Paypal Deals Blow To Freenet

hankaholic writes "I was checking into the latest progress of the Freenet project when I noticed a disturbing note on their homepage: 'Paypal has frozen the account we use to accept donations over the web, they refuse to give any reason other than "use of an anonymous proxy" [...] all of the projects subscriptions have been canceled which is a significant setback. Other means of accepting donations, including E-Gold, are still active.' Paypal is sending them a check for their remaining balance. The news update on the Freenet homepage also includes contact information for some people at Paypal."

Comments

Must have been considered a liability

[dacarr]

But that being said, Paypal is doing this a lot - it's almost as if they're going by textbook rule rather than rule and exercising discretion

I mean, Come on, Paypal, you of all people should know better! (FP?)

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just Freenet, methinks. Paypal has long been the subjects of complaints because it is trigger happy with freezing accounts -- they tend to freeze accounts at the first complaint from any buyer, even if the complaint is totally unjustified.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[chronus22]

Paypal does have a habit of scamming its customers. Attrition.org has a good article about one person's experience here.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[DAldredge]

You run that same risk if you take credit cards thru a merchant account.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Alien Being]

"going by textbook rule rather than rule and exercising discretion"

I disagree. They are using discretion. But instead of clearly explaining their position they are using ambiguous terms to disguise seemingly ad hoc decisions as standard operating policy. Their so-called policies are just another form of "anonymous proxy".

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[dasmegabyte]

"One person's experience" does not constitute a habit. I have used Paypal for years -- since its inception -- transferred tens of thousands of dollars with it and never had a serious problem, and only a handful of minor ones (most during the first couple years). Talk about YMMV. It all comes down to how much you trust Paypal...my money's never there for more than a week. Nor should it be...they make no claim to be a bank, so why use them as one?

It's more likely that they shut down freenet because they were using an anonymous email address. I'm sure you can see where an anonymous email address could be a bad thing for a company that wants to make its money transfers secure and trackable. Paypal recently placed a hold on my account for my use of fake DNS information on my domain unlogged.org (the whole idea of which was to create a form of private computing by not logging anything). I removed the account, verified my other email addresses, and everything was flowing again within the week.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[the_mad_poster]

Talk about YMMV. It all comes down to how much you trust Paypal...

Exactly. And, in the opinion of a lot of people here, the few major transgressions of PayPal are enough to warrant a strong mistrust. I wouldn't trust anyone else that did this either, as soon as I found out about them. On top of that, it's more the mishandling of complaints than anything. If I have a gripe against paypal, and I present it, I damn well expect it to be resolved, not treated like a by-the-books, scripted response issue.

Hey, they're a business. They treat their customer like shit, they should expect the same from their potential customers. No excuses.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for injecting some balance into a typical Slashdot "big business is bad, mkay?" story. I too have transferred tens of thousands of $ with Paypal and apart from their fees have nothing to complain about (although bank transfers would have cost more).

Where's your self respect, people? The editors here may choose to engage in the cheapest form of sensationalist journalism but you don't have to read it.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Frizzle Fry]

Paypal does have a habit of scamming its customers

The writeup clearly says "Paypal is sending them a check for their remaining balance." So how is anybody being scammed? They are getting the money that is rightfully theres, and after that paypal no longer wishes to do business with them. I don't see the big deal.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Anonymous Coward]

It's kind of trippy because not 18 hours ago, I was considering donating to freenet but had decided I would put it off for a little bit and do it later. I got as far as clicking on the donation page and reading up to the paypal linke. I guess it's a good thing that I didn't donate.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[orthogonal]

Paypal does have a habit of scamming its customers.

But even worse than this, PayPal forces you to be a customer.

I made a purchase from 78s2CD.com> (they offer old 78 rpm recordings in CD form, hence the name, and do an excellent job of it too -- it's a great source for vintage Gilbert & Sullivan recordings, among others).

After I gave PayPal my credit card information, I found I had an unwanted, unasked for account with PayPal.

So I logged on to PayPal to close the account -- only to find that, in order to close the account, I first had to provide more information in order to activate it..PayPal required my Social Security Number and my mother's maiden name in order for me to activate and access the account, even though all I wanted to do was close it.

Now, many banks, unfortunately, use this data, Social Security Number and mother's maiden name, to identify customers: by providing that to PayPal, I'd have made it much, much easier for PayPal -- or a rogue PayPal employee, or someone who hacked PayPal's servers -- to gain access to my brick-and-mortar bank account (remember, the credit card number identifies this, and PayPal already had that) or to otherwise steal my "identity".

Naturally, I didn't want to give this information -- among other things, I have no way of knowing that would be deleted when I closed my account. But under the USA Patriot Act, giving incorrect information to a financial institution might be illegal. So I couldn't just fake it and close the account either.

So I contacted Paypal, and talked to a rep -- who told me that PayPal could not (sure) close the account, and I'd have to log in and provide my personal information.

To his credit, when I contacted 782CDs's owner, Jim Lockwood, he apologized, and offered to let me send check in the future -- and even said that he'd ship the CDs before he got the check, on my word that I'd sent it. And now, 782Cds accepts both Paypal and credit cards directly.

But I'll never buy (or donate, sorry OSS projects) via PayPal again. Even though my PayPal account still exists in some database limbo, neither closed nor fully open.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[hendridm]

they make no claim to be a bank, so why use them as one?

I agree it's unsafe to leave sizable funds there for an extended period of time, given their track record of unpredictability, however, I'd say they do position themselves as a bank. They offer a Visa bank card, interest-bearing money market account and online bill payment. They want you to keep your money there for awhile (so they can earn interest on it, like a bank) and try to give you incentives to do so.

For the record, I've had perfect service in the ~4 years I've had a PayPal account, however, I know there are plenty of horror stories out there. I really like PayPal, but it isn't perfect.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Ledora]

There is a reason paypal is NOT a bank (notice its not part of FDIC) they don't follow the rules of a bank

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[shadowbearer]

To his credit, when I contacted 782CDs's owner, Jim Lockwood, he apologized, and offered to let me send check in the future -- and even said that he'd ship the CDs before he got the check, on my word that I'd sent it. And now, 782Cds accepts both Paypal and credit cards directly.

I've had some good experiences doing similar things with ebay sellers who require Paypal - when I contacted them directly and explained that I refuse to give out my SS# online (or other info like my bank account numbers), they were good enough to accept Western Union money orders. Those who wouldn't I simply refused to do business with.

Call me paranoid if you wish, but I feel that by not opening myself up to risk by giving out my personal financial info online, I'm doing the best I can to avoid identity theft. YMMV,etc. Personally I'd rather avoid the whole potential mess as much as possible.

SB

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[autocracy]

A private company freezing assets is an easy way to bread strong distrust.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[shaitand]

"Nor should it be...they make no claim to be a bank, so why use them as one?"

Last I checked paypal definately implies they are a bank and even has money market accounts and issues debit cards.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[DragonMagic]

This, like nearly half of the YROs recently, have NOTHING to do with ANY rights, online or not. Paypal's a business, and decided it no longer wished to do business with a company who fell into a category that is against their terms of service. Paypal is sending them their money.

So what's the terrible, rights-infringing or rights-squashing act performed here?

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[kVanQue]

Paypal does have a habit of scamming its customers

WRONG, the freenet site say that paypal promised them to send a check - however, if you read those stories about paypal scamming you will say that paypal has a nice record of unkept promises.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[itsdave]

they are not FDIC insured like a BANK

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[CoolGopher]

"One person's experience" does not constitute a habit.

Then maybe I should chip in with my experience too? I had my account disabled after I'd requested to have my name on file changed (as I legally had my name changed, and wanted my PayPal account to reflect that fact). They refused to change the name, even after I'd provided the various forms of documentation. Then once I told them to just forget I even asked (I was getting fed up with them - I have better things to do with my time, thank you very much), they disabled the account.

After quite some time of getting no response, I finally got told that to reactivate it, I needed to send in various documentation. Again. Same deal. Same stuff that I'd already faxed them a couple of weeks earlier (and I don't like faxing internationally). Alright, so I play along, give them their stupid papers. After another substantial wait, I get told they refuse to reactivate my account due to the fact that I have multiple accounts and that's against their policy, and that I'll need to close all of them except one. WTF? At this point I was getting seriously pissed off. Needless to say, I don't have multiple accounts. If I did I wouldn't be concerned about this particular one. And how in the blue f*ck am I supposed to close an account when I can't even log onto it?!

After another round of seriously narky emails, they reactivated it, but I've never used it since. I keep it for emergency use only, but as long as I have a choice, they're not getting my business any more.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[dasmegabyte]

No shit, sherlock. Western Union's not a bank, either, nor is Visa. Neither is a brokerage firm, though many money market accounts are FDIC insured. I still trust my broker not to lose my money between the time I transfer it and he makes the buy.

Paypal's only crime seems to be offering so many services that it looks a little like a bank...but if you don't have that FDIC stamp, nobody should trust their money there for long.

However, the services and incetives PayPal does offer are enough to encourage a lot of people to use their services. The whiners who complain about insurance need to step back and ask themselves whether the insurance on two or three days worth of back payments is worth losing those features. I don't think it is. I've never had a problem with PayPal. I HAVE had problems with eGold, click2pay and others.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[LostCluster]

Western Union's service has always made itself above board and auditable. They'll collect personal info when the government demands it, or when the money-sender feels like demanding it so that the receiver has to verify that they are the person the money is intended for.

They've got no way to revoke the transaction if it's fraudlent. That's your problem to figure out... they're just about getting the money from point A to point B.

That I think is PayPal's biggest problem... they're oriented to the buyer's advantage at the expense of the seller. However, that sender-side revocation capability esentially requires a credit check to even be possible, which means demanding the social security number upfront from everybody in a way Western Union never has to.

Western Union never cares how good you are at future payments of debt... they've got the cash in hand before they'll do their thing.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[dasmegabyte]

Really? Sounds like you went about things all wrong. I have changed the names on my accounts, as well as my DBA, contact email, and banks, numerous times with PayPal and with no troubles. I even "split" one of my accounts to separate my personal funds from my business funds, and there was no problem...certainly no complaint that it was against policy to hold two accounts!

Sounds like you got the wrong people on the wrong day. Maybe your emails were taken in the wrong tone?

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Anonymous Coward]

bread? wtf does bread have to do with it? Perhaps you feel they might be a little sour about their dough? They knead their money?

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[SillyNickName4me]

I do not know of many countries on this planet where you can operate an unregistered bank.

I also do not knw any country on this planet where PayPal registered as a bank. If they seriously try to give a different impression, wouldn't that be false advertisement?

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[dasmegabyte]

Seriously. Sometimes I think all the PayPal haters don't realize how much WORSE the banks and credit card companies are than anything PayPal has done. What, hold a payment to be sure it wasn't fraud? Deactivate some small-change accounts that have suspicious access records? Place an arbitrarily long "clearing" period on any transaction it pleases? Paypal is great because 99% of the time, it Just Works. And it's got great tracking and reporting features.

Besides, my point of view is this: a guy has an unreasonable expectation of a service. Service does not provide. Guy makes unreasonable demands of said service. Said service carefully continues the process, to be sure they aren't being scammed. Guy gets pissed off and makes ServiceSucksAndIsAScam.org. Meanwhile, the service has figured everything out and sent the guy a check, which he grudgingly accepts -- but leaves the domain live! Basically, one asshole can lash out and make a lot of bad press based on completely unreasonable demands.

We had a kid who used our hosting service but never paid us. Kept putting up porno pages in direct violation of our co-loc's TOS (thus endangering everybody on the server). One day, four months into this, he asks for a hand with CGI. I say sure, help him, and ask when he intends to pay us. In exchange for this, he puts up a website bashing our service, and calling us money-grubbers. Considering 85% of our sites owe us money at any given time, we're anything but "grubbers." Still, in this delusional pervert's eyes, we were out to get him. Thank god my superintendent knows the kid and could smack some sense into him...that completely libelous and unwarranted bad press would still be out there, otherwise, because we haven't got the money to send his (poor) new ISP a C&D.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[dasmegabyte]

Neither is Western Union. The difference is, if Western Union has your money for three weeks, you don't get any of their interest on it. It's not like PayPal doesn't have a big warning that says "Your money is not insured. If you keep it in here, there's a chance we might lose it." It does have such a warning...or did, when I signed up for the money market. I can't imagine it went away!

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[dasmegabyte]

How in the hell can a company imply it is a bank when it strictly says WE ARE NOT A BANK AND YOUR MONEY IS NOT INSURED all over the sign up agreement?

PayPal is a wire service. Like Western Union, which is also not insured. The difference is, PayPal offers you the ability to transfer your money into a credit account (managed by Providian, who IS a bank if I'm not mistaken), transfer it using a debit card (which is sooo much faster than transfering it to a checking account), or to keep it there and have them invest it for you.

How that varies from a bank is simple. Your money is not insured! You trade insurance for a lack of regulation that in turn means faster transfers and more options. If you are unwilling to make that trade, fine. Don't use PayPal -- because they are not for a SECOND implying that they are going to keep your hard-auctioned cash in a vault somewhere.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[m1kesm1th]

The actual link to attrition doesn't just detail ones persons experience with Paypal. It actually describes one persons experiences, then goes further to link to the practises of Paypal and additionally list links to personal and media accounts of the same.

It also has links to ex employees descriptions of their working practises. I've never had problems, but then I tend to only use it to transfer the money out. Since they take about 3%, if I still didn't receive the money I guess I'd be pretty annoyed too.

However, although I've had no bad experiences (not surprising considering my rare usage), I don't discount other peoples experiences out of hand. If it can happen to them, it can happen to me.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Anonymous Coward]

A woman I know used PayPal to collect donations for a politically related charity. PayPal froze the account without a specific explanation. They simply sent some standard form mail stating that the TOS allows them to freeze the account for any reason without explanation for a certain period of time.

There's no evidence to show that any of the fairly small number of donators sent any complaints so we're certain it was a third party with differing political views.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[dcam]

Banks are regulated. Paypal isn't.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Anonymous Coward]

I once was going to donate a small sum to a favorite project. I went through all the registration process, giving credit card information and all, only to find that I was an European and they didn't trust those with the service. But they kept my unusable account and still spams me with "information" sometimes.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[ambienceman]

are you sure that wasn't ID theft?

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Mike Buddha]

the freenet site say that paypal promised them to send a check - however, if you read those stories about paypal scamming you will say that paypal has a nice record of unkept promises.

Ahh... written with a vagueness that defies any counter-argument. And the best part of all is that chuckleheads modded kVanQue up to "informative" when all he did was to repeat heresay with NO link to this implied preponderance of evidence mounting against PayPal. If it's common knowledge that PayPal is evil, then those that slam it don't need to cite their sources, apparently.

The question I pose is this: If kVanQue's statement above is such common knowledge that he need not support it with links or anecdotes, then how is this "Informative"? Surely restating common knowledge isn't particularly informative, now is it?

Yes, I am flaming the tinfoil hat crew.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Cecil]

"One person's experience" does not constitute a habit.

I'm curious, if more people also had similar serious problems, then does it become a habit? If not, what does it take?

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Chester K]

however, if you read those stories about paypal scamming you will say that paypal has a nice record of unkept promises.

You can find websites that claim the same about any company larger than a certain size. I've used Paypal since they were still X.Com, I've processed thousands upon thousands of payments through them, and I've had no more trouble with them than I have from any brick-and-mortar bank I've dealt with.

There are two sides to every story -- keep that in mind when you go to paypalsucks.com and read the stories about how PayPal "screwed" the always "completely innocent" complaint filer.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Lord_Dweomer]

"We had a kid who used our hosting service but never paid us. Kept putting up porno pages in direct violation of our co-loc's TOS (thus endangering everybody on the server). One day, four months into this, he asks for a hand with CGI. I say sure, help him, and ask when he intends to pay us."

And why exactly did you let him keep using your service? I mean, the kid never paid, and directly violated your TOS. And you let this go on for 4 FUCKING MONTHS?! I'm sorry, but you have no reason to complain because you didn't do a damned thing about it and you even helped him out after all this. I don't mean this to come off as a troll, but I can't say I feel sorry for you at all.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[BarryNorton]

Number one distinction between PayPal and a bank - there's no independent regulator to whom I can (could) go when PayPal starts demanding that I give up my own privacy in order to get access to my money!

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[R.Caley]

Last I checked paypal definately implies they are a bank and even has money market accounts and issues debit cards.

Supermarkets do savings, loans and credit cards. (at least in the UK they do). No one (sane) thinks they are banks.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Technician]

We had a kid who used our hosting service but never paid us.

A simple 401 page for accounts 30 days past due does the trick. Do not make the mistake of carrying non-paying accounts for months hoping to get paid. Get paying customers instead.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Paypal doesn't get interest on your money, according to it's User Agreement

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[CountBrass]

Err excuse me- but they are. And the advertise themselves as such for example: Sainsbury's *BANK* http://www.sainsburysbank.co.uk/

They're actually backed by a "real" bank eg the Royal Bank of Scotland. So not only do they call themselves banks, they're protected as banks.

So I guess to paraphrase you, no-one (stupid) doesn't think they are banks.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Jaysyn]

Let me get this straight, Paypal disabled the account because of an anon. email address, but yet they have a physical address to send the check off to. Something is fishy.

Jaysyn

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Lumpy]

Just like 5th third bank likes to scam it's customers.... and Citibank, and others.....

I know that paypal was rules "not a bank" but they are and need to be treated as one that has NO Federal backing or protection.

they are acting like any bank would, if you think the local 2600 chapter would not have trouble with their treasury account at a local bank then you are really silly. Banks screw customers on a regular basis, they limit liability on a regular basis, and they change the rules secretly all the time.

Paypal is acting like a BANK. they are acting no differently than any other finaicial institution would.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[R.Caley]

Err excuse me- but they are. And the advertise themselves as such

If you confuse what people advertise themselves as with what they are I have a bridge you might want to buy:-).

They're actually backed by a "real" bank[...]

Backed is not the right word. They don't provide any banking services at all. They are `introducers', they just stand between you and the real bank sticking their logo on things. They are no more a bank than my postman is ThinkGeek just because he is the one who hands me my box of new toys.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[wpiman]

I felt bad for the girl- so I sent her a paypal donation....

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[bendude]

If they kneaded the dough more, they wouldn't be in this sticky situation.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Mr Guy]

Yeah, if the WANTED the CASH more they would have to TREAT their CUSTOMERS better!

Shit, I'm no good at this.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[div_2n]

Because unless you establish yourself as a CLEC, you will ALWAYS be subjected to the TOS a company has with anything you do online.

Bellsouth, Verizon, etc. doesn't like what you are doing? They can terminate your ability to connect.

That is a form of corporate censorship. This is also along the lines of the Moore/Disney thing. What you are seeing is corporations are starting to dictate what you can and can't do.

THAT scares me more than goverment intervention. Think Rollerball where corporations control everything. Quite frankly we aren't worlds away from that kind of reality.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[merky1]

I think that this is the main problem with Paypal. People look at thier account in the same light as a bank account. Unfortunately, there are none of the same protections that a bank account would afford. There is nothing preventing paypal from shutting down today and taking all the money stored in it away. Sure we could file a class action, but those never work out (here are your free $25.00 coupons).

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[the_mad_poster]

...how much WORSE the banks and credit card companies are than anything PayPal has done.

So? What makes you think I have any more faith in them? Why is it that on Slashdot one of the first "arguments" always seems to be "yea, but these guys are worse!" So what? What MBNA or Fulton or PNC do don't excuse PayPal from anything. We're talking PayPal. PayPal sucks ass, ok? I don't care what the banks do. If you'd like to have a long discussion with me about why Citizens, PNC, and Fulton all suck ass to one degree or another, I can do that too, but we're talking about PayPal, not Fulton, PNC, or Citizens.

Basically, one asshole can lash out and make a lot of bad press based on completely unreasonable demands.

Too bad. One looney tune isn't going to hurt you, and if they are, and they really are pressing the story in an unreasonable way, you sue them. If they're telling the whole story, however, and the demands were unreasonable, well, nobdoy is going to listen to him/her that you'd have wanted as a customer anyhow.

The point is that each of us gets to choose what we do an don't use and what we do and don't think about each individual service. I think Best Buy is full of crooks and morons and I don't think that opinion is based on them responding to "unreasonable demands". Well, too bad for Best Buy that 4 of my co-workers have actively chosen to purchase items away from Best Buy as a result.

Too bad for PayPal. They rip people off, those people retaliate and people like me evaluate the issue and decide that PayPal is an unacceptable risk. If they were concerned about their business, they wouldn't have ripped anyone off in the first place, and they'd work to actually resolve issues that legit users have rather than coming up with pre-canned bullshit responses to feed them. It's that latter point that really irks a lot of people, I'll bet. Well, boo hoo. I won't be using them as a result, and I'll encourage others to avoid them as well.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[tybalt44]

Keep digging yourself deeper, Richard. This is fun.

