the trouble of debiting my account down to zero. Now it'll be easy to close.
I inquired and got the following email:
- - - - -
When you use PayPal to send money, the balance in your PayPal Account is used first. If you do not have enough money in your PayPal Account to cover the whole transaction, please refer to the information below:
If you do have a registered credit card, but do not have a confirmed bank account listed on your PayPal Account
PayPal will first use the balance in your account and charge the rest to your registered credit
card.
If you do not have a registered credit card, but you do have a confirmed bank account listed on your PayPal Account
The balance will not be used. The entire amount of the payment will be drawn from your bank
account. The payment will take 4 business days to complete.
If you have both a registered credit card and a bank account
The "Instant Transfer" method is the default method of payment (an instant electronic funds transfer from your checking account) when there are insufficient funds in your PayPal Account to complete the transfer.
If you have more than one positive currency balance on your PayPal Account
The entire amount will be funded from this balance. If the balance used to send the payment is insufficient, it may default to another currency balance depending on the amount of funds available.
You can view the "Source of Funds" on the "Check Payment Details" page. If the payment that you are sending exceeds the amount of funds in your PayPal Account, you can click the "More Funding Options" link to choose whether to draw funds from your checking account or your credit card. If you choose to draw funds from your checking account, you have the option of an "Instant Transfer" or "eCheck" transfer. Instant Transfer is backed up by either your credit card or a secondary bank account and occurs immediately, whereas the eCheck payments may take four business days to post as complete.
Please note that once a payment has been sent, it is not possible to alter
the method of funding.
You have successfully closed your account.
I had been meaning to do this for awhile, this was enough to get me off my duff and actually do it.
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
I run a small website offering adult digital content. A few weeks ago I recieved a letter stating that i had to pay paypal a total of $1500 setup fees plus $750 a year for paypal to continue processing my VIsa and Mastercard transactions. they classified me as high risk even though we have never had one customer complaint or refund request. The more questions I asked to paypal the ruder their responces became. After a week of research I finally have found that visa is charging these "high-risk" fees. Other companies I've talked to have heard nothing about mastercards fees though. I have looked around and found several other oreder processing sites that will do the job. I wonder how much profit paypal will make off these extra charges. HAs anyone else recieved this letter? Encluded is the letter in full for your readign pleasure. Notice it doesn't have paypal's protect your password sig.
-----Original Message-----
From: Setup@PayPal.com [mailto:Setup@paypal.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2002 5:25 PM
Subject: Important message from PayPal
Dear Merchant,
We would like to update you on new Visa & MasterCard regulations that affect the way Internet Payment Service Providers (IPSPs) such as PayPal conduct business. Both Visa & MasterCard require high-risk merchants to complete a registration form, pay an initial registration fee, and pay renewal fees on an annual basis (details below).
We value our Merchants and are dedicated to providing you with the high quality service to which you are accustomed. Please note that these fees are imposed by Visa and MasterCard, not by PayPal. In keeping with PayPal's core policy of not charging set-up costs and/or annual fees to our Merchants, PayPal (in contrast with many IPSPs) will not add any additional or hidden costs to these Visa & MasterCard fees.
PayPal, like all other IPSPs, must comply with the regulations. In order to assure your continued access to PayPal's transaction platform, we need you to provide the requested information by November 1st. If we do not hear from you by the close of business on November 1st, PayPal will be unable to process your transactions until all such information has been submitted.
While some IPSPs have announced that they will cease processing for non-US merchants, that is not the case with PayPal. PayPal will continue to process transactions for high-risk merchants in the United States, Canada and Europe through our existing banking arrangements in these areas. In addition, we will continue working to expand our banking relationships worldwide.
Below is a summary of the requirements for both Visa and MasterCard:
VISA:
* Visa will require an initial registration fee of $500
* Visa will require an annual renewal fee of $250
* Paypal must provide Visa with monthly sales, chargebacks and refund information on each Adult merchant.
MasterCard:
* MasterCard will require an initial registration fee of $1,000
* MasterCard will require an annual renewal fee of $500
We will be sending another email out shortly requesting the specific information we will need to bring your business into compliance with the new regulations. We will also provide instructions on fee collection.
Should you have any questions, please send an email to setup@paypal.com. We will endeavor to respond in a timely manner.
Very truly yours,
The PayPal Team
It's the same question that affects the banks: who pays who?
The bank offers the service of holding your money in a safe location so that you don't have to worry about losing it. The bank also provides money services that require a certain amount of trust - chequing, lines of credit, etc. You pay the bank for these services.