If Sainsbury's Bank is not a bank, perhaps you can tell us why they are a member of the British Banking Association, which is restricted to institutions undertaking banking activities.

And why they are regulated by the Financial Services Authority. They act as a bank, are regulated as a bank, and are a bank by operation of law (the Financial Services and Markets Act of 2000).

The fact that I (not even a UK citizen) can find this out in five minutes while you stand screaming with your fingers in your ear about ThinkGeek and bridges, is utterly hilarious.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[cloudmaster]

The PayPal credit card is just a Providian credit card that's not actually associated with PayPal in any way other than name. You can't transfer money from your PayPal account to your credit card, and, here's the big kicker for me, you can't pay your PayPal credit card bill using PayPal. I signed up for the stupid thing under the assumption that I'd stop seeing the damned ads every time I logged in, but the ads keep showing up. Appearently, they're part fo a random rotation, and since the card is just a branded Providian card, the PayPal folks have no way of even seeing if you have one or not.

I'm still pissed that I can't pay the stupid PayPal credit card bill using PayPal's billpay service - and it's been well over a year since I started regularly complaining about that (to both Providan and PayPal, theough PayPal just responds with [generally inappropriate] form letters to everything)

The PayPal debit card, OTOH, is all kinds of handy.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[aonaran]

On the other side of the coin, I have a paypal account BECAUSE I don't like giving out my credit card info.
Whenever possible I use online merchant's paypal option instead of their inhouse credit card processing because I would rather only one company that I know a bit about had my credit info than 12 companies on different servers each of which I know nothing about beyond what they sell and how I found them on Google.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[pqdave]

Sheesh. "I was able to do something similar, and a bunch of other stuff, therefore is perfect. If you had problems it's because you don't know what you are doing, it's all your fault."

I haven't had serious problems with Paypal, but getting a minor problem sorted out is far more difficult than necessary.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[R.Caley]

If Sainsbury's Bank is not a bank, perhaps you can tell us why they are a member of the British Banking Association, which is restricted to institutions undertaking banking activities.

Because undertaking `banking activities' does not make one a bank? Note that the BBA page you referenced, but clearly didn't read (since it doesn't mention `institutions undertaking banking activities'), includes such things as being an agent for investments as qualifying an organisation for membership. Sainsbury's is an agent standing between members of the public and the Halifax bank.

Perhaps it would have helped if you had read the about the BBA page where it says they represent banks and other financial services firms.

Ditto the FSA, they regulate all kinds of financial organisations, not just banks.

Look, Sainsbury's don't do any banking. They just take your money and pass it on to the Halifax, take information about your account from the Halifax and pass it on to you and so on. They are an agent.

It even says this (in beurocratese) on the page you presumably looked at (but again didn't read):

Sainsbury's Bank plc is regulated by the FSA and introduces only to the Halifax Financial Services Marketing Group for advising on and selling life assurance, pension and collective investment scheme business. The Marketing Group is regulated by the FSA.

The key term here is `introduces'. As `not even a UK citizen' perhaps the technical meaning of the word in this context slipped past you. An introducer is a class of financial organisation who provides no services, but passes customers on to a organisation which does. They are regulated because they might run off with your money rather than send it on, but they don't actually invest the money, hold reserves and so on.

You might also note that they direct any complaints to the Halifax's compliance officer. If they were a real bank they would be responsible for their own compliance.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Geoff-with-a-G]

That is a form of corporate censorship. This is also along the lines of the Moore/Disney thing. What you are seeing is corporations are starting to dictate what you can and can't do.

I think you misunderstood the Moore/Disney thing. The corporation isn't telling you what you can and can't do, it's telling you what it will and won't do. Disney wasn't saying "I forbid you to speak your mind!" They were saying "I'm not going to take your opinions and put my company name on them, then spend money distributing them with my infrastructure." They said this a year ago, and he knew it a year ago. He has since admitted this, and admitted that all his complaints in the media have been an attempt to drum up publicity.

If you want a country where companies have no right to refuse you service, I suggest you look outside the US. If Bellsouth/Verizon doesn't like what you're doing, then they should terminate your connection. It's their circuit. If they knowingly allow you to use their equipment and services in the commission of crimes, they can be held liable. If you think they've terminated your service unfairly, complain to the city, which is responsible for its utilities, or change to VoIP or get a cellphone. But the fact that companies have the right to stop providing their services to customers is hardly dystopian.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Anonymous Coward]

I used paypal for my hosting company for almost 4 years, never a charge back or dispute. I payed my co-lo fees from my paypal account and all costs of doing business because that's the way the bulk of the people where paying me. But then with thei anti-adult fuvor of a few years ago, they decided that selling HOSTING to adult website operators was the same as selling porn, they in turn froze my account, etc, etc, etc ... what a mess. I'll never use them again

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[AntonyBartlett]

But even worse than this, PayPal forces you to be a customer.

Yep, I've been there too. I don't like it because I live within the EU data protection umbrella, but had to give PayPal permission to store my data on their US servers, so that my data is now vunerable to random subpoenas and goodness knows what else.

Still, my credit card was due to expire within a few weeks, so I didn't lose much sleep over it :-)

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[cayenne8]

"Paypal doesn't get interest on your money..."

Interesting...in that case...how do they make money? I hear of these fees, but, I don't think I've ever been charged a fee for moving money to/from eBay and my bank acct.

Changing the subject, if PayPal sucks so badly, how hard would it be to set up an alternative to them? A few computers...bank accounts? With no 'banking' regulations...what's to stop anyone from setting up a new PP type system?

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care to create an account here, heh...but I am squido@attrition.org. I determined to post my experience with paypal because of the many, many similar stories I read, as well as that of former paypal employes.

It seems that this is just their way of doing business, their way of freezing your funds and holding onto them, while giving you no good reason, changing the reasons, and passing you from one inept customer service representative trained well in double speak to another.

Of all the stories I have read of people having the exact same issues as me...I didn't encounter another one where paypal accuses the client of selling porn off a webpage that 1. Isn't even theirs, 2. Isn't even porn, and falls under their acceptable use policy as "digital art", and 3. Is clearly not even selling anything.

Least I can feel special for that!

(p.s. mail me for the farm animal porn)

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[LifesABeach]

"It's more likely that they shut down freenet because they were using an anonymous email address"

mmmmmmmm, so you should not be allowed to do business because of an email address? Why?

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[LifesABeach]

"Seriously. Sometimes I think all the PayPal haters don't realize how much WORSE the banks and credit card companies are than anything PayPal has done. What, hold a payment to be sure it wasn't fraud? Deactivate some small-change accounts that have suspicious access records? Place an arbitrarily long "clearing" period on any transaction it pleases? Paypal is great because 99% of the time, it Just Works. And it's got great tracking and reporting features."

So; "WORSE"? Is the money that is gained by sitting on the daily interest earned given back to the Payer of the transaction? I haven't read that one. Please point me to that web page.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[shaitand]

The service agreement is irrelvant, it's extraordinarily wrong, nobody reads them and paypal knows nobody reads them. They offer "secure" bank services, they offer savings accounts, they perform electronic transfers between their accounts and those of other banks, they offer debit cards, they offer paypal credit cards.

They do everything but actually say "we are a bank" on the homepage. What they put in the service agreement is reality, which has nothing to do with implication. Their actual visual and percieved front is what they imply.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[shaitand]

In the US I've never seen a Supermarket do this.. just about all of them DO however have banks operating in the building.

The supermarket itself generally only does paycheck cashing from local buisnesses up to a realitively low dollar value.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like they were lucky, from what I've heard Paypal usually just keeps the money after they freeze accounts.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[LifesABeach]

'Negligence'.
Because of Paypals actions, Freenet is now damaged; If only for $1.

I'm no lawyer, but lets take out 'Freenet', and put 'your_business_name' there instead. Lets consider the impact on your business based on Paypals actions. $1 in damages? Ohhhh, if it only was.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[dasmegabyte]

So...your argument against PayPal is that they lie to people by telling them exactly what they do?

That's an amazingly stupid argument. People probably don't read loan contracts or credit card portfolios or bank terms either. Are you suggesting we invalidate all of these until such time as people learn to read?

Goddamn it man, stop trying to villify people for doing the right thing when there are so many people doing wrong things!

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh... written with a vagueness that defies any counter-argument.

What is vague about a contention that if you read stories about Paypal's scamming, that you would say that Paypal has a record of unkept promises? You provide no evidence or references to back your claim of vagueness.

And the best part of all is that chuckleheads modded kVanQue up to "informative" when all he did was to repeat heresay with NO link to this implied preponderance of evidence mounting against PayPal.

Where is your link? I see NO links in your post that refer to this so-called kVanQue, his statement, or that anybody modded him "informative". Surely you do not expect me to go looking for it on my own!

If it's common knowledge that PayPal is evil, then those that slam it don't need to cite their sources, apparently.

Where's your link? You provide no evidence that those who slam it don't need to cite their sources. Are we supposed to just believe you?

The question I pose is this: If kVanQue's statement above is such common knowledge that he need not support it with links or anecdotes, then how is this "Informative"? Surely restating common knowledge isn't particularly informative, now is it?

You've got Asperger's Syndrome.

Yes, I am flaming the tinfoil hat crew.

No you're not.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[hesiod]

> Disney wasn't saying "I forbid you to speak your mind!" They were saying "I'm not going to take your opinions and put my company name on them, then spend money distributing them with my infrastructure."

This is a point so many people miss. It's similar to CBS refusing to show that child labor commercial (actually about tax cuts) during the Superbowl. The organization (can't remember who, at the moment) screamed that they were being subjected to unfair censorship, which was a crock of shit then, and it is now.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[LaCosaNostradamus]

Roger that. I was all prepared to use PayPal, then after hearing rumors and spending some time surfing sites criticizing PayPal, I ended up not trusting them to handle my money. Result? Another customer lost (i.e. not gained).

PayPal has yet to learn that a customer has to be presumed innocent before proven guilty. This leads to loss, which as a consumer I expect to pay for as higher fees when I become a business client. I prefer this way of doing business over the way PayPal obviously adheres to, in which customer guilt is assumed and hence keeps PayPal's losses low, which I presume are passed onto the (surviving) client base as stable or lower fees. Note I said SURVIVING.

Just call me a business socialist. {smirk}

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never given paypal a SSN. They have my credit card number and address, that's it. No bank acct. number. I request payment via check ($1.50). I get lots of messages to verify my account but I ignore them. I'm fine with this limbo.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Jonner]

Mmmmmmm! Breaded strong distrust. Frozen assets? D'oh!

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Crayon Kid]

I'd recommend a 5xx error instead. 4xx suggests that the visitor has done something bad, which isn't the case. "503 Service Unavailable" may do the trick.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Crayon Kid]

There seem to be two kinds of personal accounts about PayPal going around: either it works well, or it screws you so bad you wish you were never involved with them, ever. I don't have a personal experience with PayPal of my own, but wouldn't the above seem to indicate that PayPal works well for the most part and when it does err (however seldom) and you're the lucky winner, it will make you wish you weren't born? I've put two and two together and I'm not using PayPal. There are other services (more or less similar) out there; even if their best is not as good as PayPal's, their worst isn't quite as bad as PayPal's either. To me, what I've heard about PayPal seems to indicate it's like playing russian roulette. No, I'm not willing to try it myself to actually see what it's like. :)

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[proj_2501]

"how do they make money? I hear of these fees, but, I don't think I've ever been charged a fee for moving money to/from eBay and my bank acct."

It's mostly Premier and Business members who get charged fees.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[proj_2501]

I once had a PayPal debit card that WAS in fact linked to my PayPal account. Do they no longer offer this? (I think it was for premier members only)

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[proj_2501]

CBS's excuse was that they don't display political advertising.

In fact, they displayed other political ads during the Super Bowl. It may not be censorship, but it's playing dirty.

I don't feel so bad for CBS getting shafted because of Janet's booby.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[autocracy]

Yes... thankfully, they use ziploc bags, though - so you don't get (freezer) burned.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Floody]

If you want a country where companies have no right to refuse you service, I suggest you look outside the US. If Bellsouth/Verizon doesn't like what you're doing, then they should terminate your connection. It's their circuit. If they knowingly allow you to use their equipment and services in the commission of crimes, they can be held liable. If you think they've terminated your service unfairly, complain to the city, which is responsible for its utilities, or change to VoIP or get a cellphone. But the fact that companies have the right to stop providing their services to customers is hardly dystopian.

No? What happens if the company in question doesn't like the fact that you're arab? Or doesn't like your sexual orientation, or even the perception of your sexual orientation? It's just a private business choice, so they have the right to deny you service, eh?

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[R.Caley]

In the US I've never seen a Supermarket do this.. just about all of them DO however have banks operating in the building.

It's just brand name building. The bank and the supermarket both win.

The bank is getting their services in front of people every time they are queueing, and people may feel more comfoprtable taking a load from `friendly' Tesco than from a percieved to be cold and distant financial organisation.

The supermarket gets a cut of the profits and also to look like a far more important organisation. I suspect there are also loyalty card like features to the credit cards, I've never looked into the details far enough to see.

The supermarket itself generally only does paycheck cashing from local buisnesses up to a realitively low dollar value.

So far as I know none of the mainstream UK supermarkets do any kind of over-the-counter banking operations. I think all the banking stuff is by mail/web etc. The only thing which shows in the shop is racks of leaflets.

The Co-Op on the other hand do run a real bank, and have for a long long time, and where I grew up the local Co-Op did have a banking counter. IIRC my parents mortgage was under a scheme run by the local council and the Co-Op bank.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats that sir? I'm sorry, I can't quite hear you. Perhaps you should remove Paypal's dick from your mouth before speaking.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[hurfy]

"Still, my credit card was due to expire within a few weeks, so I didn't lose much sleep over it :-) " Should be ok at Paypal...i think. but DON'T use this logic for recurring payments on CC, They do NOT neccessarily need the expire date! Sony was able to continue billing me afterwards :(

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Master of Transhuman]

Excellent point. Most corporations are like this - screw you one day, nicey nice the next.

The issue is: should companies be allowed to get away with it. Answer: obviously not.

For any given person at any given time, you might want to put up with it for your own reasons. But as a general rule, companies that do this stuff need to be punished by customers bailing so they get either clean up their act or get run out of business.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry.. no

your bank cannot just freeze your accounts and leave it up to an arbitrary internal process to un-freeze it, giving no particular reason for the frozen account. Paypal does this.

Banks are forced by LAW to implement strict anti-money-laundering policies.. banks are held criminally liable for accepting money if they don't know the origin. Bank TELLERS are held liable if they don't report suspicious activity.

The thing is, if your bank freezes your account, there are clear avenues of resolution. They can't just sit on it and not give you your money, citing weird rule after weird rule.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Because up front they say that you can't. If you don't like it then fuck off and use some other money transfer service, there are others.

Why is it that slashbots think that an agreement means that a company has to do all they promise and more but they only have to follow the terms of the agreement as long as they think it's "fair"? Is that the problem - your mommy always gave in when you whined NOT FAIR!?

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[shaitand]

Yeah, they'd probably be smart to do that here. But instead the supermarkets and even gas stations have real honest to god big steal vault and all banks in them.

Usually the supermarkets do check cashing but as far as I know there is nothing even especially bank backed about it. You go to the courtesy counter and they cash the payroll check. AFAIK they just do it as a third party check to cash it themselves. Which is why they require it be drawn on a local bank and be issued by a local buisness AND it generally has to be $300 or less.

Now bear in mind I said I've seen them, they aren't rare per say but much more common are supermarkets with ATM machines and check cashing and nothing else.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[shaitand]

My argument against Paypal is that what they do is act like a bank, offer bank services, and pretend your money is safe with them as it would be with a bank.

And hide all statements to the contrary in the very very fine print intentionally with the knowledge nobody will read it.

No the answer isnt' to get everyone to read, it won't happen. The answer to put in large bold letters just above the paypal logo on the site "We are not a Bank and under certain conditions we will confiscate funds held in our accounts."

This of course should be under the link "Pay with paypal" pages on all auction sites as well as the homepage.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Rakarra]

I think that this is the main problem with Paypal. People look at thier account in the same light as a bank account.

And also, Paypal very very strongly pushes linking your Paypal account with your bank account, a rather risky endeavor.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Geoff-with-a-G]

No? What happens if the company in question doesn't like the fact that you're arab? Or doesn't like your sexual orientation, or even the perception of your sexual orientation? It's just a private business choice, so they have the right to deny you service, eh?

Yes, absolutely. If they start doing this, then you open a company that doesn't, and you've got all Arab, gay, and metrosexual customers without even having to be competitive on price. You can market your company as open-minded and non-discriminatory, and you'll outsell the bigoted corporation. Which is why corporations rarely do that. Because they don't care about you, just your money, and telling 30% of your customers to go away isn't good for business.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[CoolGopher]

I haven't had any problems changing anything that I could myself via their web interface. However, the one time when I needed a human being to assist me, I was sorely let down.

If I was to hazard a guess, it might be related to the fact that I'm not a US resident. You didn't mention if you were?

As for emails being taken in the wrong tone; well, the first few were as polite as the next persons. Towards the end I'll happily admit I wasn't being particularly generous with the benefit of the doubt. My point however, is that it should never have gotten to that point. Whoever they've got answering emails obviously has no customer service training what so ever (at least not any of the ones I dealt with during that incident). For starters, half the time they didn't _listen_ to what I was saying, and were sending back canned responses completely inappropriate to the question asked. The other half of the time they appeared to be simply incompetent.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[cloudmaster]

There's a debit card that can be used as a credit card. It works the same way as a bank card - you can get money out at an ATM, or pay for purchases at stores that accept credit cards. It doesn't extend any credit to you, though - your limit is the amount in your account.

There's also a PayPal *credit* card separate from the debit card. The credit card is what I was referring to in the parent post - just a Providian card. It's fairly ironic that the PayPal branded credit card can't be paid off with funds from your PayPal balance, IMHO.

They are separate, though. I've got both. One's just a credit card with a horrible interest rate (like 17% or so), the other's a convenient debit/check card that gets 1.2% cash back on purchases. Both are still available.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[proj_2501]

unfortunately, from my perspective, 17% is a wonderful interest rate :)

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[cloudmaster]

Ohh, sorry. :)

I generally just use cards for expenses that I pay off at the end of the month. I've been carrying a balance on some for a while, but about once a year, I apply for a couple of new "0% for a year or so" cards, transfer the balance over, and continue making whatever payments sound reasonable. It's a great scam, so far. I'm considering putting a low-end car on a 0%-for-life-on-balance-transfers card next time. That'd be cool.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[LifesABeach]

Taken from the view of a child; mommy's word is law.

Taken from the view of adults that are doing business; mommy knows her place, and wisely shuts up.

Taken from the view of 'Contract Law'; Paypal unilateraly changed their method of doing business after conducting business in a specific manor for a reasonable amount of time. Paypal is legally bound to continue to perform. Paypal can also communicate to Freenet stating that at some resonable amount of time in the future Paypals' rules for doing business will change, ( 2 weeks is reasonable, and purdent). Paypals' act of locking the 'account' on Freenets ability to do business has commited an act that could be argued as both 'Breach of Contract', and a Tort of 'Neglagence'. Paypals holding of Freenets money could be argued in Criminal Court 'Racketering', and 'Bait and Switch'.

Taken from the view of an 'out-of-work-software-engineer'; Paypal just gave me a problem to solve. How can I create a software solution that rivals Paypals'?

Thanks Paypal, I was getting tired of doing the house chores while looking for my next job. Paypal, you've given me purpose.

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[iminplaya]

A true case of "buyer beware" if there ever was one. Always read your contract, write it off as BS (because that what will be when the company goes belly up, or changes ownership), and have a backup.

(dcam, check out my last reply to you on the IRC thing before it drops off of your info page. It's getting way off-topic and we should probably move it over to a journal.)

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Floody]

"Rarely do that?" Are you somehow completely unaware of southern (mostly) US business practices prior to the 60s?

Does the phrase "whites only" ring a bell?

Re:Must have been considered a liability

[Geoff-with-a-G]

Key phrase "prior to the 60s". Give me a real example, from present day.

But to address your example, it wasn't just the south, it was the entire country. Yes, it was greater in the south, but don't buy into this mindset that the US divides neatly into "the South" - made up of bigoted slaver hicks, and "the North" - educated, compassionate humanitarians with no racist attitudes. It's a whole big mess of people, and lots of them don't like each other. There are different trends in different places, but no big clear borders.

However, the disparity between treatment of blacks in the north and south gave an incentive for blacks to move north, where they would be treated better. "The market" (in this case, the country) wasn't devoid of options, and those who treated blacks better were rewarded with better performing companies, except when individual whites shunned them for black-friendly policies.

That's not a problem with corporations, that's a problem with humans. As soon as you build a list of things nobody is allowed to discriminate against, two things will happen:
1. People will be more clandestine with their discrimination, not eliminate it.
2. They'll find new things to discriminate against, which aren't on your list.

The second is happening now. If you check the Constitution, you'll notice it explicitly prevents discrimination against ethnicity and sex, but not sexual preference. Giving more power to individuals and less to corporations doesn't fix that problem. Especially since you then start running up against people's Constitutionally guaranteed rights to choose who they associate with (think Boy Scouts ruling).

I'm not such a fool as to claim there are no problems in the US, but you can't blame corporations for racism.

Slashdot Uses PayPal

[johndiii]

Absent a satisfactory response from PayPal, Slashdot should stop accepting PayPal to pay for subscriptions.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[H310iSe]

Boycott PayPal? While it's difficult for some PayPal clients to just drop them any PP user whose primary role is technological (and therefore is equipped to do the work needed to replace them) should cease their relationship with PP as soon as possible. It would be offensive if Slashdot continued to use them after such an outlandish stunt.

Now, having said that, I'd like to hear Pay Pal's side of the story first...

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Anonymous Coward]

You fucking slashdot hippies better not even think about boycotting paypal! I own EBAY stock so don't rock the fucking boat. As if you broke-ass losers would even put a dent in ebay's revenues.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[loggia]

Hear, hear.

I've never been thrilled seeing SlashDot and other sites like the EFF accepting PayPal.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Anonymous Coward]

And what other solution would Slashdot have then?

I run a site with about 50,000 members and I have to use paypal because it's what all of my members use. If you have something to offer but for your visitors to donate or pay you for your services or product, they have to give out credit card, address, personal information to yet another payment processor, establish a bank account connection with them, fill out forms, process authorization email, verify accounts and maintain yet another set of passwords and payment records just to do business with YOU... they're going to switch to someone else who just uses paypal and makes it simple for them in the first place.

By the way, eBay has an adult section. Is this to say that all the integrated eBay PayPal options are not available for ebay sellers and buyers to use for those sections of ebay?

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Surazal]

I've been uneasy about using their service despite the "convenience" it would offer me in the online world. The horror stories keep piling up, and I don't see an end to it.

PayPal, you are free to consider me a "lost customer" at this point. I will take my business elsewhere.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Anonymous Coward]

What? And break the longstanding tradition Slashdot hyprocisy? Never!

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[next1]

what about simply getting a merchant account?

surely it would be worth it with a 50,000 member site, even if the individual sales were only relatively small amounts.

i used to accept credit cards inhouse for a subscription type online business and at the time i introduced that i only had about 25 customers.

after the initial setup costs (which were reasonable anyway), a merchant account offered a far better deal than that offered by people like paypal and this way you are in control.

and re; passwords etc; the point is you process inhouse, so all they are entering is their credit card details. there are no new passwords etc to remember. personally, i prefer that method of online sale any day to something like paypal.

i would talk to your bank, it may not be as expensive as you think.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[secolactico]

I've never been thrilled seeing SlashDot and other sites like the EFF accepting PayPal

"Me too!" *ducks*

Seriously, I used to use Paypal for auctions and donation to certain sites, but then, one day they decided they didn't like my country, so I'm now unable to use them. Now I cannot subscribe to Slashdot nor patronize other sites that take only Paypal.

I realize that it's very convenient for webmasters and Paypal probably offer ease of use or somesuch, but for potential customers from unsuported countries, we are SOL.

Nor do they seem to have plans to support my country any time soon.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Anonymous Coward]

When they ask me why I'm boycotting I'll say "use of an anonymous coward".

-Kilroy

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Anonymous Coward]

after the initial setup costs (which were reasonable anyway), a merchant account offered a far better deal than that offered by people like paypal and this way you are in control.

Yes and no. We have both a merchant account and accept paypal, and payments via paypal are almost guaranteed non-fraud, whereas with cards these days there are so many stolen card numbers that you have to verify every purchase by phone, and even that isn't enough sometimes.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[denisonbigred]

what country is that?

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[next1]

yes that's true. i used to verify/authorize every purchase with the bank by phone, you have to for online sales.

then also, for any customer addresses that weren't familiar to me like overseas addresses, i used to check that the addresses were legitimate, eg; check that the postcode is correct for the city. i found that in many bogus orders, things like this would be incorrect (when i was doing this, address verification or security numbers weren't introduced yet).

if i still had any doubts, i used to actually call the customer and confirm their order.

sounds like a lot of trouble but bogus orders were rare in my experience so it never became an issue. guess it just depends on the business etc.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Kris_J]

Even supported countries get an "International Transaction Fee" whenever one or more parties to a transaction are outside of the US, even when the transaction in in US$. A little while after they brought that in I cancelled my account -- the added fees negated the last bit of profit I was getting after all the eBay fees. (I dropped eBay after being sniped out of more than a dozen auctions where I was leading until the last 15 seconds.)

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Anonymous Coward]

Except this isn't a business. If it were 50,000 people doing $10 worth of business each, that'd be great. But it's 50,000 people with perhaps a few hundred donating a buck or five here and there. The only game in town for that is paypal. It's a risk, certainly - but you can't very well tell people "Thanks for wanting to donate $15 to us... but to do so, please go to this other company and give themall your banking and credit card info, fill out some forms, sign up for an account, set a name and password, wait for an email, confirm your account via the email, then come back to our site, click on this link to send us a donation through that site and voila you're done!".

They'd rather just be told "click on this button to donate $10 via your existing paypal account".

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[cbreaker]

Must be Canada. They're always causing trouble.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[zenyu]

PayPal, you are free to consider me a "lost customer" at this point. I will take my business elsewhere.

Easier said than done, they like to consider you a customer for life. I loged on once and found that they wanted me to agree to a new user agreement which I found objectionable. Well when you call them up they transfer you to different agents who all say they can't close your account unless you accept the agreement. Very Kafkaesque, consider yourself lucky and wise if you never accepted the $10 sign-up bonus. Now I have to change my regular bank so that they don't have any current information and another security breach there can't haunt me.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Surazal]

Fortunately I avoided that whole fiasco by simply not signing up to begin with.

And somehow, I managed to survive to this day. Go figure.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[chimpo13]

I dropped eBay after being sniped out of more than a dozen auctions where I was leading until the last 15 seconds.

Without this meaning to sound as snotty as it will -- huh? What are you talking about? It's an AUCTION. You bid the most you're willing to pay and then ignore the auction until it's over. If it tops what you're willing to pay, you've lost nothing.

Of course, a lot of the time, you get stuff at a lower price if you make your bid in the last 10 seconds of an auction. And eBay should extend an auction by another 5 minutes when someone bids in the last 30 seconds. But if you want to boycott eBay because you aren't bidding enough, you're loony. The loony part was meant to sound snotty, not the other part.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[SillyNickName4me]

Gotta love them trying that in Europe. EU privacy laws require them to remove it in the end, you can goto court over it if needed. Regardless, they do have some odd ideas about service and dealing with customers in general.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[zoloto]

either I'm failing to get the sarcasm, as i usually do, or you are flamebait waiting to be run over.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Kris_J]

Without this meaning to sound as snotty as it will -- huh? What are you talking about? It's an AUCTION. You bid the most you're willing to pay and then ignore the auction until it's over. If it tops what you're willing to pay, you've lost nothing.

Okay, lets say that 12 items are all ending at the same time and my budget is $120. I start by bidding $10 on all the items. If I'm outbit on all or most of them, I can bid up to $20 on half, or $30 on a third, and my maximum commitment is still $120. If I'm sniped on all of them, I don't have any opportunity to adjust my other bids within my budget.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[wwwillem]

Must be Canada. They're always causing trouble.

Hope you just forgot your smiley, otherwise I take offence!! Which country is currently messing up the world!! And I'm even not a Canadian, just living and working there. GO FLAMES GO!!! :-)

Back to the topic, PayPal has always been made a big mess of splitting up US versus international customers. For a long time "internationals" had no verified addresses, etc. I've a long email exchange with their staff about that topic. But, they were very friendly and appologizing about that. I've seen it much worse. Anyway, maybe because of that, I'm pretty sure I never supplied them any social security number. Probably because they don't know we have that here in Canada as well, and fortunately so.

So, if you don't want to give them your social security number, move up north, and you're fine. :-)

After a few years, I can only say that I'm a happy PayPal customer, even used them today. But when I hear about having to provide confidential information to cancel your account, that horrifies me!!

OK, PayPal, take up the challenge. We /.-ers (among others) made you big, reply and comment seriously to this question. I'm sure Cmdr Taco will give you a fresh topic. Or otherwise "The Rgister" will make your anser an item.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Anonymous Coward]

Boo hoo.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really want /. to stop taking PayPal, just call PayPal and complain about Slashdot and how they screwed you. PP will freeze the /. account and then the staff will be forced to switch to BitPass or some other more reasonable donation method.

Posting anonymously to avoid getting in trouble.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[drinkypoo]

I don't approve of people only using paypal (I accept paypal and money orders/cashier's checks for my ebay auctions) but I like paypal! I don't put them in a position to screw me over, and they don't screw me over. At a time when my bank (actually a credit union) wouldn't give me a check card for some reason (ostensibly my credit rating, but it's not like you can spend any significant quantity of money you don't have with it) paypal would, and they gave me 1.5% back when I spent money with it, to boot. If I get an auction payment, and then spend the money via mastercard, that takes care of most of my paypal fees. Since I can pay several of my bills online via credit card these days, that's actually useful for more than just frittering away money. Or of course, I can just spend it in a store that way.

Supporting only paypal seems like a bad choice to me given how many people seem to have problems with or objections to them, but I figure if your audience doesn't use paypal, that's a self-correcting problem.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[drinkypoo]

Given that you know this is how the game is played, why aren't you playing along? This is the road to ebay success. With that said, all bt one of the last several auctions I won (about six of them) I just bid what I was willing to pay and I won without trouble. The other one had a little more interest so I had to nickel and dime my way to victory, but that's just part of the ebay experience.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Kris_J]

Sniping would not have helped me stick to my budget. Fark had a funny example of how wrong that can get some months back where a stick of RAM went for over US$4,000. Sniping only disadvantages people on a budget bidding on multiple things -- that's specifically who it disadvantages, that's the only time it has any real effect. If I'm only bidding on one thing, I put in my maximum then forget about it until I get an email with the result.

Fortunately I don't need eBay for anything. Maybe I'd sign up for a sniping service if I was buying chips for NASA or something.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Anonymous Coward]

Awwww... you beat me to it.

I was going to say when does slashdot EVER eat its own dog food? I mean it still has the same inaccessible, shitty HTML it's had for most of its lifetime.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Anonymous Coward]

And what other solution would Slashdot have then?

How about the merchant account they already use ALONGSIDE paypal?

Or did you not even think of looking at the subscriptions page for yourself??

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, having said that, I'd like to hear Pay Pal's side of the story first...

Yeah, and I'd like to know how you're going to get it out of them.

PayPal's side of the story is basically that they reserve the right to do whatever the fuck they like, and their decisions are final, cannot be appealed, and will never be explained, or even necessarily revealed.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[micromoog]

So in other words, someone else got your items for more than you were willing to pay. It's an AUCTION.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[LetterJ]

Or you use a service like 2Checkout.com who does the fraud checking for you, but still doesn't require the customer to sign up for any sort of account. They do the phone authorization if necessary and still have reasonable fees.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[b0bby]

I'm happy I never became "Verified" with them, despite being asked to do so every time I use my account. As far as I can tell, "Verified" means "we can take money out of your checking account" which I'm not into. If I buy something, I use my credit card, if I sell something, I transfer my balance out ASAP (I'm usually only selling stuff for $100 or less anyway).

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, one of the primary functions of verifying your bank information with them is such that you can recieve an EFT of your balance directly to your account. It also enables you to transfer funds from your bank account to your paypal account which can be useful depending on situation. I sell things frequently on Ebay and find this function to be quite convenient as after my auctions have cleared i just click a button and money magicly flows to my bank :)

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[JLyle]

Yeah, and I'd like to know how you're going to get it [Paypal's side of the story] out of them.

All kidding aside, Slashdot is a pretty well-recognized web site in the geek world. If the Slashdot crew approached the powers-that-be at PayPal and asked for an explanation (with the understanding that Slashdot was going to report their reply to the thousands of readers of /.) they might get some explanation that you or I wouldn't.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Tirjasdyn]

The advantage of paypal for sellers, is that they don't charge a monthly fee(ranging from 25-100usd depending on the other service) to accept credit cards...in fact they take nothing from the customer until the transaction is completed.

You have to sign up for their full bank services...they don't do that automatically. I've canceled three accounts and recreated two with out any problems.

It seems to me that people are jumping the gun here. Don't want to use them fine, but that does not make them a bad business.

Oh and it is illegal not to provide correct info. Since they are trafficing in money they have to double check every time. And since they are a US company...if a country doesn't allow a person to give up that info, or a person won't then they can't do business with them. The patriot act requires that US businesses have this info at any time to give to the government and can face penalties if they don't...now if the PA goes away then it isn't a problem, but Bush is already suing to make it a permenant law. I guess we'll have to get used to it.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Anonymous Coward]

I dropped eBay after being sniped out of more than a dozen auctions where I was leading until the last 15 seconds.

Wah wah wah...

WTF do you even bother to bid on an item at any point prior to the last hour that the auction closes is beyond me. All you're doing is telling the other bidders that they need to raise the bid. Which generally leads to a bidding war and you'll end up paying more then you want for the item.

Bid once, bid last, and make it a good one. For online auctions, unless prevented by the auction rules (and I do mean hard-coded, "auction doesn't close until 5 min after last bid", software rules), there's simply zero value in submitting *any* bids prior to the closing minutes of the auction.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[chimpo13]

You chose one at random, preferably one without a gallery picture because those sell for more, and bid your budget on that one.

If there's a dozen items of the same thing that all end at the same time, there's got to be others out there.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[cbreaker]

No offence man - I love canada.

I like Paypal, I mean, it does allow people without credit cards to make online purchases. And it is fast; I can buy something on ebay, pay for it, and many times the item is shipped within the same few hours.

Unfortunately, paypal has a heavy hand with it's customers. They charge a lot for their services, and you'd think they would appreciate the business more, but they don't seem to care. I mean, if you have so many customers, who cares right?

So, I just don't keep money in paypal. I use it to purchase things, and only very rarely to I use it to sell. If I do sell something, I immediately transfer the funds to my bank account. They make enough money on each transaction, they don't need to make money on interest from my money. And I don't want something funky to happen where they freeze my account.

Of course, if they do freeze my account with money in it for whatever reason, they will have me calling them every 15 minutes and a letter from a lawyer the next day. You can't just hijack someone's money. Whether they like it or not, when they hold your money, they are a bank. And banks can't hold your money for long without legal assistance.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Kris_J]

Nope, someone else got some items for less than I was willing to pay, because sniping turned multiple auctions into a single one.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Kris_J]

They weren't the same thing and some were quite rare, a couple were even unique. Someone was liquidating a collection to pay off some related debts.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[micromoog]

No, someone got the items for more than your stated maximum. If you had set your maximum higher, you would have gotten the items.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Kris_J]

If I'd set my maximum higher on all the items and won them all I wouldn't have been able to afford them all. What I'm willing to pay for an individual item and what I've entered into the eBay system while I'm bidding on multiple items are different things. The fact that eBay couldn't see the difference is the reason that I cancelled my account. (Actually, I cancelled my account because the many security issues that surround eBay mean that an inactive account is a risk. If it wasn't for that risk, I would have just walked away for a while.)

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[kinzillah]

So if they are all a single seller, you contact them and request that they allow you to bid on multiple items and purchase only one out of any that you win. If you told them an order of preference they could just cancel your bids on any items ranked lower than the highest ranked that you won.

Sure, it's a little bit of work for both parties, and the seller might not agree to it, but its kind of silly to expect ebay to do it, when its really unfair to subject a seller to it without their consent. Given that ebay makes most of its money from sellers, its not surprising that the system is geared toward them.

Re:Slashdot Uses PayPal

[Kris_J]

I can't imagine any seller that would do this. Also, I don't see how this system is geared towards sellers.

The solution was posted way back at the beginning. Extend the deadline whenever a bid is made in the last few minutes. That would have solved my problem -- and actualy made it more like a real auction.

Bastards.

[Anonymous Coward]

They may not like Freenet, but this is just discrimination, plain and simple.

*sigh*

fear of terrorism strikes again

[778790]

Looks like Paypal is trying to cover its ass in case any "shadowy' Freenet money finds itself coming through from America's enemies(TM).

PayPal problems

[Lordofohio]

Paypal is certainly a shady company. To find out why, go to www.paypalsucks.org

Re:PayPal problems

[nacturation]

PayPalSucks.com is certainly a shady company. To find out why, go to adzoox.com/paypalsucks.html

Re:PayPal problems

[Gudlyf]

You have to wonder if many of the people who have had their accounts "mysteriously" deactivated or put on hold really were doing something bad (in the eyes of PayPal) afterall. I'm sure there's got to be people claiming total innocence and crying foul, when in fact they don't want you to know they did a little gambling on the side with the PayPal money or subscribed to an adult porn site, or heck maybe commited some sort of fraud. If they claimed any of those things, their complaints wouldn't hold up a full 100%.

I'm not defending the heavy-handed operations of EBay/PayPal, but I also wouldn't want to look at things from only one perspective. I think people should be able to do whatever they want with their PayPal money, but really the best thing to do is immediately withdraw what you have as soon as you get it.

Re:PayPal problems

[JudicatorX]

... when in fact they don't want you to know they did a little gambling on the side with the PayPal money or subscribed to an adult porn site [...] If they claimed any of those things, their complaints wouldn't hold up a full 100%.

How would either of those things make their complaint any less valid?

Of course, this is all assuming that such isn't against PayPal's TOS, which I haven't *actually* read.

Re:PayPal problems

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I think credit card issuers are worse. If you think Paypal is bad, DON'T start a business and accept credit cards from Visa / Mastercard either.

In one case, the card issuer had authorized a $1200 transaction, then the next day they put it on hold. The package had already shipped. The customer probably could have claimed that it was unauthorized use and kept the package, but thankfully the customer was an honest person.

I know one guy in which his business was bilked out of about $20,000. He simply had the misfortune of dealing with a person that used a stolen credit card number. When the fraud was exposed, the card issuer sued him to recover the money. I haven't talked to him lately, last I heard he said that he'd probably have to file for bankrupcy and lose his business.

Card issuers really don't take much risk in terms of fraudulent card use, often they automatically do charge-backs when a transaction is contested, even if the business took every required means of verifying the card.

Re:PayPal problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Credit card companies are one of the few organizations who almost always side with "the little guy." Having had some bad chargeback experiences, I can say that the CC companies are real hardasses when it comes to being even-handed. They will almost always side with the cardholder, even with a total lack of evidence from either side. Even when the merchant has evidence that the cardholder did authorize the charge, the CC companies more often than not will give in to the cardholder. It's very frustrating.

Re:PayPal problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's the douchehole that modded this one down from my 2? Not enough of a man to stomach the crushing realization that big bad PayPal, while big, isn't nearly as bad as you thought, you commie faggot?

Re:PayPal problems

[Gudlyf]

From PayPal's User Agreement:

7.2 Restricted Activities. Your Information and your activities (including your payments and receipt of payments) through our Service shall not: (a) be false, inaccurate or misleading; (b) be fraudulent or involve the sale of counterfeit or stolen items; (c) consist of providing yourself a cash advance from your credit card (or helping others to do so), (d) be related in any way to gambling and/or gaming activities, including but not limited to payment or the acceptance of payments for wagers, gambling debts or gambling winnings, regardless of the location or type of gambling activity (including online and offline casinos, sports wagering and office pools), with the exception of payments for gaming transactions that are expressly authorized by law in the jurisdiction of both the sender and the recipient of the payment; (e)violate PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy; (f) infringe on any third party's copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret or other property rights or rights of publicity or privacy; (g) violate any law, statute, ordinance, contract or regulation (including, but not limited to, those governing financial services, consumer protection, unfair competition, antidiscrimination, or false advertising); (h) be defamatory, trade libelous, unlawfully threatening or unlawfully harassing; (i) be obscene or contain child pornography; (j) contain any viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs cancelbots, easter eggs or other computer programming routines that may damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or other personal information; or (k) create liability for us or cause us to lose (in whole or in part) the services of our ISP's or other suppliers. If you use, or attempt to use the Service for purposes other than sending and receiving payments and managing your account, including but not limited to tampering, hacking, modifying or otherwise corrupting the security or functionality of Service, your account will be terminated and you will be subject to damages and other penalties, including criminal prosecution where available.

----

So I guess what they consider "obscene" (outside of child porn) is up in the air.