On the other hand, you are providing the bank a service too. You allow them to use your money (for many reasons) and, in exchange, the bank pays you for this service in interest (although, not very well).
A bank requires trust not only from those who bank with them but also with those third parties who interact with customers of the bank. A cheque (and credit cards, too) only works if everyone trusts that the bank system works (sure, you can overdraft on a cheque, but the bank will report that).
PayPal _is_ a bank by definition. They can skirt around the issue as much as they want to, but they are a bank. More importantly, they are a (or should be a) trust. That is, everyone _trusts_ that PayPal is honest to the core - that you can trust them to hold your money and provide the services that they offer in a legitatmite and honest way.
They are not a savings bank, however, and should not be required to fall under the same laws as a savings bank. They are not (should not) be required to provide insurance on deposits and they should be allowed to verify all transfers and 'money movement' at their discretion.
The abiword theft doesn't make sense - did this person steal a password or something? Did (s)he compromise the PayPal system in some way? If the former is true, PayPal would not, necessarily, be liable - the person who stole the password would be. If, however, there was a security compromise, then PayPal should be accountable for the money - they should put the money back and sue the thief.
--
I want to touch on something that I've read alot on sites like paypalsucks - the issue of PayPal "double-dipping" and taking funds without permission to settle accounts.
IF YOU ARE STUPID ENOUGH TO AUTHORIZE ANY COMPANY TO DIRECTLY WITHDRAWL / DEBIT MONEY FROM ANY OF YOUR ACCOUNTS THEN YOU GET WHAT YOU DESERVE.
Don't be so fucking stupid and ignorant as to give _ANY_ company the keys to your accounts. So what if you have to enter your credit card # on each transaction? Or send a cheque instead of allowing them to directly withdrawl from any bank account. Don't get me wrong, if PayPal takes your money without authorization then it's still wrong on their part - you just helped it along. By not authorizing them to save your information you catch them in a much tighter corner.
In the end, it's all about trust. If enough people stop trusting them then they will either fold up or mandate themselves under the same laws that control the banks.
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
http://www.paypalwarning.com http://www.aboutpaypal.org/ http://www.paypalsucks.com/ Enough said
Here is the mail I sent them from the web-form email contacting option in their Help section. Feel free to use it as a template for your comments to them:
I was going to sign up for a PayPal account, but have just been informed that AbiWord has had their donation PayPal account robbed, highlighting the lack of security and customer protection within your service. The coercion to give bank account information upon payment receipt is unacceptable, and your use of debit functions rather than credit on cards that support both shows great disregard for your customers' protection offered by VISA and other credit services. Until you rethink your service with the thought of protecting your customers' transactions, and working for them to make PayPal as convenient, customer-friendly and
secure as possible, I will keep using my credit card and checks through snailmail for all online transactions.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
No, +1 Appropriate. After all the Objectivist motto is "I've got mine. Fuck the rest of you."
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
There's also the c2it service, which is part of Citibank. They don't seem as free-wheeling as PayPal (They have limits on how much money you can transfer around), and they don't charge stupid percentage fees to accept money from credit cards! They will, of course, charge you for international transfers, but so does my bank if I deposit a check drawn on Canadian dollars.
On the other hand, when someone sends me money, it gets transferred to my real bank account. But the no-fees transactions of c2it are nice. That's how a real credit card works anyway, right? (Pay in full, no fees, pay partial and there's a finance charge.)
Don't pretend PayPal is a bank. It isn't. Get a real bank account, transfer it out of PayPal, and keep the money in there.
Why risk being shafted by PayPal? Use another service like c2it, and if someone wants to deal with you, then they have to get an account with them too.
this is my sig
IF YOU ARE STUPID ENOUGH TO AUTHORIZE ANY COMPANY TO DIRECTLY WITHDRAWL / DEBIT MONEY FROM ANY OF YOUR ACCOUNTS THEN YOU GET WHAT YOU DESERVE
;)
That's a common misunderstanding. I know that it seems logical that there would be some sort of a cash-withdrawal authentication system but, amazingly, there's not. Anybody that wants to, via a bank transfer, withdraw any sum of cash from your account is free to. The burden of proof is on the consumer to prove that this is not a requirement.