Re:PayPal problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent down.

adzoox.com/paypalsucks.html does not address these accusations of consistent and methodical fraudulent practices at PayPal, http://www.paypalsucks.com/forums/showthread.php?f id=6&tid=1529&old_block=0 , made by a former PayPal manager.

Instead it complains that PayPalSucks.com is generating revenue by steering traffic to PayPal competitors and therefore exagerates some of the complaints.

Big f*cking deal! Read the link I included above and the many personal complaints about frozen accounts that PayPal refused to release. It's sickening.

Re:PayPal problems

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, they _do_ have procedures that vendors are required to follow to do their due diligence to protect against fraudulent transactions. If your friend lost the lawsuit, it's pretty likely his business wasn't performing their due diligence obligations.

Re:PayPal problems

[miskate]

I would think a sensible business person would do some fairly serious fraud checking before accepting a $20,000 credit card payment.

There is a point at which you have to protect yourself.

Re:PayPal problems

[GooberToo]

First, let me say that I've worked in the CC industry for years. I have good friends that work for some of the largest ISOs in the country. Generally speaking, what you're stating doesn't smell right.

If they authorized it, they are contractually bound to pay it unless there is a charge back. Charge backs are resolved through their own process and should not directly effect the bank's promise to pay. In the case above, it sounds like the merchant failed to follow the guidelines which are clearly layed out and now he's paying the piper. Different banks have slightly different guidelines, as set by their risk departments. If that store did not check ID and signature or did not swipe a card as as required to ge their discount rate, then they should expect to get it in the tail pipe. It's simply not acceptable for mechants to shink away from their contractual obligations and expect the issuing banks and/or visa/mc to absorb the merchant's mistakes. I can assure you that merchants tend to go out of their way to fail to follow simply contractual obligations and then want to blame someone else. I can't say for sure this is what happened to your friend, but I can say, the odds are greatly in my favor for being correct.

Charge backs, on the other hand, do tend to be in the card holder's favor. Just the same, most banks have groups which watch for fraud from cardholders, as it relates to chargebacks. Additionally, while the odds do tend to be slanted toward the cardholder, as long as the merchant has properly upheld their end, a chargeback can be denied, so long as the merchant made reasonable efforts to address the dispute. Especially if the goods were not returned by the cardholder.

Re:PayPal problems

[nacturation]

Um, right. I find it incredibly suspect that an alleged ex-manager would consistently misspell PayPal as Pay-Pal. All they claim is a job position as a "middle management type". But perhaps PayPal never educated their "middle management types" on how to properly spell the corporation's name that is written on every company document and that provided their paychecks. HINT: There is no hyphen!

Could be fake (that'd be my guess). Could be legit. Who can tell?

Re:PayPal problems

[truesaer]

I know one guy in which his business was bilked out of about $20,000. He simply had the misfortune of dealing with a person that used a stolen credit card number. When the fraud was exposed, the card issuer sued him to recover the money. I haven't talked to him lately, last I heard he said that he'd probably have to file for bankrupcy and lose his business.

Sounds like a good reason for businesses to carry insurance for such contingencies. Its certainely not Visa's responsibility to cover the fradulent charge...businesses need to verify the identity of people who buy from them. If there are large amounts involved like this, greater lengths need to be taken. Most businesses require a credit application to be filed with business and banking references even if you intend to pay by credit card.

The final failsafe is your business insurance. Pay a thousand dollar dedictible to get yourself off the hook in the unlikely event that you still are scammed.

Re:PayPal problems

[Mr Guy]

For a demonstration observe:

I am the current owner of PayPal. I am also the owner of PayPalsucks.org. I also run all the crime in the United States from my secret lair that I keep in a box in my garage. I would take all your money, but it's better for me if you keep it in PayPal or any bank (because I control them all). To prove my power to you, go to any ATM and try to withdraw money. I will charge you $1.00 to prove I'm really in charge. The ATM may charge you up to an additional $1.50 as a show of support to me.

I think that Paypal is the bestest service ever in the whole wide world, and I should know, because I own the whole wide world.

Re:PayPal problems

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had 2 paypal accounts over 4 years.

When you feel you have been ripped off, you notify paypal. They freeze the other users account for like 2 weeks until they respond to paypal, or make restitution.

I haved used this twice, the last to keep from getting bilked 300 bucks. You be suprised how fast the established user will come up with your goods under the threat.

The reason for the freeze at the time is to try and save whatever dough they can for the poor sucker who may be getting ripped off.

Thats why they tell you to keep receipts, etc, cause if your account is froze and you cant prove you did something, refunded something, sent something, etc, then paypal is gonna make you do it if they can.

I sing the praises of paypal who have annoyed me many times, PAYPAL PAYPAL PAYPAL

Re:PayPal problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Many merchants, or to be more specific, checkpersons, do seem to have a problem with verifying the identity of the person using the card.

On my card, where it says "Signature", I wrote, "See Driver's Licence". Quite a few places never asked once to see my ID, and I find that quite distressing. Until they do, stolen credit cards are going to remain a big business.

This entirely begs the question of online purchases. How do you verify someone's identity there?

Re:PayPal problems

[stanmann]

And since freenet enables some or all of these things it was reasonable for paypal to cut them off. It was even more reasonable to give them their money.

and the kicker is k which covers anything that might be suspicious or just plain rude.

Re:PayPal problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, this is not correct at all for Internet merchants or MOTO (mail order / tel. order), which are grouped as "Card not present" transactions. For these, at least AMEX will immediately give back everything to a customer once the customer phones in. The merchant is screwed. They call this "full recourse."

Re:PayPal problems

[GooberToo]

That's because the entire industry is not really setup to stop fraud. Not at all. They are, however, setup to detect, catch, and prosecute fraud. They are slowing inching toward measures to prevent fraud but sadly, merchants usually do not do their share. So, it makes it really hard for the industry to shift when the guys on the front line don't wat to do the most basic of things to help themselves.

Re:PayPal problems

[GooberToo]

err....when I said, "stop fraud", I really meant, "prevent fraud".

Re:PayPal problems

[hesiod]

> by Mr Guy
> I also run all the crime in the United States from my secret lair

That explains a lot. All along we were blaming "The Man," but it was, in fact, "Mr Guy." It's all becoming clearer...

Re:PayPal problems

[GooberToo]

This is why mail order merchants pay the highest discount rates because there is so much fraud associated with it.

There are also some minor tidbits which you are leaving out from the above situation.

Paypal has had a long history...

[NightWulf]

of screwing over companies. Personally I don't trust the company at all. http://consumeraffairs.com/online/paypal_02.html is the consumer reports complaints page on the many problems paypal has given "customers". Caveat Paypal!

Re:Paypal has had a long history...

[adzoox]

Look up any better business bureau report for almost any company - if you based your shopping habits on this fact alone - you'd never shop anywhere.

Paypal also has a long history of being business saviour and small business boom tool. Paypal has a long history of neing an easy way to donate to causes quickly - many many noble causes.

Just because people don't make a site paypalisthebestthingsinceslicedbread.com doesn't mean they are all bad.

It is the ONLY way I accept credit cards for eBay auctions. I sell 200+ items a month 75%+ pay with paypal 50% of those paying with credit cards. A merchant account (which places liability on me) is more costly and requires an ENORMOUS upfront cost - plus the funds are not nearly as instanteously mine.

I have to be sent a check from a merchant account, I have the money on a spendable debit card as soon the money is deposited at paypal.

Re:Paypal has had a long history...

[Txiasaeia]

Yeah, but compare the good-to-bad ratio of Paypal to, say, Amazon.com. Just because you're huge, doesn't mean you need to be a customer relations disaster.

Re:Paypal has had a long history...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apples to oranges. Amazon is a standard business, they sell merchandise and they're directly responsible. PayPal is the web equivalent of a merchant service. Pretty much anyone can just hop in and start doing business through them.

What I'm saying is that when you have so many people from any walk of life, you're going to get a high volume of garbage. They need to compensate for that in some less than friendly ways. Not advocating them or overlooking their crap, but anyone (or company) who deals with so much bullshit is likely to: 1) have a strict policy, 2) make mistakes. They could be worse and they aren't.

Re:Paypal has had a long history...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Caveat Paypal" means "Let PayPal beware!", not "Beware of Paypal," which would be "Cave Paypal."

Re:Paypal has had a long history...

[Txiasaeia]

I'm going to have to disagree with you here. Their policies are draconian, as evidenced by the fact that they refuse to have anything to do with Freenet, even as little as holding some funds for them.

"Amazon is a standard business, they sell merchandise and they're directly responsible." Not true. They have a network of used product sellers ("Buy it used!") over whom they have little to no control. Amazon still has an excellent rep, Paypal doesn't.

"Pretty much anyone can just hop in and start doing business through them." Exactly, you just pop in a credit card number, pay for shipping, and you'll get your book/dvd/whatever in a few days... oh, you meant PayPal!

"What I'm saying is that when you have so many people from any walk of life, you're going to get a high volume of garbage." You've just described the customers for every single online business. What makes PayPal so special?

"Not advocating them or overlooking their crap, but anyone (or company) who deals with so much bullshit is likely to: 1) have a strict policy, 2) make mistakes. They could be worse and they aren't." Have you read PayPalSucks? They *are* worse.

Re:Paypal has had a long history...

[Tough Love]

I'm going to have to disagree with you here. Their policies are draconian, as evidenced by the fact that they refuse to have anything to do with Freenet, even as little as holding some funds for them.

Good job, you almost make Paypal sound reputable. However Paypal's normal modus operandus is to hold other people's money hostage, far from refusing to hold it, they typically refuse to give it back to its rightful owner (e.g., the bank account it came from in the first place). I have had first hand experience of this and apparently so have many thousands of others.

Re:Paypal has had a long history...

[ValourX]

I smell a PayPal astroturfer.

PayPal screwed me out of money. I sold a computer to someone and it was slightly damaged during shipping. Rather than call me about it, the guy called PayPal who told him that they could do nothing about it. So then he called me and we resolved it... I shipped him a new one, he sent the old one back, I got credit for it and in the end I was out the shipping fees and nothing more. Except that PayPal froze my account because the customer called them. That was last fall, and my PayPal account with all of the money I had in there is still frozen to this day.

Now I suppose you're going to accuse me of working for PayPal's competition? I find it more likely that you are a PayPal astroturfer. If you're not, let me buy something from you and I will show you how the wrath of PayPal can ruin your business.

-Jem

Re:bashing paypal

[Omnifarious]

You obviously didn't RTFA.

why?

[Anonymous Coward]

why do people put up with this crap?

i refuse to get paypal for the simple reason that one small complaint (which paypal won't divulge) can lead to them freezing potentially thousands of dollars.

they are NOT a bank, and don't need to be accountable! yet they offer bank like services...

Re:why?

[arazor]

After all these reports of complaints why are people still letting their money "sit" in paypal. I mean soon as money gets deposited in my account I withdraw it, granted Im not a large operation. But couldnt these groups withdraw fund at least once a day to minimize the damage of paypal "freezing" an account.

Just my opinion...

--
I'm going to support Kerry right until I vote against him on November 2

Re:why?

[derF024]

After all these reports of complaints why are people still letting their money "sit" in paypal.

Because every business gets people who are unhappy with the service, and those people are *always* the most vocal. A happy customer tells, on average, 4 people about a good experience. An unhappy customer tells, on average, 10. I've gotten nothing but good, reliable service from paypal, and so has everyone I know who uses paypal. I'm not going to run off and register "paypalrocks.com", though.

Now, why do I leave money in my paypal account? Because I earn around 3 times the interest on my paypal account versus my bank account, and paypal gives me 1.5% cash back whenever I take money out of the account. Paypal's web interface is also leaps and bounds ahead of my bank's web interface and it's always more up-to-date.

I like freenet, I think it's a good project, and I'm not too happy with paypal for pulling a stunt like this, but to tell you the truth, my real banks (I've been with 3) have done much worse. My current banks (Fleet, and a local credit union) send me junk postal mail faster than I can dump it in the garbage, and all of it has sensitive information on it that makes me wary of just throwing it away. My previous bank (Citibank) would habitually make "mistakes" and deposit my money into someone else's account.

Re:why?

[farnz]

I've had trouble with Paypal, despite not using them; someone managed to convince them to put my credit card onto their account, thus forcing me to keep charging back via my card company. After 3 months of arguing with Paypal, my card issuer and I took things to the police. Suddenly, Paypal had a human being who could call me, and who had read all the e-mail I'd sent, and who realised that they were doing something wrong. Amazing!

Re:why?

[derF024]

I've had trouble with Paypal, despite not using them; someone managed to convince them to put my credit card onto their account, thus forcing me to keep charging back via my card company.

So your credit card was stolen, and you didn't want to cancel it, so you screwed the people who were losing money because of it? If, instead of paypal, the person who stole your credit card had gone to Best Buy and bought thousands of dollars in electronics, would you be saying "Best buy tried to steal money from me, even though I've never shopped there"?!

If someone had enough information to add your credit card to paypal (full CC#, expiration date, CVN and billing zip code), they had enough information to do tons more with it. As soon as the first charge showed up on your account, you should have called your credit card company, reversed the charge, and cancelled your card.

Re:why?

[farnz]

I did. This didn't stop Paypal charging it, and trying to pass the charges onto me.

If it had stopped being an issue once I'd got a new card and cancelled the old one, I'd not be so upset. However, Paypal insisted, right up until the police got involved with them, that I had authorised the charges, and that they could continue to charge my account via my old card, which had been cancelled 3 months earlier, and that I should pay those charges.

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I swear if I could remember my /. nick, I would add you to my list of favs...

All that based on just the sig used...

Too freaking funny sig..

Their call, but a borderline one...

[LostCluster]

This is eBay's house, they get to set the rules.

Since their takeover of the company, PayPal's free-wheeling days abruptly ended. PayPal can no longer be used to fund online gambling of any kind, it can't even be used to fund porn of any kind.

Now, online gambling is of questionable legality in all fifty states and many other places in the world where real gambling is prohibited or heavily restricted. However, most forms of pornography are legal in nearly all parts of the world except where the government is heavily controled by religious influence.

Here in the USA, the government's nowhere close to banning porn.

I think eBay's concern is keeping the PayPal name from being soiled by anything contraversial becase if anybody says "Boycott PayPal... they're helping fund Thing X!", then that indirectly means a boycott of eBay.

Re:Their call, but a borderline one...

[Rick Zeman]

Now, online gambling is of questionable legality in all fifty states and many other places in the world where real gambling is prohibited or heavily restricted.

Questionable legality? Isn't it totally illegal which is why unfair trade practices complaints were filed against the US by the fleabag offshore casino operators in Costa Rica and other such countries?

Re:Their call, but a borderline one...

[LordK3nn3th]

Don't be too sure about that.

Re:Their call, but a borderline one...

[forgetmenot]

Eeehh... so what's your point exactly? They don't allow porn... because porn isn't banned in the US or anywhere else... consequently they're afraid of being boycotted for funding some... thing....

Whatever.

Anyway I seriously doubt they're afraid of boycotts. What large company is, in this day and age? The world has been conquered my friend. The general public doesn't care enough about anything anymore and they don't boycott anything anymore because everyone wants to have their cake and eat it. If boycotts worked then Monsanto would be bankrupt, Tibet would be free, and there would be no ducks with oil-soaked feathers.

The only thing they're afraid of is not attracting investors, and investors want a "sure thing" with little to no risk and nothing that looks like it will attract legal attention. And THAT is why PayPal doesn't fund online-vice and open source projects which could 'potentially' enable said vice.

Re:Their call, but a borderline one...

[Usagi_yo]

Pay pals name was way soiled before Ebay bought them.

Online gambling *is* illegal in the U.S, and paypal still sucks.

Paypal and Ebay are a wrapped service. Meaning they now get to take a cut from both ends of the trade, the payment method and the trade method. These fees, though seemingly cheap are really expensive in terms of % of sales for what I was selling -- mmorpg items.

I won't go into detail about the whole story, but somebody charged back a $90 item after delivery and you figure Ebay and Paypal together could investigate it, but no. Ebay didn't care and Paypal charged me extra for the charge back, including the transfer fee. Items weren't covered because they were mmorpg items.

Re:Their call, but a borderline one...

[DAldredge]

Porn has a much higher rate of charge backs than do other forms of internet commerce.

Re:Their call, but a borderline one...

[zarthrag]

Here in the USA, the government's nowhere close to banning porn.

You must not live in Oklahoma! :P

Re:Their call, but a borderline one...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is."

True, but replace "on Slashdot" with "in the USA" for a more general truth.

Re:Their call, but a borderline one...

[LordK3nn3th]

Well, Christians have done similar things, but not actually yell "-1, Troll!"...

Paypal has the right

[bersl2]

to determine with whom they do business. As long as they send Freenet the balance and don't steal, I see nothing (catastrophically) wrong with this.

Re:Paypal has the right

[Omnifarious]

Yes, but if every bank said "We don't like you, you don't believe in capitalism." and refused to give you an account, wouldn't there be something very wrong going on?

Re:Paypal has the right

[Entropius]

They do have that right legally; there is nothing legally wrong with it. However, it's up to individuals to determine whether something's ethically wrong with it and determine whether they dislike Paypal for it.

If I own a store, there's nothing stopping me from refusing to serve people with tongue piercings. There's also nothing wrong with people who sympathise with the tongue-pierced from boycotting or criticising* my store.

That whole vote-with-your-dollars principle that's put forth by capitalist theorists as a way of enforcing business ethics? It only works if you do it.

*As long as they don't run afoul of slander/libel laws...

Re:Paypal has the right

[Anonymous Coward]

the problem is paypal will keep the balance..

They have been freezing money of "suspicious" accounts for years.

Re:Paypal has the right

[ActiveSX]

Since when was PayPal a bank?

Re:Paypal has the right

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, give a bad name to Anonymous Cowards everywhere.

Re:Paypal has the right

[Omnifarious]

You're a troll, and an idiot. But...

Drug laws and copyright law both require a police state to enforce. In fact, most consensual crime laws require a police state to enforce. If no party involved wants to report the crime because they don't feel wronged, that requires the police to come around, looking for things and poking their noses into people's private business because otherwise they'll never learn the law has been broken.

Re:Paypal has the right

[edp]

"Paypal has the right to determine with whom they do business."

I do not understand the thinking behind statements like this. What is your point? There is no dispute that a right exists. However, that has nothing to do with whether it is behavior we wish to encourage or discourage or whether the behavior is good or bad for us.

If a company makes a policy we think is harmful to interests we want to promote, why shouldn't we criticize it, even boycott it? The fact that the company has a right to do what it does is not a reason for us to remain silent and do nothing.

If Jane opens a new restaurant and serves only foods loaded with things that are bad for you (and loaded in gross disproportion to any benefit, such as good taste), she has a right to do that, and I have a right, and it is a good idea, for me to avoid that restaurant. It is also a good idea for me to advise my friends to avoid the restaurant.

The fact that somebody has a right to do something means we should not use force to stop them. It does not mean we should not use other means to discourage them.

Re:Paypal has the right

[br00tus]

How can Paypal have rights, Paypal is a fucking COMPANY. It's sheets of paper and a stock prospectus. When people start thinking a non-living entity like Paypal can have "rights", you start seeing how people think how people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time who wind up in Abu Ghraib no longer have rights. That so many people argue for rights for these legal constructs controlled by a tiny elite (the wealthiest 1% or so), and on the other hand argue that so-called "illegal combatants" on Guantanamo Bay (a military base the US has in a country that has officially asked the US to leave) have no rights (or even Americans like Jose Padilla), you can see how degenerate the mentality of some in the US has become, especially among some of the white collar workers.

Re:Paypal has the right

[Omnifarious]

If it looks like a bank, and it quacks like a bank, it's a bank. I don't care what the courts say it is.

Re:Paypal has the right

[davidstrauss]

How can Paypal have rights, Paypal is a fucking COMPANY.

U.S. law considers companies non-natural persons, which have almost all the inherent rights of a natrual person. It's not extremism. It's reality.

Re:Paypal has the right

[spiritraveller]

Welcome to America, where immortal nonhuman entities have the same rights as human beings.

Jesus, it sounds like the Matrix doesn't it?

Re:Paypal has the right

[0racle]

Stars look like little candle lights, twinkle and flicker like little candle lights, they're little candle lights. I don't care what science says.

Paypal isn't a bank, they never said they were a bank, and if the courts say its not a bank, well guess what, no matter how you slice it, its not a bank.

Re:Paypal has the right

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because something exists in reality doesn't mean it's not extremist.
Ref. Taliban.

Re:Paypal has the right

[br00tus]

It's not "reality"...the "U.S." is yet another non-sentinent entity. What you're saying is one entity recognizes the existence of another entity. It's like saying my clock recognizes the existence of my toaster. In fact what you're saying is even more vague, as the Ebay corporation and the US government are both not tangible, like my clock is.

Re:Paypal has the right

[statusbar]

Go see The Corporation and find out how and when corporations got to be seperate legal entities with the same rights as a human.

--jeff++

Re:Paypal has the right

[3263827]

Geez, what happened, did you forget to equate the US with the Nazis while you were typing? It's a bit of a stretch to link the idea of "corporate entities" to what happened at Abu Ghraib. But wait, I forgot. You're probably one of the folks who thinks that we should try to understand "Why they hate us."

Re:Paypal has the right

[Omnifarious]

In what way aren't they a bank other than the label you (and the courts) have chosen to apply to them?

Your analogy about stars is also incorrect because the word 'bank' is a label we apply to a human institution that performs certain functions. We didn't create the stars. They exist independently of what labels or things we decide about them.

Re:Paypal has the right

[davidstrauss]

It's not "reality"...the "U.S." is yet another non-sentinent entity.

By your standard (the U.S. isn't tangible, and thus, its legal recognition of entities is irrelevent), no laws have any force. Do you pay your parking tickets? If you do, you're recognizing the government's recognition of the local law enforcement agency. Do you pay your taxes? Same thing. The IRS is just another entity recognized by the government. Finally, do you use cash? Its value is primarily based on the government's recognition of it.

Re:Paypal has the right

[NonSequor]

Let's rephrase things. The people who operate Paypal have the right to decide whom they do business with.

Re:Paypal has the right

[br00tus]

It is not a stretch at all to link Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Jose Padilla, and the legal statements that the Geneva convention does not have to be followed, that Jose Padilla, an American citizen, does not deserve a trial and can be detained indefinitely by the state if it so wishes to (destroying the Fifth Amendment write to habeas corpus ("nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"), and see a pattern of denying national and international rights to humans, and then on the other hand seeing rights given and extended ("intellectual property") to intangible legal entities.

As far as why "they" hate "us" - considering myself as a worker, and the people ordering the attacks on Iraq (and Haiti, and sending "military aid" to Colombia and Israel and everywhere else) as members or flunkies of the idle class; and after looking at Abu Ghraib, the CIA role in overthrowing democratic Chile, El Mozote, the CIA role in overthrowing Mossadegah in Iran, the mining of Nicaragua's harbors, the Vietnam war, the "secret bombing" of Cambodia, the billions in arms to Israel, Colombia, the war in Iraq, the recent invasion of Haiti and so on and so forth, all while on the day Pat Tillman was killed him sahring the NY Times cover with a GI who came home from Iraq - on welfare...the US idle class elites making a class war on the workers at home and against the working people of the world abroad, I certainly find myself in the "they" category, and the parasitical idle class elite, and perhaps you, depending on your allegiance, in the "us" category. My "us" is with the working class, not the idle class, which is a synonym for US foreign policy which is barbaric, terroristic and monstrous, and which I am quite unfortunately financing through my tax dollars. My only satisfaction is knowing one day, like Louis XVI or Tsar Nicholas II, the Paris Hiltons of the world will get their comeuppance.

Re:Paypal has the right

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, to start with, they're not required to follow the regulations that a bank is. Also, your account with them isn't federally insured up to $100,000 as it would be in a bank account. Those seem like pretty gigantic differences to me.

Re:Paypal has the right

[Anonymous Coward]

That whole vote-with-your-dollars principle...

In Homeland America the dollars vote for you.

Re:Paypal has the right

[spectre_240sx]

So basically they're a bank that's figured out a way to weasle out of the rules regarding banks and the need for insurance.

Re:Paypal has the right

[shaitand]

"Finally, do you use cash? Its value is primarily based on the government's recognition of it."

Unfortunately your right on that one, once upon a time it was actually backed by gold and silver and it's primary purpose was to be easier to carry. Those days are long gone, we don't even have enough assets total to cover all the cash floating around, let alone enough gold and silver.

Re:Paypal has the right

[SEE]

And that non-living entity made up of sheets of paper and a stock prospectus -- that legal construct -- doesn't do anything. At all. It never acts on its own.

Rather, people do things. Their agreements among themselves on how the group will act is written down in those papers, but that doesn't change the fact that all the actions are by people, who have all the rights of people. The corporation-as-person-with-rights is merely a convenient abstraction that simplifies the problems of dealing with large groups of people working together.

Re:Paypal has the right

[Anonymous Coward]

Paypal has the right to determine with whom they do business. As long as they send Freenet the balance and don't steal, I see nothing (catastrophically) wrong with this.

Would you say the same if they had cancelled someone's account for coming out as a gay?

Would you say the same if they had cancelled someone's account for being black?

Would you say the same if they had cancelled someone's account for criticising the government?

Unless the answer to all three questions is "yes" - in which case I would be sorely tempted to lose the argument in accordance with Godwin's law - then you do not even believe the claim you're making yourself.

Re:Paypal has the right

[SpaceJunkie]

Umm - they in fact end up having more rights- as corporations can and do often afford better lawyers than individuals. The coroporate entity given rights like a human is a very sinister development in the history of the western world - and one that we are slowly, but surely coming to regret very much. How long is it before companies get to actually vote?

Re:Paypal has the right

[Anonymous Coward]

If I own a store, there's nothing stopping me from refusing to serve people with tongue piercings. There's also nothing wrong with people who sympathise with the tongue-pierced from boycotting or criticising* my store.

Interesting, I didn't realize that yet.

Mind you, this is certainly NOT true for all countries; for example the Dutch Constitution forbids discrimination. Roughly translated the first ammendmend says "everyone present in the Netherlands are treated equally".

Btw, I personally don't think the Dutch Constitution is as well written as the US one, but that feeling stems mainly from ambuigity.

Re:Paypal has the right

[MyHair]

As long as they send Freenet the balance and don't steal, I see nothing (catastrophically) wrong with this.

One point most people in this discussion seem to be missing is that all the subscription donations are now terminated. That is to say that Freenet's income/cash flow from Paypal is now terminated. I don't know what percentage of their donations come from Paypal, but I suspect it was their bread-and-butter stream of money to pay the developers.

I expect most adults to realize that they won't come close recovering that revenue stream anytime soon. It's not like all their subscribers will immediately find another way to contribute. A significant portion will either not take the time to re-pledge or won't notice that the subscription stopped. Even if Paypal were to reinstate Freenet the subscriptions couldn't (I assume) be auto-reinstated and not all contributors would immediately resubscribe.

That doesn't necessarily change the issue of whether or not Paypal has a right to terminate or if it's bad business to do so, but the point needs to be made that this really hurts the Freenet Project, and if I were a software project or other entity that relied heavily on subscribed donations or a business that relied on paid subscriptions I would want to learn more about why Paypal cut off Freenet and determine whether I would want to rely on Paypal for my enterprise.

Re:Paypal has the right

[LifesABeach]

"If I own a store, there's nothing stopping me"

uhmmmm; consider this senario:

I'm your landlord that you pay rent to. This morning I put a Padlock on your front door. And tell you that I'm mailing a check to you for the balance of the rent not used. Oh, and by the way, if you don't like it, so what. I'm Paypal, and your not.

Re:bashing paypal

[Anonymous Coward]

mod me down if you wish

You know, I would have, but then you reminded me.

Contact Paypal

[Lehk228]

From the Freenet page

If you are concerned about whether your account might be at risk due to your political opinions you may wish to speak to their PR contact Hani Durzy at (408) 376 7458. If you are an investor and you would like to see what other political opinions Paypal doesn't like, you may want to speak to their Investor contact Tracey Ford at (408) 376 7205.

Re:Contact Paypal

[catch23]

I made my contribution to the Freenet political movement by calling that number and leaving a polite voicemail about my concerns. Others should do the same! We can slashdot a voice mailbox!

I left a message at Hani Durzy's voicemail box... the number leads directly there since he's out of office...

Re:Contact Paypal

[Anonymous Coward]

I called and asked why Freenet.org gets the boot but anymoviez.com and anygamez.com which sell pirated movies over the internet for $11/mo do not. Completely unfair. Fuck PayPal.

Re:Contact Paypal

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice karma whoring. Let me try:

From the Freenet page

If you are concerned about whether your account might be at risk due to your political opinions you may wish to speak to their PR contact Hani Durzy at (408) 376 7458. If you are an investor and you would like to see what other political opinions Paypal doesn't like, you may want to speak to their Investor contact Tracey Ford at (408) 376 7205.

--
Two Lights intertwined eternally
Not even Time itself
Can Tear them Apart

Yeah, what he said. Just like what FREENET SAID.
--
Can't think for myself
Anti-Slash could not help me
I stole this Haiku

Paypal can do what they please

[Roland Piquepaille]

Paypal isn't a bank, it isn't FDIC-insured, and doesn't have any kind of the obligations normal banks have toward their customers. They're been freezing/witholding/cancelling accounts willy-nilly ever since they started. Nothing new here. The only interesting bit is that they probably want to detach their names from the Freenet name, that sort of reeks of piracy, RIAA suits and kiddy porn. Basically, it's a bunch of verified pirates trying to not be associated with a piracy activity tool. Amusing...

Re:Paypal can do what they please

[whoever57]

Paypal isn't a bank, it isn't FDIC-insured, and doesn't have any kind of the obligations normal banks have toward their customers.

I became very concerned about PayPal when they changes their terms to clarify that they are not a bank.

However, they act like a bank, isn't there any rule or law under which they could be forced to register as a bank?

Re:Paypal can do what they please

[TykeClone]

I agree there - they act as a bank in that they hold funds and pay interest (through a mutual fund). They should abide by Reg E for electronic funds transfer, as well as the rest of the regulations that all other banks operate under.

That wouldn't stop the bitching, though. From what it sounds like, much of what is going on is PayPal's attempts to stop money laundering and perceived fraud. Sounds like they could make a better effort at investigating disputes.

Re:Paypal can do what they please

[Anonymous Coward]

And further,.. this BILL OF RIGHTS, BAH its just a tool for theives and no-good-nicks! Especially Freedom of Speach, it lets all sorts of people write stupid things in public with out asking ME first! For example just the other day I was reading ...
THIS

Re:Paypal can do what they please

[dj245]

Paypal isn't a bank, it isn't FDIC-insured, and doesn't have any kind of the obligations normal banks have toward their customers.

Absolutely true. However they do issue some sort of debit card. Doesn't that make them a bank? I know that actions have been taken against them for acting like a bank and not actually being one before. I think they were fined. Maybe some stronger action needs to be taken

Re:Paypal can do what they please

[Anonymous Coward]

However, they act like a bank, isn't there any rule or law under which they could be forced to register as a bank?

The day you are forced to use their service is the day they will be forced to register as a bank - I wouldn't hold your breath.

Sad, but unsurprising....

[King_TJ]

PayPal has grown increasingly hostile towards anyone accepting payments via their service if they do anything "out of the ordinary". Not long ago, I heard about a woman complaining because her PayPal account was suspended after she accepted donations to help keep her "size acceptance" web site going. (PayPal seemed to be afraid it was pornography-related in some way, since you had a female collecting money from her personal web site.) In reality, she was trying to boost the self-esteem of overweight women and let them know about events where they could meet guys interested in larger women.

They're also scared of anyone or any business that doesn't provide full disclosure of their whereabouts (complete address, phone/contact numbers, and so on). To put it in perspective though, don't forget they're just one of the arms of eBay nowdays - so their primary interest is simply being a facilitator for their own auction buyers and sellers to complete transactions. If you even so much as look vaguely like you do things in a similar way to eBay auction scammers, you'll get cut off in an instant.

Re:Sad, but unsurprising....

[nacturation]

Wonderful anecdote. Too bad there isn't a +/-1 Anecdotal Evidence mod.

Re:Sad, but unsurprising....

[LostCluster]

PayPal is no longer the best vendor to use if your transactions are not happening on eBay...

- If you're taking donations on the web, Amazon.com has a much friendlier service going.

- If you're running a porn site, there's subscription billing companies designed especially for you out there.

- If you're running a low-volume e-store that's not using eBay, you're best positioning yourself on Yahoo Shopping or a simlar storefront-providing network.

- Large volume stores should be handling their own credit card transactions. Contact your favorite bank.

Re:Sad, but unsurprising....

[Anonymous Coward]

For subscriptions of all kinds (including [legal] pr0n) check out these guys, situated in Netherland. www.verotel.com. I use them for several adult sites. Used them for about 2 years, never a problem!

Good luck!

Re:Sad, but unsurprising....

[Anonymous Coward]

> If you're taking donations on the web, Amazon.com has a much friendlier service going

Not at all. It takes about 10 times more in commission than does PayPal. For a smaller operation, PayPal is much more reasonable in its fee structure.

Re:Sad, but unsurprising....

[RTMFD]

...overweight women and let them know about events where they could meet guys interested in larger women.

Ahh, a "chubby-chaser" convention. I wonder why they didn't want to be associated with this?

Re:Sad, but unsurprising....

[Kris_J]

To put it in perspective though, don't forget they're just one of the arms of eBay nowdays

Does anyone remember that PayPal was originally about small PDA-to-PDA payments, such as for splitting up the bill at the restaurant? Since they gave that up, has anyone else tried to fill the void?

Re:Sad, but unsurprising....

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, amazon takes a pretty big chunk of your domations. Plus, more people have paypal accounts than have amazon accounts.

Re:Sad, but unsurprising....

[orthogonal]

In reality, she was trying to boost the self-esteem of overweight women and let them know about events where they could meet guys interested in larger women.

Guys who are interested in "larger women" can find them in any chat room.

In fact, that, and "larger" women pretending to be petite women, and other guys pretending to be petite women, is about all you can find in chat rooms. :)

Re:Sad, but unsurprising....

[kubrick]

In fact, that, and "larger" women pretending to be petite women, and other guys pretending to be petite women, is about all you can find in chat rooms. :)

I think you've left out FBI agents pretending to be underage girls.

Re:Sad, but unsurprising....

[kryptkpr]

- If you're taking donations on the web, Amazon.com has a much friendlier service going.
a) They take lots in comission,
b) Most of my donations come from SourceForge projects.. SF uses Paypal.

- If you're running a low-volume e-store that's not using eBay, you're best positioning yourself on Yahoo Shopping or a simlar storefront-providing network.
Have you seen how much Yahoo Shopping charges for even a basic account!?

The reason we all use paypal is partly because it's convenient, and mostly because its' CHEAP. A hell of a lot cheaper then any of the alternatives. You get what you pay for.

I never let my paypal account go above $100, as I don't trust them. If you're making any kind of money, then you shouldn't be using PayPal.. but if you're just making a little bit on the side, you simply have no choice.

Re:bashing paypal

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thrown into being part of a scheme whereas some individual would transfer $2000 in to my account, then transfer $1500 out (account was "hacked") and then they never took the time to figure out what was going on. Then, the $2000 credit was revoked by PayPal and I was left with $1500 which they insisted I pay.

I blocked them from my bank account, wrote a letter to the President of PayPal, and have never used it since. It's a shame - it was a good service while it lasted.

I have never liked their business practices, but I can't say I wouldn't like to see them suffer a little.

Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/subst/fx/home.htm l/103-2120026-1757409

ok thx bye!

Re:Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

to be more proper,

http://www.amazon.com/honor/

This isn't paypals first

[Anonymous Coward]

Paypal has been known to do stupid stuff like this in the past. Sites like http://www.paypalsucks.com and http://www.trashcity.org/ARTICLES/PAYPAL.HTM tell horror stories of accounts being frozen for unknown reasons leaving hundreds and thousands of dollars locked out. They have also been known to give the runaround to people trying to get their money back.

Re:This isn't paypals first

[Anonymous Coward]

You should have claimed this comment I would have modded it up. I made this suggestion to the site owner - (paypalsucks.com) - my IP was banned

this is GOOD news.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Because Freenet was going the wrong way for the last year and a half - from a promising open source project with great importance to the comunity it had degenerated into a ploy to keep Matthew Toseland, a mediocre developer employed and paid.

Many other Freenet developers left because of mr. Toseland's inability to tolerate difference in opinion, egotism and overal attitude problems. Under his influence, Freenet took the path of the closed source projects - pump out new features, do not debug existing ones, do not provide support, all for the single goal of profit.

I'm glad Paypal did this, in the long run it will be better for Freenet. For now, please do not donate anything until Ian Clarke takes charge of his own project and mends the situation.

Re:this is GOOD news.

[cujo_1111]

What is stopping Ian Clarke from forking the project and running with it himself?

If it really is his project then he should have no problems doing this.

Re:this is GOOD news.

[ShaunC]

Under his influence, Freenet took the path of the closed source projects - pump out new features, do not debug existing ones, do not provide support, all for the single goal of profit.

You clearly haven't been following Freenet latley. Debugging old problems is _all_ that's been going on for the last month. Two major insertion bugs were recently fixed, one that's apparently been around for years. Bugs in the next-gen routing system are being fixed almost daily. Releases are being pumped out like they're going out of style.

And profit? Are you out of your fucking mind? Toad makes the equivalent of US$1500/month. He could earn more working at McDonald's. Twice within the last six months, the project has had to send out pleas for donations just to afford to pay him that much... And now PayPal, in its infinite wisdom, has gone and screwed the project out of - at the very least - the time it's going to take to find a new method of accepting donations.

Re:this is GOOD news.

[Anonymous Coward]

Obvious flamebait, but I suggest people read the mailing list archives (e.g. http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.devel) and decide for themselves. Toad is *not* egotistical, works well with other volunteer coders, and has achieved a lot of good work relative to the pittance he's paid.

Re:this is GOOD news.

[shaitand]

Explain to me again why the project can't continue without donations in the meantime?

Is there anyone who actually volunteers to work on this project WITHOUT getting paid?

Re:this is GOOD news.

[ShaunC]

Explain to me again why the project can't continue without donations in the meantime?

Because no independently wealthy, talented Java programmer with a lot of free time on his hands has stepped forward. If you know of one, I imagine that the Freenet folks would love to hear from him. Freenet doesn't have the benefits of a userbase, developer pool, or audience anywhere near the size of the larger, more "popular" OSS projects out there. Thus, it has to make do with the developer resources it has.

Is there anyone who actually volunteers to work on this project WITHOUT getting paid?

Not on a full-time basis, at least not that I know of. (I'm just a user, not a developer.) There are a handful of frequent contributors, but they can't devote a lot of time. Usually someone will spot a bug, one of the contributors will edit a few lines of code to fix the problem, and commit to CVS.

Toad, the lead coder for Freenet, does most of the heavy lifting. He's doing it as a full-time job, and for what he's earning, some among us would probably consider it volunteering.

Not polititcs, but staying out of politcs.

[LostCluster]

eBay's clear modus operandi for PayPal ever since they got their hands on it is "high availablity". They made sure PayPal got out of any and all questionably legal transactions, and even those that might cause credible anti-something groups to declare a boycott of PayPal.

The reason for eBay's aquisition of the business clearly wasn't because they thought PayPal would be profitable. However, they saw a problem as the money transfer services of the web's free-wheeling days started to fall... if PayPal were ever to shut down for any reason, eBay's transaction volume would suddenly pulmet with it, wiping out eBay too. They bought it to make sure nothing funny happens with it.

Freenet seems to have steped over the line of things eBay doesn't want to see. It's not that they did anything eBay thinks itself is wrong... they're scared of anything any politically active group might call wrong leading to boycotts. Hello, ??AAs...

Re:Not polititcs, but staying out of politcs.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

they're scared of anything any politically active group might call wrong leading to boycotts.

So, the answer is simple -- We should organize a mass boycott of paypal for being such a bunch of pussies!

Re:Not polititcs, but staying out of politcs.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as "staying out of politics", because silence is political. And ending peoples accounts is VERY political.

It's like sayig "I don't date black people because I am staying out of race politics". What a load of shit, everything is political, and if you don't act against the status quo, you are acting for it through your silence.

Paypal Warning

[eraser.cpp]

This website was established because of paypal doing this kind of crap.

previous story

[Coneasfast]

here is a previous story on paypal NY lawsuit

Re:bashing paypal

[radicalskeptic]

I've never dealt with Paypal, but some of the stories over at PaypalWarning.com are pretty scary. Apparently Paypal has a habit of freezing accounts with almost no reason given, then sitting on the accounts which have hundreds of dollars tied up in them. Some of the stories also explain that it is nearly impossible to clear up the problem promptly, and that the best way to get your account unfrozen is to say you're going to complain to the Better Business Bureau or your local district attorney. Of course most of the stories I read were from two or three years ago. Maybe they've changed.

What an incredible suprise

[RoderickMcDougall]

I mean its not like.. http://www.paypalsucks.com http://www.paypalwarning.com http://www.paypalalert.com http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/paypal.html etc etc..

Re:What an incredible suprise

[adzoox]

Paypalsucks.com is sponsored by Paypal's competition. Anyone who disagrees with the moderator has their IP address blocked from entering the site. Most thos that post are spazz freaks who couldn't handle a normal transaction anyway.