I know this sounds crazy, and it took a while for me to be convinced, too. My brother was billed for over a year by a local Internet service provider via monthly withdrawals of ~$20 before he noticed. (He and his wife had just gotten married, and her employer's payroll company has the same name as the local ISP, and confusion reigned.) He went to our local bank to express his outrage, and left without satisfaction. I'm friends with pretty much ever employee at this local bank, so I went down to follow up. They explained this system to me as I have to you -- there's no authentication system whatsoever. There is currently no system in place at this particular bank to block such transfers, and they know of no such system in place at other banks. Truth be told, they regarded me as a little paranoid. But I get that a lot.
Giving a company permission to withdraw from your account certainly isn't helping the situation any, but it is in no way a requirement for them to rip you off. Anybody with one of your personal checks and a little know-how can do the same thing.
-Waldo Jaquith
Abisource competitor Microsoft finds extra cash for its political lobbying fund.
It doesn't need to be their fault.
They claim to be insured. It doesn't need to be the insurance company's fault that my car gets totaled for me to get my money.
Do you get it? I rent an apartment. The group that owns the apt. is insured. If something in my apt is damaged, their insurance covers it.
If you leave something in someone else's care you expect them to take a certain amount of care with it. I don't really care if abiword's password was easy to guess. Their system shouldn't be set up to allow people to sit there and try to guess passwords. After x failed login attempts in y minutes, all login attempts should be blocked for z minutes. If this happens more than a few times in one day, it should be looked into. Also, if I leave my car unlocked, it's not okay for you to steal it and my insurance company still has to pay up if you do.
I don't wanna hear any crap about their terms of service either. While it's true that you can write whatever you want in your terms of service, it doesn't mean that those terms will hold up in court. By law, there are certain liabilities that can't be discalaimed and certain rights that can't be signed away.
Life is too short to proofread.
Yes, I do realize the issues at hand.
The difference is, unlike you, I expect people to take responsibility when they get ripped off because of their own stupidity. If you left your car (since you want to use that analogy) on a street corner with the keys in it and the engine running and it got stolen, I'd have no sympathy what so ever for you either. Whether stealing it is "right" or "wrong" is irrelevant...if you didn't use reasonable common sense to protect your property (take the keys out, lock the doors), you're an idiot.
If Abiword got ripped because of security hole in PayPal, PayPal should pay up, and I'll join the line of people writing nastygrams and canceling their PayPal accounts. However I have yet to see any indication that this is the case, at least in this instance.
But on the other hand, if Abiword got ripped because 147 people had the password, or the password was "sex" or something equally stupid, then Abiword should use what funds they have left to go purchase a fucking clue.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
If I leave my car running on a street corner and it is stolen it is still a crime.
Even if the password was "password", if the guys in charge of the abiword account know who took the money, contact paypal and paypal refuses to freeze the account, then paypal is doing something wrong. If paypal refuses to acknowledge legitimate complaints of fraud, which they could have done something about but chose not to, the there may be grounds for a civil or criminal complaint.
Even the stupid have rights. That may be a good thing or a bad thing, but it's the way things are.
Life is too short to proofread.
It never ceases to amaze me that people continue to use PayPal despite the number of pissed off people that feel that they've been ripped off. If you're dumb enough to *use* it, despite their by-now-well-known policies, I hate to say it, but I don't feel entirely sympathetic if you lose money.
It sucks that an Open Source project got ripped off, but it also sucked that one of the people involved decided to use PayPal.
May we never see th
You need to do buisiness with a company, to buy their product. Realistically there is no other possible supplier for what you need, other suppliers in the market are a poor fit interms of product features that you need. This particular company only accepts payment by Visa or MasterCard (those being the two biggest players with greatest penetration), you don't have either of those cards but do have a Bank of Ethel charge card. You are one of literally thousands of customers, virtually all of whom have Visa or MasterCard and none of whom have a Bank of Ethel charge card. What are the odds that you're going to have to get a Visa or MasterCard?
That's why a lot of people use Paypal, in terms of supplier penetration they are the Visa or MasterCard of online payments. Yes, there are other online payment systems out there but few, if any, have the prevalence of Paypal. Virtually all of the sites I use on a regular basis use Paypal, most of those that didn't in the past are now adopting it as a payment method, a few use Worldpay. Many of those that do offer alternative methods will only do for for US citizens (I'm in the UK).
Until a large number of ecommerce sites use a different system, and agree on one particular system, users are going to be stuck with Paypal.
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
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Hey Shwag!
Check out Susan Blackmore's article "The Power of Memes" which was originally published in Scientific American. She's a little out there but it will at least get you started. She is also an editor at the online Journal of Memetics.
You're welcome,
gcondon
p.s. I think Dan Gillmor's answer was a cop-out.