An eye opener about PaypalSucks.com

Re:What an incredible suprise

[RoderickMcDougall]

Paypal sucks has been around for years, how long has this cow thing been going ? Only I don't remember seeing it on their site years earlier.

Re:What an incredible suprise

[RoderickMcDougall]

Furthermore that article is poorly written with little to no cohesiveness to it atall. You don't seem to address much atall other than the fact that you have had an ok time with paypal. Why is suprising that a site that condemns a poor service takes the time to advertise another? Like I said, look into the history of that site and I think you will find it wasn't always like that, it was not established to generate income. Why do you have a problem with them generating revenue to pay for the site?

Re:What an incredible suprise

[adzoox]

The point would be that; how can the other less known payment sites be any more reputable than Paypal which has stockholders to please? I'm sorry you found the article poorly written - it is linked on over 50 websites and I was complimented by a major news organization for it's insight.

I also find it very hard to believe that you read my post. visited the link, and typed a critique all in the span of 14 minutes. You must be trolling,

Re:What an incredible suprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Links to article

You seem to be the one that is trolling.

Re:What an incredible suprise

[Bullet-Dodger]

Dang, you should've registered Paypalsuckssucks.com :) (And if someone disagrees with you, they can just get Paypalsuckssucksalsosucks.com)

Re:What an incredible suprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Found this in metamod -

What was this to prove? Most links aren't covered by Google - usually you only get the source. I've personally seen this guy's gripes on paypalsucks.com and the link to the information there. If links are not tagged - Google won't recognize them. The host website must also allow meta data link gathering - slashdot doesn't for instance. So, with high moderation you would expect the link that was made on this article to show up in Google too, right? Nope! The only information that shows up in Google searches for links is if the entire page is meta tagged - which few websites have.

Re:What an incredible suprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that most sites will link to a frontpage rather than a site page - this seems to be how your site is set up.

PayPal has that right...

[AtOMiCNebula]

PayPal runs their own service. PayPal isn't a right, it's a privilege. They aren't forced to offer service to anyone. Now, they may have shut down FreeNet's account for the wrong reason, but still, it's their own service, they can do what they want.

I'm not trying to troll, I just think this needs to be pointed out, amidst the "curse PayPal!" and the "omg they froze me too! let's lynch them!!" messages. I think it was wrong for them to freeze Freenet's account, but so what if PayPal doesn't like it? What's different with this, between PayPal and any other company? The only difference was that PayPal was a source of donation income, and they have a direct effect on them.

I'm sure FreeNet will find a way to survive. They've made it this far...

Re:PayPal has that right...

[madcow_ucsb]

Refusing service is one thing. But the main reason people are pissed about paypal is they have a tendency to refuse service..*and* not let you get your money out of your account.

Happened to two of my friends. One had over $5000 in there for a couple months before they decided that no, he didn't actually do anything wrong and wrote him a check. This is definitely a company that needs some more regulation. It looks like a bank and acts like a bank. But it isn't governed by any of the laws that real banks are.

Terminating an account and mailing you your balance is fine. Annoying, but fine. Holding your money hostage? Definitely not ok.

That said, with the number of people this happens to, you'd have to be a retard to keep money in the account. I use paypal, but *only* via credit card and I sure as hell don't leave any money with them.

PP was fined $10 million for violating PatriotAct

[loggia]

PayPal was recently fined $10 MILLION for violating the US Patriot Act.

It's not a company I do business with.

Control of the means of production...

[br00tus]

That sucks. I just got a DSL line and threw Freenet up on my computer at home. It really makes you think of what a Nazi-like authoritarian world we live in that even a few people using a little p2p network that gives them some degree of anonymity is a threat to the system, as it might help put them beyond the jackboot of authority.

Freenet is a p2p pioneer - it actually came out before Gnutella did, and only one month after Napster launched. I like the applications that use it like Frost as well. Of course, a project like Freenet takes a lot of development time, needs lots of high-bandwidth 24/7 nodes running it and updating, and pile all of the authoritarian, anti-freedom people on top of that and you can see why awesome things like Freenet have trouble getting off the ground.

It's unfortunate that my programming skills are such that I can't make much of a contribution to Freenet - and that my monetary situation is such that I can't afford even a small donation. My programming skills are improving however, and perhaps my monetary situation will improve as well. I enjoy developing p2p applications because it is intellectually challenging and also because I feel its ultimate aims are good. Not all problems can be solved technically though. A boycott of sorts might be good - perhaps there should be a campaign to use eGold instead of Paypal for paying, and let Paypal know about it. Not only could people receiving money stress eGold, or some other competitor, or even drop Paypal, but people contributing money can refuse to use Paypal. I'm really sick of all of this crap!

Re:Control of the means of production...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nazi-like authoritarian world?

Ah.. to be young, in college, and filled with absurd "ideas."

Re:Control of the means of production...

[MourningBlade]

What really makes you realize what an authoritarian and censored world we live in is the type of things that you see on Freenet. How differently people speak when they have no fear of retribution in any manner.

Consider blogs: once your friends and family learn about it, what you say is usually a bit more constrained. Unfortunately, not in the way of "meaningful" but more in the way of "unrevealing" and/or "unoffensive."

I was on Freenet for a while, and it was very refreshing to see what all was spoken about. It's not THAT different from the web, it's just the atmosphere.

And the willingness to use copyrighted material for things. Personal pages with images that would get C&D orders on the web.

Re:Control of the means of production...

[Anonymous Coward]

It really makes you think of what a Nazi-like authoritarian world we live in that even a few people using a little p2p network that gives them some degree of anonymity is a threat to the system, as it might help put them beyond the jackboot of authority.

"Freedom of choice is a thing of the past. We're down to six media companies, six airlines, two and a half carmakers, and one radio conglomerate. Everything you will ever need is at WalMart. You can choose between two political parties that sound alike, vote alike, and are funded alike by the same exact wealthy donors. You can choose to wear nondescript pastels and keep your mouth shut, or you can choose to wear a Marilyn Manson T-shirt and get kicked out of school. Britney or Christina, WB or UPN, Florida or Texas - there ain't no friggin difference, folks, it's all the same, it's all the same, it's all the same."

-Michael Moore, "Stupid White Men"

Re:Control of the means of production...

[benzapp]

It really makes you think of what a Nazi-like authoritarian world we live in that even a few people using a little p2p network that gives them some degree of anonymity is a threat to the system, as it might help put them beyond the jackboot of authority.

If only freedom were so simple. You are free to sit here on slashdot and bullshit to your hearts content. None of that matters. Your emotional tyrade will be forgotten as quickly as it popped into your head.

Are you free to do anything meaningful in life? Build a great monument? Start a new kind of community?

Are you free to raise a large family on the average American salary? Would you even have the time to effectively raise the minimum 3 children necessary to mainain your curren population?

Are you free to devote your life to art instead of bureaucracy?

The freedom you are focusing on is, in the history of mankind, quite trivial. You don't want to contribute to the future and progress of human civilization. You dream no great dreams. You want the freedom to say anything you want! So grand a freedom!

In 5 years, we will look at freenet and it will be just like the internet as a whole if not worse: full of crap, full of self centered, naive losers products of our depraved, anti-social world, who are incapable of thinking about what they can contribute to a cause greater than themselves.

Re:Control of the means of production...

[BigGerman]

why not to develop a P2P payment system on top of Freenet? Surely people who want to donate to Freenet are likely to be Freenet users.

Re:Control of the means of production...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no greater cause, because there's no great cause at all. Each cause means an interest, and each interest is directly or indirectly self-centered, egoist. Freedom is and can only be an individual freedom, but IMHO, a free person is someone that is no longer self-centered...

Not about controversy

[phorm]

Well, yes, I'm sure that ebay wouldn't want to have anything to do with a topic so controversial as pornography or sex. Certainly they would be very careful about products that were probably not legit in such areas. And certainly, they wouldn't want anything to do with dubious internet privacy software.

I think that if ebay is concerned about such issues, it's in a direct relation to profit/controversy... guess that freenet just isn't profitable enough for them.

Re:Not about controversy

[linuxrunner]

The best part about the parent post....

is that he knew exactly where to find those links... especially those penis enlargement pills.

heh.. just making an observation.

Re:Not about controversy

[PerpetualMotion]

In deference to Ebay, the penis enlargement pills were found in the "Everything Else > Weird Stuff > Totally Bizarre" section. I wish my email was catagorized like that.

hypocrisey

[Anonymous Coward]

It's interesting how they pick and choose what is acceptable and what isn't.

Anymoviez.com offers hundreds of pirated hollywood movies, downloadable over the internet via a 100MB connection for only $10.75/mo... payable via PayPal.

Granted, people have been signing up left and right and this "service" has managed to not actually follow through with giving anyone what they promise for two months straight now (first they claimed to be having problems with bandwidth, then building new servers, then switching to a new hosting setup/software, then switching to new accounting software, then an unreliable host causing them to have to fish around for a new hosting partner...). I think their plans are to string people along by making the website look legitimate until it's too late to contact paypal for the 30-day refund period.

At any rate, it's itneresting that PayPal doesn't want to let Freenet do business through them, but they don't mind Anymoviez.com and Anygames.com selling pirated materials for a profit through their service. That's as hypocritical as you can get.

Re:hypocrisey

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, that's anymoviez.com and anygamez.com (not anygames.com).

Patriot Act?

[technogeeky]

Violating the Patriot Act is something I'd be happy to see. Do you have a link regarding this? -tg

Re:Patriot Act?

[LostCluster]

The PATRIOT Act has some rather questionable clauses in it, but the money transfer clauses aren't exactly part of it. Basically, it does is tie up loopholes in the existing money tracking laws.

The law that says any transaction involving $10,000 or more in cash has to be reported is one I don't see too much of a problem. Anybody who's pulling $10,000 out of their wallet deserves police attention... even if they got the money legally they should show that they've got good-enough security to protect them while transporting that much cash!

Think about it... who goes into a car dealership and pays cash for a vehicle? Consumer Reports magazine's testers used to as part of their "We pay cash and buy our test models at stores so we get an untampered unit from the marketplace every time.", but even they gave that up when honest salespeople in the CT region were telling them that they must be Consumer Reports because only they would try to pay cash for a car rather than get a checking account like anybody else who has enough credit to buy a car on loan, or enough money to pay for a car upfront.

Re:Patriot Act?

[sangreal66]

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/03/31/1610218.shtml ?tid=98

Re:Patriot Act?

[technogeeky]

In a related node, if you want to remove money from your online account (using a service like NetTeller) then you need to remove multiple instances of $10,000 unless you want to be instantly red-flagged.

Re:Patriot Act?

[Anonymous Coward]

Answer: Smart people pay cash for a car when they can. Why pay for the car multiple times through interest?

Re:Patriot Act?

[Zirnike]

Ummm... Where's the warrent for that? Do they have proof that I'm moving $10,000 because I'm a terrorist/drug dealer/whatever? Yes? Then they have no trouble getting a warrent. If not, what the hell are they doing looking at me?

It's your money. Doing what you want with it (legally) should not make you suddenly the target of suspicion.

Sure people should get security if they're moving 10 grand. But that is THEIR call, not the government's. If they want to, they can take the money and scatter it across a parade. It's not the feds' business.

Re:Patriot Act?

[LostCluster]

Sure people should get security if they're moving 10 grand. But that is THEIR call, not the government's. If they want to, they can take the money and scatter it across a parade.

You need good security for you and the people around you for that too. Otherwise, it's disorderly conduct. Some rich people have tried that already.

I want my financial transactions documented. I want my bank to have no wiggle room about how much money I put in it today. And I don't mind the fact that I can't manage to hide anything from the IRS... they only tax me when I'm making money anyway.

Re:Patriot Act?

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent link doesn't work for me.

Re:Patriot Act?

[Anonymous Coward]

Smart people also buy used cars. New cars instantly depreciate by a substantial amount the second you drive them off the lot. Why make a bad investment?

This message is brought to you by the cult of Dave Ramsey.

Re:Patriot Act?

[Zirnike]

"I want my financial transactions documented. I want my bank to have no wiggle room about how much money I put in it today"

Great. Go use a bank with those (mis-)features in their terms of service. What you don't do is force EVERYONE to put up with your desires.

Re:bashing paypal

[Anonymous Coward]

Hacked?! Oh, please. You're one of an innumerable number of fools who responded to a "please verify your account" email or a "security update" email that asked you to enter your eBay or PayPal userid and password.

If you'd have a brain to begin with, none of this would have happened to you.

Good - freenet shouldn't exist anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

When I first heard of FreeNet I thought, "Wow what a cool idea!" I downloaded the software needed to make a node, and made one, and ran it for about a month. Then one day I started browsing around on it... and like someone said above, there were links that claimed to be kiddy porn etc. I never clicked on them - but that's what they claimed to me. I shut my node down, removed FreeNet, and haven't looked back. The idea is a great one, but as usual the humans involved fucked it up and corrupted it.

Re:Good - freenet shouldn't exist anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

None of us (well, apart from the obvious tiny minority of fucked up individuals that put them there) like the fact that what purport to be child abuse images exist on the network. We accept however that it's an inevitable consequence of a strongly anonymous system. We don't retrieve them or link to host freesites so that we don't assist their propogation, but we cannot actively supress them.

Freedom is binary, you have it or you do not. You have freedom to say and publish anything anonymously, or you don't. As soon as you start introducing "bad" content detection/censorship mechanisms then we lose our plausible deniability defences and it can be found that we acted in bad faith by being willfully ignorant of our encrypted datastore contents.

Yes, it's sad that such content exists on Freenet amongst numerous other more legitimate uses, but its continued presence does at least demonstrate that Freenet is already pretty damn anonymous. If evidence of serious crimes can be distributed on it then you can assume that minor crimes such as the warez, mp3 and movie distribution occurring on the network isn't in any trouble. Freenet is also used by Chinese dissidents to voice their discontent, again by extension you can assume it's a totally safe place to discuss US foreign policy without ending up on a PATRIOT act shit list or suchlike.

Re:Good - freenet shouldn't exist anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea is a great one, but as usual the humans involved fucked it up and corrupted it.

Which idea would that be -- free speech?

Re:I've been saying it for a long time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus Christ you're a crap troll. You can't even create a hyperlink. YOU FAIL IT.

Re:PP was fined $10 million for violating PatriotA

[mebon]

PayPal was recently fined $10 MILLION for violating the US Patriot Act.

To a lot of slashdotters that would be a reason to do business with them.

Pissed off

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm getting really pissed off with paypal. This is the second time this week that I've heard of them freezing an account for web site donations.

Re:Not to ruin the parade

[Tezkah]

hey! If people start being able to speak their minds, they might do insane things like voting for third parties! That would be a terrible thing :(

say what?

[nanojath]

Paypal Deals Blow To Freenet

Am I the only one who read this and tried to figure out how it was that Paypal was selling cocaine to Freenet?

Re:say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes. yes you are.

Re:say what?

[Kaimelar]

Am I the only one who read this and tried to figure out how it was that Paypal was selling cocaine to Freenet?

Glad it wasn't just me. :-) I was thinking, "Damn, child porn on Freenet, now coke??" Then I started thinking about how one would use Freenet to deal blow, and then, and only then, did I figure out what the hell the headline was talking about.

Sigh.

Re:say what?

[randyest]

actually, no he isn't. surprising perhaps, but true.

Re:say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude,

yes.

Re:PP was fined $10 million for violating PatriotA

[loggia]

To a lot of slashdotters that would be a reason to do business with them.

Ha, ha. True, true.

another case of ebay's selective enforcement

[j0nb0y]

You can find tons of pirate anime on ebay and half.com. They refuse to crack down on it. But the MPAA and the RIAA want ebay to crack down on something that isn't even illegal, and *BAM*, freenet's account get shuts down. The whole situation is really quite ridiculous. As a consumer, I don't want to buy pirate stuff, so I'm basically forced to avoid the online used market because 98% of it is pirate. There's now way to tell when you buy something whether it will be pirate or not. And if it turns out to be pirate, ebay won't crack down on the seller, and won't refund the buyer's money. This happened to a friend of mine. He bought some anime VCDs on ebay. They turned out to just be CDRs (which are specifically banned in ebay's terms of service). Ebay refused to do anything about it.

Re:another case of ebay's selective enforcement

[Lehk228]

ummm what did he think VCD meant, nobody buys pressed VCD, VCD= code word for CD-R anime/TV show

Re:another case of ebay's selective enforcement

[devnullify]

Pressed VCDs are fairly common in Asia. Anime comes from Asia. Connect the dots.

Re:bashing paypal

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a disgusting attempt at using the word "whereas" in proper place.

No problems in the last year

[LPrime]

I run a mid-sized jewelry shop on the web and have been using paypal for over a year. I actualy switched from using MerchantServices because of the constant headache with fraud and chargebacks. As much as people hate to hear it, PayPal is on the side of the merchant not the customer and in 9 cases out of 10 (at least for me) the customer is the one trying to screw me over. Before I get flamed, I would like to say that I am in no way trying to deffend their actions in this case, however I have learned that their verification techniques are always based on some specific activity.

Re:PP was fined $10 million for violating PatriotA

[taped2thedesk]

Interesting... story about it here

Maybe they're being assholes because they think freenet might land them another "patriot" act violation? Don't see how it would, but the whole 'anonymous' thing might be catching their eye...

Whatever they are thinking, I'm probably going to be closing my PP account out soon...

well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you seem to know what the problem is, why don't you let us know Mr. "I'm talking out of my ass"?

Prepare for...

[Mike Hawk]

Well this thread will contain hundreds of anecdotes and 0 posts about how this will actually hurt Freenet other than to say something brilliant along the lines of "if you aren't with us you are against us." Paypal is not a monopoly. Sack up and move on.

Re:Prepare for...

[Felinoid]

Supprise.
Much later a buch of posts are made saying.. "HAY Paypal has a right to do this".

And you know what? It's true.
It may look like Paypal is using the "Annon Proxy" thing as a lame excuse.
I've read the complaints and it appears Paypal has a history of over reacting and not verifying complaints.

I wouldn't take the conspericy theroys sereously.

However.....
I'm reminded of the MAPS. They have been accused of doing a remarkably sloppy job. Not verifying complaints and over reacting.
MAPS can trash a persons e-mail. It's annoying enough but so is spam.

Any business that relys on paypal can be brought too it's knees by Paypals sloppy handing of complaints.

There is a reasonably easy way to handle this.
Send e-mail to paypal complaning about this event and let them know what you think of them cutting off Freenet.

Re:Prepare for...

[Bullet-Dodger]

Freenet can't get donations through Paypal anymore. So... less money to spend towards development/bandwidth, assuming that's what their using the donations for.

Re:Prepare for...

[curator_thew]

> Paypal is not a monopoly. Sack up and move on

Neither are bus companies, and so when they refuse to allow black people to ride for some non-objective reason, we should apply the same policy huh?

Weasel.

Re:Prepare for...

[Mike Hawk]

I don't know where you live, but in every city here the bus companies ARE monopolys granted or operated by the government. You have done a great disservice to african-americans today.

Re:Prepare for...

[SagSaw]

I don't know about you, but everywhere I've ever lived, local bus service is a monopoly granted by the local government. Sure, there are other transportion options, such as personal vehicles, taxis, bicycles, etc, but none necessarily serve the same market.

Re:Prepare for...

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha. Score!

Unlike this idiot, Mike Hawk does a great service to African-Americans by strictly adhering to what his black supervisors on the Nokia janitorial staff tell him to do.

Re:PP was fined $10 million for violating PatriotA

[technogeeky]

I'd imagine that the majority of /.'s either: 1. Dislike the Patriot Act 2. Dabble in porn. 3. Dabble in online gambling. Seems like this is the wrong place to use that as evidence against us. I still don't understand how exactly online gambling is illegal nor do I understand for what reasons it is illegal.

It's not hard to see how this might happen

[eclectro]

ebay, who owns payal now, will fold an auction if it feels the temperature outside is wrong.

It's not hard to envision a scenario where the RIAA called somebody up at ebay and said, "Hey, look, we have found a couple of illegal mp3s on freenet and we are going to sue you because you are helping sponser illegal filesharing."

ebay being ebay folded like a cheap card table.

I haven't been on freenet for a while so I do not know what is on there. But it works for your favorite *AA

not true

[Anonymous Coward]

"They aren't forced to offer service to anyone."

If they're going to refuse service, there has to be a good reason.

If you think I'm talking out of my ass, open a restaurant (or any retail store), and then put a sign in the window that says "No served".

Its your restaurant, you can serve who you want, right?

On the other hand, if a customer is drunk you can throw him out. But you can't throw somebody out just because you don't like them.

Re:not true

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, if a customer is drunk you can throw him out. But you can't throw somebody out just because you don't like them

As a business owner I can do anything I want to. I could throw all brunettes out and offer blondes a 10% discount if I choose.

Re:not true

[Anonymous Coward]

As a business owner I can do anything I want to. I could throw all brunettes out and offer blondes a 10% discount if I choose.

Oh yeah?

Try putting a "Aryans only" sign in the window.

Re:not true

[Anonymous Coward]

I could throw all brunettes out and offer blondes a 10% discount if I choose

I guess a little thing like civil rights dosen't mean anything to you?

The relevent text: (Since 1964 the Supreme Court has expanded the reach of the 14th Amendment in some situations to individuals discriminating on their own).

You can kick out a costummer becouse your having PMS. You can kick out a costummer becouse your in a bad mood.
But you can't do anything based on a such details as hair color.
There are quite a few organisations who'd eat you for lunch if you EVER tried that.

On the other hand you can do anything you like so long as it's not against someone for his/her race, religion, gender, sexual prefrence.
Giving blonds a 10% discount kinda falls under the "race" given that outside of hair die you kinda need to be white to have blond hair.

Re:bashing paypal

[AKAImBatman]

Hacked?! Oh, please. You're one of an innumerable number of fools who responded to a "please verify your account" email or a "security update" email that asked you to enter your eBay or PayPal userid and password.

Arguably, scammers are getting very clever at their email attacks. They'll send you an email with a link like this: http://www.ebay.com/cgi-bin/verify.dll?Acct=1234

At first glance, it LOOKS legit. And when you click on the link, it takes you to a page that LOOKS like the real thing. Many even have links to the real site. The only way to know that it's fake is to look in the URL bar, and keep your head straight about them asking for passwords and credit cards.

The sad part is that companies seems to be doing very little to prosecute these scammers. I've received emails for both eBay and Citibank. Both times I've gotten no response on my fraud report.

PayPal == Pusher Man?

[node 3]

Paypal Deals Blow To Freenet

Isn't dealing blow illegal in the US? Freenet should turn PayPal in to the DEA in exchange for immunity.

Anyone know if SCO dealt blow to Freenet too?

Re:PayPal == Pusher Man?

[kubrick]

SCO have been behaving like they're on smack... so they'll probably appreciate the fact they'll get a big load of smack from IBM through the courts over the next 12 months.

Re:PayPal == Pusher Man?

[shadowbearer]

SCO charges $699 a line for their blow. Going after them is not worth a crack at it, considering the crack team of lawyers SCO has.

SB

Fraud prevention - anonymous proxies disallowed

[eltoyoboyo]

Freenet is going to get their $550 and can no longer use Paypal.

Anything beyond that is "Paypal said/Freenet said"

We may not understand exactly what happened. The nature of the closing leads me to speculate that someone was trying to access the freenet Paypal account repeatedly by browsing through an anonymizing proxy server. See Anonymity and Paypal (and other online businesses) from the Anonymity 4 Proxy Support Pages to get an idea what might happen when you try to access paypal from an anonymous proxy. I'll quote: "So if paypal finds out that you are using a proxy to fool their logon system into allowing you in, you are quite likely to find your paypal account closed. If I'm not mistaken, they clearly state in the user agreement that you can't connect from an anonymous proxy."

The Anonymity 4 support tech is correct. On paypal.com in the User agreement, Under "Closing Accounts and Limiting Account Access" paragraph 2 - "Any of the following events may lead to your account being limited: " "item xvii (Use of an anonymizing proxy;)"

This is not censorship news, it appears more like carelessness on the part of someone at Freenet.

Re:Fraud prevention - anonymous proxies disallowed

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they deny this :

Paypal has frozen the account we use to accept donations over the web, they refuse to give any reason other than "use of an anonymous proxy", which suggests that someone at Paypal took a dislike to the goals of our project, since I have never used an anonymous proxy to access Paypal (this being the activity I assume they sought to prevent)

Re:Fraud prevention - anonymous proxies disallowed

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this "it appears" stuff. So a large company is always right and a small group is always wrong? Not on this planet. I'd say "it appears more like carelessness on the part of someone at Paypal". That's more in line with the world as I know it. BTW, how is the pay working for those folks? Are the benefits good? Looks like they have you working late.

Re:Fraud prevention - anonymous proxies disallowed

[r00zky]

"Any of the following events may lead to your account being limited: " "item xvii (Use of an anonymizing proxy;)"

But is this meant as "Use of an anonymizing proxy for accessing PayPal"
Or is a general prohibition of the "Use of an anonymizing proxy" in your computer at all?

Freenet people think is the second, and PayPal is giving no explanation, so...

Re:Fraud prevention - anonymous proxies disallowed

[ShaunC]

Well, they deny this

It doesn't have to have been anyone affiliated with the project. I think the OP was suggesting that perhaps someone had tried to brute-force their way into the PayPal account, using proxies to hide the trail; PayPal caught on and froze the account.

Suppose you want to destroy Freenet, or scare people away from it. Or suppose you're part of some oppressive regime, and you want to see which dissidents in your Homeland are providing financial support to terr^Wanonymous networking. Or, maybe you own a lot of copyrights, and you want to bypass that complicated "John Doe" process and figure out straight away who to hit with subpoenas and fishing expeditions.

A list of the people who have made (and, in some cases, are repeatedly making) financial contributions to the project would be very valuable to some people/organizations.

This is all speculative, and I probably have my tin-foil hat on a little too tight. At least I hope so, because my name would be on the list.

Re:Fraud prevention - anonymous proxies disallowed

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, so if some random person tries to log into my PayPal account using a proxy, then I'll get my account locked?

Even though I didn't do anything...

Nice.

Irony

[Wraithlyn]

Boycott PayPal... they're *NOT* helping fund Thing FreeNet!

That oughta get'em. ;P

Why waste your time?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

That's a "nice thought", but you do understand that PayPal does not give a crap what you think, so why waste your time? Really it goes to the Patriot Act and the fact the they fear being associated with an org that some in Washington consider dangerous.

Re:Why waste your time?

[mcpkaaos]

You don't have a few dozen copies of Catcher in the Rye floating around by any chance, do you?

But they freeze your BANK account!

[billybob]

When they say the account is frozen, they are talking about your bank account (as well as your paypal account). Search the internet for paypal horror stories or pay a visit to paypalsucks.org. If they freeze your account, and it's your only bank account, guess what? You are absolutely fucked! There is no way for you to get money out of your bank account until paypal unfreezes it. Got rent? Mortgage? Car payment? Too bad. Looks like you're going to be late on those.

Now anyone who's smart, doesn't keep all their money in one account. I have 95% of my money is a savings account, which no one can touch except for me, at the bank window itself. Anyone who's really smart and uses paypal often enough, would open a seperate account specifically for paypal. Now they would have to do what you mention, withdraw everytime you get money in it. So you transfer from paypal to your paypal bank account, then do an online bank transfer from that account to either your "real" account or your savings account. If they freeze your bank account specifically opened for paypal, oh well, no biggie. Fuck 'em and start using a new service :)

Re:But they freeze your BANK account!

[Anonymous Coward]

How does PalPal freeze a bank account? If my bank froze my accounts at the request of some jumped-up non-bank, non-credit card company, we would have words.

Re:But they freeze your BANK account!

[mrshowtime]

Paypal can attempt to take money out of your bank account, but the CANNOT freeze your bank account. They are not a bank and have no authority to do anything.

Re:But they freeze your BANK account!

[Wakkow]

They have no control over bank accounts. Where are you pulling that from?

Re:But they freeze your BANK account!

[nacturation]

If they freeze your account, and it's your only bank account, guess what? You are absolutely fucked! There is no way for you to get money out of your bank account until paypal unfreezes it.

YOU: [ringing bank]

BANK: Good afternoon, Whatever Bank.

YOU: Yes, I just tried accessing my money and it says my account is frozen.

BANK: Okay, can I have your account number please and verification?

YOU: [give info]

BANK: Ah, yes. It seems we received a call from a company in a different state this morning.

YOU: Okaaayyy...?

BANK: And they asked us to freeze your account for no particular reason. So we did.

YOU: Wait a second. You're saying that an unrelated third party is able to just call you up out of the blue and freeze my account in violation of my banking agreement?

BANK: Absolutely, sir. You see, we freeze all bank accounts at the request of any unknown third party.

YOU: So if I asked you to freeze your own personal account...?

BANK: You bastard. Now *my* money is frozen and I can't do anything until you authorize me to unfreeze it.

YOU: Hah, now you know what it's like.

BANK: Actually, we're just joking with you. You see, according to banking regulations, you are our customer. The only time we would ever freeze an account is if the bank is going to be out some money and we need to put a reserve on the money you already have with us.

YOU: But I read on Slashdot...

BANK: Yes, we've been getting calls about that all day. It seems that somebody on Slashdot has been spreading FUD.

YOU: Well, maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

BANK: Hey, it's Slashdot, isn't it? I'll fancy a guess and say that the person who said that didn't present any evidence to back it up?

YOU: Yeah, that's exactly right.

BANK: We have to deal with people like that all day. They make unsubstantiated claims about what PayPal can or can't do. Why, just the other day, a customer said that PayPal sold their home without them knowing it just so that PayPal could recover a chargeback!

YOU: Oh come on!

BANK: No, I'm serious. You'd be surprised what other people can come up with when the burden of proof is absent.

YOU: Actually, I probably wouldn't be. From time to time, I read Slashdot at -1.

BANK: [laughs] On Friday, someone said that the GNAA acquired this bank.

YOU: [laughing hysterically] Oh, that's a good one. Well, I guess my account can't be frozen then?

BANK: Of course not. At least not by PayPal. They would need a court order to do something like that.

YOU: Thanks, that's good to know.

BANK: No problem. Have a good afternoon!

Re:But they freeze your BANK account!

[randyest]

Genius. You, sir, are a talented dialog writer.

Moderators? Over here, look up ^

Re:But they freeze your BANK account!

[shaitand]

Somewhat offtopic, but while your bank will not freeze your account at the request of a random third party.

Something fairly nasty that they will do, is automatically debit your account and pay any company who runs through a check-by-phone type transfer. All that is needed is the information on the bottom of your check and no authorization whatsoever. It's happened to me 3 times now, each time for somewhere between $250-$500.

This is 100% automated. The first time I did a check by phone to pay my monthly providian bill, not only did they charge that, they also charged me for the full $500 balance of my mother-in-law's bill (she lived with me and I guess they figured I'd surely want to pay the credit card bills of everyone!).

Sure enough, the charge came through automatically, no review, not even so much as a check to verify that the name it was put through under was on the account!

I've switched banks twice since and had check by phone frauds nail me at each bank (and yes, the providian thing was the first and only time I actually used a check by phone legitimately) because they ALL process them automatically with NO review and no authorization. Anybody you write a check can charge your account without signiture for up to your full account balance plus whatever the bank will cover for you.

I thought the primary purpose of a bank was to lock my money up and insure in every possible manner that your money can only be removed with your authorization?

I never write checks anymore, I'm afraid to.

Re:But they freeze your BANK account!

[Anonymous Coward]

Go back to fantasizing about Natalie Portman.

Re:But they freeze your BANK account!

[Christopher Thomas]

Something fairly nasty that they will do, is automatically debit your account and pay any company who runs through a check-by-phone type transfer. All that is needed is the information on the bottom of your check and no authorization whatsoever. It's happened to me 3 times now, each time for somewhere between $250-$500.

It occurs to me that the government sends you your tax return by cheque...

I'd be quite amused to see what happens to someone unwise enough to try this kind of fraud on them (not that it would be likely to work, but I doubt they'd like it any better if it failed).

Re:But they freeze your BANK account!

[nacturation]

Interesting. I think we've discovered the missing step!

1. Visit porn site using anonymous proxy and "Pay by check" using government account.
2. Watch the many people who apparently have had their underpants stolen.
3. Profit!

Re:But they freeze your BANK account!

[Technician]

your full account balance plus whatever the bank will cover for you.


I've got a beef with my bank regarding this. I got checking and did NOT sign up for overdraft protection to limit my fraud liability. But guess what, they covered one that created an overdraft and charged me $32 for covering it. Hey guys, how about bouncing the fraud transfer? Hmmm? Then I did a quick draw from an ATM of $40. They ran that also and charged me another $32. That was when I noticed a negative avaliable funds and asked questions. It's very expensive overdraft protection on an account without overdraft protection. By the way the bank is US bank. I hope they resolve my complaint soon.

Re:But they freeze your BANK account!

[LiENUS]

I work for the company who handles providian(different linegroup but i do the same kind of stuff only for shopnbc instead),i can tell you right now if you had contacted them back they would have reversed that charge and fired that person immediately, the company i work for loves to fire, they train new employees every week and if they hire 30 employees they are guerenteed to fire 30, you could have easily had that persons job, i've seen people get threatened with dismissal for taking 5 minutes over on their breaks, hell im one of the top employees and im scared to come back 2 minutes late from a break for fear of getting dismissed. and the company handling providians calls isnt providian, its a company on a contract and you call customer service for providian ask for a superviser, theyl'l find the employee and have them fired by the next day.

Re:But they freeze your BANK account!

[Rich0]

They probably handle this like payroll checks.

Take a look at your next paycheck and compare it to a previous one. I'm guessing the account numbers are different.

I belive that the way payroll is typically handled is the company creates an account, deposits the appropriate funds in the account, and then mails out checks. The account is closed a few months later. That way the company is immune to such trickery, and and it doesn't have dangling obligations. It also means that if somebody messes up in accounting and charges a bill to the wrong internal account they won't have 10,000 angry employees to deal with (since their money was set aside in a deposit-only account (from the company's perspective).

Re:But they freeze your BANK account!

[shaitand]

In the case of providian first I called the bank, they said I'd have to call providian.

I called Providian, they said I'd have to call the bank because they couldn't talk to me in regards to her account even if they charged her bill to my bank account without authorization from either me or her. When she called them they said the charge had been made by an authorized party (despite being unauthorized on my account) and that they could tell HER who it was, they said we'd have to work with the bank.

I finally called the bank back, went through 3 supervisors and finally got someone to give me to the fraud department. The fraud department wanted to investigate the issue. Naturally I pointed them to their own online records saying the charge had come through under name x and that name x wasn't on my account and they don't have authorization to release funds to name x whether name x claims I said ok or not. After drilling them for awhile they finally admitted that the charge should never have been paid and that getting their money back from Providian was their problem not mine and refunded it 2 days later.

Re:But they freeze your BANK account!

[shaitand]

This is something all banks do as well. However they charge you an overdraft fee whether they cover the difference or not.

If they don't cover the difference then you'll generally have an additional fee from whoever you wrote the check to.

Most companies run a check twice, since some places automate this (like walmart) and often do it one right after another you'll get two overdraft fees and then another from whoever you wrote the check to.

Re:But they freeze your BANK account!

[shaitand]

oops sorry typo:

When I said they "could tell HER" in regards to my mother in law calling I meant "couldn't tell HER".

Re:But they freeze your BANK account!

[Technician]

This is something all banks do as well. However they charge you an overdraft fee whether they cover the difference or not.

I've learned my lesson. I've dropped the checking and use a savings account. For almost everything, it's cash. For bills it's credit union online bill pay. Checks are not used. I asked to never clear a check. A check is a sure sign of fraud. I'm done with the expensive free checking gotcha's. With cash, there is no overdraft charges ever.

Re:But they freeze your BANK account!

[LiENUS]

you werent talking to providian, that was west
you should have asked to talk to the supervisor then when you got him/her (basicly the "supervisor" isnt a supervisor 9 times out of 10 its just another phone agent pulled off the phone to "coach") ask for his/her supervisor and complained then. they record ALL calls and the providian contract is VERY shakey it gets dropped and re picked back up all the time, every time it is dropped, everyone is fired and they must be retrained when the contract is picked back up.

Re:bashing paypal

[ShaunC]

account was "hacked"

I wonder if maybe that has something to do with the freeze? Everyone's first guess seems to be that PayPal cut off Freenet because they didn't approve of the project, but the whole bit about "use of an anonymous proxy" has me curious.

The Freenet project leaders have said they've never logged into PayPal through a proxy. Maybe someone else was trying to brute-force the project's PayPal password through a proxy? Maybe a large percentage of Freenet's donors, being generally privacy-minded types, used proxies when they logged into PayPal to send money to the project? PayPal is known to freeze accounts which have been sent fraudulent funds, whether they know it or not; maybe now they're freezing accounts which receive funds sent from someone using a proxy.

I really hope PayPal provides an official explanation.

Re:bashing paypal

[technogeeky]

Actually, I am not one of those. I have never responded / clicked / touched a single email from paypal. If I get an email from PayPal, I go to the PayPal website manually and see what's going on. Don't be so quick to assume - it took PayPal two months to "resolve" the issues going on (someone had done this same technique with thousands of accounts over a short period of time). Even PayPal didn't understand how he/she had access to the accounts. They said they had no record of a login, either.

Introducing the latest nazi type ... *drums* ...

[Too Much Noise]

The Latin Grammar Nazi!!!!! *bows*

caveat Paypal means "let Paypal be wary". What you were probably looking for is caveatis Paypal(um)

Re:PP was fined $10 million for violating PatriotA

[John Hasler]

> PayPal was recently fined $10 MILLION for
> violating the US Patriot Act.

That's 10 MILLION points in their favor.

> It's not a company I do business with.

I haven't done business with them in the past, but if what you say is true I may reconsider.

Re:bashing paypal

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for one of these companies, in the department that dealt with these issues. Here's the problem:

1. Customer gets scammed by such a link.
2. We fix it (or do our best), then tell customer: we will NEVER send you an email containing links back to our site. We will certainly NEVER send an email soliciting your username and password, or providing a link that solicits your username and password.
3. Customer contacts us again, a week later... scammed by the same link.
4. "But I swear it was legit! It had your logo on it!" says customer.
5. Wash, rinse, repeat.

The same customers getting "hacked" over and over and over and over and over again because no matter how many times you explained to them that we would NEVER send out any emails containing a link, they would click the damn link anyway.

OFFTOPIC - Your sig

[Wraithlyn]

Your sig says, 'Never insult religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual your post is.'

Why must a factual post be insulting then? An insult is a judgement on something.

A troll is someone deliberately trying to provoke a heated response. I can see how pronouncing judgement on someone's faith could be seen as trolling, no matter the facts that led to it.

I've found people on /. generally tolerant of religious observations, as long as you stay objective.

Now watch me get modded down for being offtopic, despite labelling the topic as such and cancelling my Karma Bonus... ;)

Re:OFFTOPIC - Your sig

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD PARENT TROLL!

Legal Obligations

[cgenman]

Courts around the country have already setup reasons when a business has or does not have the right to determine which whom they do business. As far as I know, and IANAL, a business cannot refuse service based upon race, religion, etc. They may have terminated their relationship with Freenet because of political ideology, something that may be protected under law.

Why do people keep saying that the legal ability to do something is the same as moral justification? Do so many people have no higher structure than the law?

Re:bashing paypal

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

I wonder if maybe that has something to do with the freeze? Everyone's first guess seems to be that PayPal cut off Freenet because they didn't approve of the project, but the whole bit about "use of an anonymous proxy" has me curious.

In all liklyhood, this is exactly what happened. Freenet could very well go and get another PayPal account and move on. But this is Slashdot, and so of course it has to be something shaky on PayPal's part in an attempt to kill off Freenet. Paranoia, folks.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Deals Blow?

[Stogeboda]

Drugs are bad mkay..

Welcome to the world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Controversial opinions are routinely denied access to paypal funding - just ask any White Nationalist, Black Nationalist or even Ecoradical. Those organizations get cut off all the time, and Paypal pockets the money.

paypal sucks anyways

[Anonymous Coward]

What are they complaining about? At least THEY can get their money out of paypal.

Re:Introducing the latest nazi type ... *drums* ..

[NightWulf]

Thanks for the correction. Now...how do you say it in sandskrit? :)

Why not give them the benefit of the doubt?

[Penguin2212]

Maybe we're jumping the gun on this, it could have very well just been a mistake due to the fact that it's not really known why they froze their account. It could very well just be a mistake...

Re:bashing paypal

[AKAImBatman]

I'm actually more concerned with the lack of prosecution. These scammers often register domain names and leave a long paper trail. When I send a notification to a company of a fraudulant attempt, what do they do to attempt to prosecute the scammer? Do they contact the police? The FBI? Bring in their crack team of technology investigators? No. They tell you not to trust anyone. THAT'S NOT HELPFUL. What would be helpful is to pursue criminals who misuse your name in an attempt to steal money.

*ALL* banks suck.

[EvilStein]

PayPal isn't a bank, #1.

How about having a bank not only freeze your account, but bar you from getting an account for FIVE YEARS?

Yes, it's called "ChexSystems" - a private company. US Bank will throw you into ChexSystems for very minor mistakes, even if you pay them off. I closed my US Bank account years ago, but a check for $20 went through after it was closed. US Bank did nothing to notify me. No letter, nothing.
Finding a bank that does not use ChexSystems is next to impossible.

That sucks far worse than PayPal, to say the least.

Re:*ALL* banks suck.

[sweede]

man, i know exactly what you are talking about, except i had a lost a checkbook, reported the range of numbers, closed that account and got a new one w/amcore bank. This was done at an office, not over the phone.

about a month later i get a letter in the mail saying that my account (the closed one) was overdrawn ~400. called up amcore and they said that they never recieved any notification of lost/stolen checks nor a cancellation of my account. soon after ( a few days), i get another bounced check statement and then a letter to go to court. i got it fixed in court (judges rock), but the would not fix my account with the credit agencies. this was almost 4 years ago and i have ~3 years left before that is cleared off my credit record.

closed the new one and got a US Bank account, Never had an amcore account again.

Re:*ALL* banks suck.

[EvilStein]

US Bank not only didn't notify me, but they refused to give me an exact payoff amount. I have the copies & receipts for 4 certified letters still at home. I even talked to a manager that said even if I did pay off the money that was allegedly owed, they would NOT remove me from ChexSystems. It was their policy. Ugh.

I threatened them with legal action and 4 months before the 5yrs was up, I was mysteriously removed from ChexSystems. It royally sucked.. the whole ordeal.

Re:*ALL* banks suck.

[Anonymous Coward]

you werent making enough noise, you gotta raise more hell, and wake up a few upper managment types in the middle of the night, send a telegram or registered messenger, something out of the ordinary to get there attention

Re:*ALL* banks suck.

[sysadmn]

Learn from this. Phone, them, then follow up via first class mail. All communication should be in writing. Save copies.

The real reason freenet will never become popular.

[VAXGeek]

It's a legislative nightmare!! Where is the control?

i remember the site

[Anonymous Coward]

without even checking:

http://www.paypalsucks.com

Re:Introducing the latest nazi type ... *drums* ..

[Too Much Noise]

I'm sorry, we had to outsource the sanskrit grammar nazis to India.

oh, wait ...

9 cases out of 10

[Anonymous Coward]

in 9 cases out of 10 (at least for me) the customer is the one trying to screw me over.

So in the other 1 out of 10 cases, it's you trying to screw the customer over? Well, thanks for being honest.

PayPal Terminated our Business Account too...

[Anonymous Coward]

PayPal notified my one company, Psychotropics Cornucopia, Inc. http://www.psychotropics.org/ , Thursday May-15th 2003 via a "canned" email (see below for the full text of it) that stated in part: "Due to the severity of the violation, or your accounts history of repeated violations, your account will be permanently locked".

The only email notice we received from PayPal/Ebay terminating our account - no advanced notice, no discussion, just abrupt termination.

------

> Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 14:52:54 -0700
> To: Ronald Bennett
> Subject: PayPal (KMM30070882V34963L0KM)
> From: "customercare@paypal.com"
> Reply-To: "customercare@paypal.com"
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset = "us-ascii"
> X-Mailer: KANA Response 7.01.102
> Message-Id:
> X-UIDL: [4O"!%U*!!oXj"!SHg"!
>
> Dear Ronald Bennett,
>
> We regret to inform you that your PayPal account will be permanently
> locked for the following reason:
>
> * engaging in activity expressly prohibited under the Acceptable Use
> Policy.
>

They further stated that we violated their Acceptable Use Agreement by selling illegal drug paraphernalia. It's obvious from their "canned" email that no one from PayPal ever actually examined our company, our many services, nor our past PayPal transaction history. We only sell advertising, videos, and memberships (non-adult) - NOT pipes, etc.

We opened our PayPal account back on June-21-2000 and in that time we *never had any disputes* and we *never had any reversed payments* - an amazing record given our activity. We had a "Business account" (which costs much more than a personal account) with PayPal and yet they never attempted to call us nor email us regarding their actions until after they terminated our account; all they sent was one brief automated email - not exactly customer service.

We requested more details from them regarding why our PayPal account was abruptly closed, but we never any response other than automated emails that mentioned nothing we didn't already know. PayPal was very convenient and served us well for nearly 3 years, but no more.

Our experience should serve as a warning to others who rely on PayPal ... doing so can be disaster ... many folks think the above can't happen to them until it does, then it's too late.

On the bright side, we'd already begun phasing PayPal out prior to them suspending our account, but I personally know of several people who have lost substantial amounts of business due to PayPal "problems".

Ron Bennett

Re:PayPal Terminated our Business Account too...

[Ron Bennett]

I posted the above...I had cookies blocked so Slashdot dropped my login info when I posted.

While on this topic...

Three good alternatives are:

e-gold
http://www.e-gold.com/

merchant account
http://www.authorize.net/
(url above is a gateway service - works with many banks; has a listing)

Western Union
http://www.westernunion.com/

Ron Bennett

Re:PayPal Terminated our Business Account too...

[truesaer]

Well I just looked at your website, and one of your services "cannabis.com" has a store which sells pipes, seeds, grinders, rolling papers, etc. Some of those links go to other domains, but it isn't at all clear what you sell and what you link to third party sellers. Even if you only personally accept payment for non-drug paraphernalia, how is PayPal to know that you wont change your product lineup next week? They probably aren't interested in monitoring businesses like yours.

Now personally, I have no problem with selling marijuana pipes and seeds and the like. But a business (especially a publicly traded one) has a lot of legal, insurance and PR issues to think about. If I were them I wouldn't want to have any business with a shady legal standing as a customer. Who knows what high-profile targets Herr Ashkroft will go after next.

What we need is...

[jonwil]

I have said it before and I will say it again.
What we need is a replacement for paypal that is just as easy to use (e.g. for payments online etc) but which follows banking rules and doesnt do the crap paypal does.

As for paypal itself, if they were more open about account freezes and gave people a chance to sort things out, they wouldnt get anywhere near as much flak.

One of the biggest reasons for account closures is this:
person a pays money into a paypal acct
person a then pays person b
person b either leaves the money in their paypal acct or takes it out and into their regular bank
person a then (for whatever reasons) issues a chargeback or bank thingo and wants their money back. Paypal now freezes the account (and often the bank account and such as well) of person b while they sort out the whole mess.

What paypal should do is to tell person b that person a has done the chargeback and now wants their money back. That way, person b can give paypal such money as is necessary to resolve the chargeback with person a's bank and the whole issue would sort itself out.

Another good idea if you use paypal is to set up a seperate account just for dealing with paypal. At any given time it should only contain money about to be transfered into paypal or money thats just been transfered out of paypal. If you transfer money out of paypal to this account as soon as you get it then transfer it straight from this account to your regular account, paypal cant touch it.

Re:What we need is...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot.

1.) If you don't voluntarily "verify" your bank account with PayPal, they can never withdraw any money from it. However, you can still use that bank account to receive money *from* PayPal.

2.) PayPal cannot "lock" your bank account. Never. Under any circumstances. It simply can't happen.

Re:What we need is...

[Vlastyn]

I pay my credit card bills online and one of them was accidentally still linked to my old Wachovia account-- I recently switched banks and still have my old account open. Instead of the ~$1,000 charge being denied, my old bank (probably "for my convenience") let the charge go through, gave me a -$1,000 balance with an additional $30 overdraft fee on top of that, and sent me a notice in the mail a few days later. I was going to use this as a special Paypal only account until this happened. Yeah, you still have the benefit of them not freezing your real bank account, so I suppose that may be useful enough, but it's still a hassle either way.

Familar management style

[Vexar]

Okay,

Everyone is going to think I'm a total dead-head gamer for this, but it has to be referenced. This is the same business attitude that Project Entropia used on resolving some fraud issues. Apparently, someone at one point was either using a fraudulent account, or had a hack they used to generate expensive game gear in this MMPORPG (or however that gets abbrev.). I briefly participated in one of those successful clans which had good business entrepreneurial spirit, making use of the real/in-game economy and acting as a trader of sorts. We ran into this as their reason for playing a variety of constrictions with our "banker" character. Eventually, the clan abandoned the game as a poor business model.

Oh, you dealt with a fraudulent individual, and bought an item which was obtained falsely/ sold an item to someone who had a fraudulent account. You must be in on it.

Right. Like you can always tell the difference in a computer game between a data set obtained through normal game play, or an observably identical one obtained through some loophole. This falls into the indefensible "guilt by association" category of law enforcement. I see no difference in the way Paypal decides things. I hereby coin the ToS summary: "Autocratic Draconian Whim." Avoid it if you can. Read that fine print, be it a return agreement on a box of steaks, or a business contract for hourly labor. If it smells suspect, you have to trust that inner prompting and keep walking.

Paypal sounds like a good idea, I hope this bad press garners some alternatives, like PayTrustedSoul, PayDearHeart, PayBosomFriend, or at the very least PayLongTimeBusinessAssociate!

Re:Familar management style

[UnrepentantHarlequin]

Like you can always tell the difference in a computer game between a data set obtained through normal game play, or an observably identical one obtained through some loophole.

Actually, depending on what kind of logging and audit tracking they have, they quite possibly can.

If, for instance, an item that is dropped as treasure by slain monsters is tagged with the ID# of the type of monster that dropped it, one that is created via a bug would not have that information, or might have invalid information -- a negative number, maybe. So any item that doesn't have a valid dropped-by field is the result of a bug or the exploiting of a bug.

You pull all such items from your database, you find out where they came from and where they went, and odds are there's someone connected to your problem. If 90% the counterfeit cash in town passed through Fred's Pawnshop, the cops are going to be very interested in Fred. If 90% of the duped items in the game passed through Sir Fred's inventory ... well, there's no due process for suspected TOS violations.

Re:Familar management style

[Vexar]

Hey, observation from the data management side is entirely different from "view from gamer interface" and that is the difference. As long as that is opaque, gamers are unable to discern between fair and foul play.

My Response

[Anonymous Coward]

Transfer to: Bank Account
Funding Source: PayPal Balance
Total Amount: -$106.67 USD
Date: May 17, 2004
Time: 22:31:56 CDT
Status: Pending

Tell PayPal that you don't like their business practices by not letting them have your money.

So I cancelled

[rsletten]

So I cancelled my paypal account in protest and gave them my reasons in their survey. Did you?

Re:So I cancelled

[funk_phenomenon]

I didn't even start one. I looked into it as a method to use Mastercard, but it was just all for them in the end. Not worth my time or money.

What happened to the good old money order or certified cheque. Easier and less hassle, but maybe a $1 more in the end. I think that's worth it.

Re:So I cancelled

[HolyCoitus]

I only transferred about 100 dollars through paypal, but I cancelled my account. I also let them know that it was because I don't support groups that will use politics in who they decide to provide services too. The service is hardly secure or anything of that nature anyhow. I've heard enough stories to know that I had to worry every time someone would send me money. Chargebacks are a bitch.

Re:So I cancelled

[Anonymous Coward]

I think people are idiots who send me a money order for a $4 item (what i sell the most of) on eBay because they think Paypal is a bad service.

Re:So I cancelled

[Anonymous Coward]

I created a PayPal account over a year ago, for a single ebay auction that I got very excited about, and when I 'won' the auction, I tried to pay with my shiny new paypal account, and got denied. Three times over a week. The seller got increasingly--and unsurprisingly--angry with me as this bull continued, and finally, after almost a week and a half of trying to get the stupid account to process the transaction, I emailed the seller, told her I'd send her a money order instead, and apologized profusely.
Then I cancelled my paypal account.
They sent me a quarterly statement three months later, and I emailed them to say, "Hi. Your account proved to be useless and I very nearly got negative feedback on my ebay account as a result of your unreliable service. After several stressful weeks of hoping that your service would finally work, and seeing that it did not, I cancelled it. If you expect payment for a service I wasn't even able to use, then you're nuts. Forward this to all pertinent departments, please."
They're still sending me e-statements. I don't know how I could possibly have a balance on an account I closed, and never used. I'll stick to money orders, too, when necessary, even if it does cost a little more.

Re:So I cancelled

[/dev/trash]

You do know those surveys are all directed to /dev/null

Simple - Use NetworkForGood.org

[Anonymous Coward]

Paypal does suck sometimes, and they do have many examples of using dubious business practices. So what? Big deal. I don't think they lost any money, did they? Why doesn't Freenet just publicize that they can accept money through NetworkForGood.org? From their website:

Network for Good is the Internet's leading charitable resource -- an e-philanthropy site where individuals can donate, volunteer and get involved with the issues they care about. The organization's goal is to connect people to charities via the Internet -- using the virtual world to deliver real resources to nonprofits and communities.

Founded in 2001 by the Time Warner Foundation and AOL, Inc.; the Cisco Foundation and Cisco Systems, Inc.; and Yahoo! Inc., Network for Good is an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in Vienna, VA.

In addition to connecting the public with opportunities to give, Network for Good works to advance nonprofit adoption of the Internet as a tool for fundraising, volunteer recruitment and community engagement. It represents a groundbreaking partnership with leading technology and media companies and more than 20 nonprofit foundations and associations who share the desire to foster the informed use of the Internet for civic participation and philanthropy.

You can donate to their 501c3 organization here, I believe.

Re:bashing paypal

[Felinoid]

I went to the fake Paypal verification site and logged in as
root@website.url
pasword: NowToHackYourDataBase

However I tracked the server to a location outside the united states so it'd be a waist of PayPals time and energy to try and get anything done.

Maybe sites like Slashdot...

[Yaa 101]

Maybe sites like Slashdot need a open source mergant to handle donations for all sort of open source projects...

Re:Introducing the latest nazi type ... *drums* ..

[tbjw]

Surely `caveatur paypal' (i.e. passive subjunctive)

Re:bashing paypal

[Frizzle Fry]

The FBI has little power against people in countries other than the US, including those who perpetrate these scams.

Worryingly

[binkzz]

Counterpane's Schneier said PayPal doesn't have to be "100 percent bullet proof" to be of value to online merchants. "I'm sure there are lots of ways to muck with it. The question is, does it work well most of the time? I mean, how badly do people want to steal Pez dispensers?" he said. I know for a fact if I would make a statement as that I would get sacked on the spot; or at the very least get a major bullying from my boss.

Re:Introducing the latest nazi type ... *drums* ..

[nomadic]

caveat Paypal means "let Paypal be wary". What you were probably looking for is caveatis Paypal(um)

Unless Paypal is the accusative form of Paypal, which you can make the argument for since you don't make the distinction between nominative and accusative in English. Or you can make it easy by making up a latin word for Paypal--maybe ErogereAmicus. So you could say "Caveatis emptor ErogereAmicum".

Though you're just being ostentatious with changing caveat to caveatis ;)

Paypal is NOT a bank

[Tablizer]

Don't keep more than about $100 in your paypal account and don't buy anything more than $100 with it and you have little to worry about beyond $100 getting frozen. Convenience sometimes has risk. If you use paypal like a bank and you get screwed, don't complain.

They got me as well

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not surprised. My family uses a wireless network (NAT router of course) to get online. My brother and I both had accounts, they locked them both claiming fraud because 2 accounts came from the same IP. They held over $400 from me for 180 days before I finally got a check, the entire time they were collecting interest on my money. Their normal time to hold the money is 180 days, I wonder if FNP got special treatment because they were big enough to get Slash Dotted. With luck this will make more people aware of Pay Pal. They're NOT a bank; they can lock your money away for any reason. There are entire communities built around people who were burnt by Pay Pal.

Like http://www.nopaypal.com

The concept is a crock...and they found out why

[snStarter]

Let's see, here's what they say:

"Without anonymity there can never be true freedom of speech, and without decentralization the network will be vulnerable to attack."

Freedom of speech also hinges on the responsibility of the speaker. If you can say it you should own it. Otherwise the lies have no accountability.

Adam Bridge

Re:The concept is a crock...and they found out why

[badzilla]

Freedom of speech also hinges on the responsibility of the speaker. If you can say it you should own it.

Maybe true where you live but it ain't necessarily so everywhere else. There are many places in the world where saying, for example, "I disagree with the government" will ensure that a string of unpleasant things happens to you very soon afterwards. Freenet gives a voice to those people.

Re:The concept is a crock...and they found out why

[sysadmn]

But it's a short slide from "Freedom of Speech" (i.e., anonymous speeck) to "Felony Money Laundering" if you're an online financial provider. Why should PayPal risk big fines for the 3% of $550 that's at play?

Paypal is SICK

[srosebush]

They did this once to me as well when I lived in Canada, decided to put me through a "random audit" which they want to check accounts that have "suspecious" activity. They wanted me to fax in documents on their special fax letterhead, they wanted stuff such as credit card statements, utility bills, proof of who I was, and so on...

The only thing I could do with the account is still recieve money from people, I couldn't send it, I couldn't transfer it to my bank account.

I had around 50 dollars USD on my account... I was kind of mad and wanted my 50 back... Anyways I kind of let it go and about 6 months later they released the funds to my bank account.

I now have being moved to the Netherlands, have another Paypal account, and I do not leave large amounts of money on Paypal at any time, I usually transfer just enough to pay for something I want to get online and that's it.

--

This story is an example of them discriminating against the people using their service, they gave a shit reason and decided to suspend their account, which was a donations account and not for profit.

So I guess porn kings can have bank accounts but people trying to start up a small thing online can't have an online account to accept donations.

Discusting.

One less Paypal Account...

[thentil]

I just closed my account, which has been open for .... jees... years.

Ohh yea, screw freedom...

[cbreaker]

I mean, you're right. Who needs free speech? Who needs a network where we don't have to worry about big brother watching and tracking everything we do?

So damned it to hell! Take away our freedoms because we don't use them anyways right!?

boycott Paypal

[Anonymous Coward]

This is ridiculous. Suffice to say that Paypal probably has some fine print that allows them to arbitrarily refuse service to anyone at any time, their reasoning doesn't make sense. If Paypal is going to terminate accounts based on the PREMISE of potential questionable activity, then they might as well terminate everyone's account.

Nowadays, it's pretty easy to get your own merchant account anyway. Screw Paypal and the other middlemen. Get your own credit card terminal and accept credit cards directly. If you shop around, you'll find companies that will offer these services. The key is to tell them you do mail order - don't even mention the Internet. They don't do much substantive checking and once you have the account, it's difficult to lose it unless you are doing something illegal.

For consumers, it's best to pay by credit card rather than debit/paypal, and the first time you do a chargeback on a paypal payment via credit card, they're liable to cancel your account, so screw 'em.

Re:Introducing the latest nazi type ... *drums* ..

[Too Much Noise]

sir, if you want to talk latin grammar, we can take this business outside, like real ... erm ... something.

(now, that everyone else has left the building)
caveo + acc.="to be on guard [against]"; there's no need for the passive form. the "classic" caveat emptor is active subjunctive, too; on the other hand, 3rd person needs a subject, which in your phrasing would be paypal (latin needs the proper noun declension and paypal is nominative by default).

anyway, when playing the nazi on /. the key is not to know what you're talking about, but to persuade the other party that you do :-)

sue them?

[medelliadegray]

while i am appaled at how many frivilous lawsuits there are in the US as of late, why isnt it possible to just sue them in small claims court if its a sizeable sum?

Hell, sue them in small claims court or wherever over any sum they owe you! think about it, even if it is a small sum they owe you--it will cost them more to represent themselves so even if they win, it would be somewhat of a victory for the person sueing.

Correct me if i am wrong (and i very well may be) but they have to come to the court/state you are sueing them from.

just an idea for all of those people out there who have been scamed by ebay--i mean paypal.

umm

[Too Much Noise]

"caveatis emptor" won't work - the verb is 2nd person plural, the subject is emptor (nominative of buyer). And what on earth is erogere? Did you mean erogare, in which case probably erogans would do better?

anyway, relax - it was just a joke. Besides, I don't remember enough latin to follow up much more from here, anyway. Shall we call it even?

Re:umm

[nomadic]

Yeah, you're right. I shouldn't have thrown the emptor in, and yes, erogere, that was actually a typo (in that I tracked down the spelling just to make sure before I wrote it, but still typed it wrong)

Besides, I don't remember enough latin to follow up much more from here, anyway. Shall we call it even?

No, not until I prove I remember less latin than you.

Anonymity is not a virtue

[daminotaur]

Freenet is shady and an idea that will never work--some kind of libertarian fantasy with no there there. Even if it worked ideally, it means your server could be passing, say, child porn. Or pirated information. Live free or die, blah blah.

If I ran a server and someone was engaged in such nefarious activity, they would be "censored" pronto, as in rm -rf *--how in the world can not knowing what's going on (the Sgt. Schultz method?) be an improvement?

Good job PayPal in not making payments to anonymous recipients.

Re:Anonymity is not a virtue

[Eric Smith]

Good job PayPal in not making payments to anonymous recipients.

This had NOTHING to do with payments to anonymous recipients. Paypal doesn't provide any means whereby anonymous recipients could receive money.

If Paypal doesn't like the aims of the Freenet project, perhaps they may be within their legal rights to drop the account. But it's certainly not very ethical. Suppose other major corporations behaved the same way...

• "Sorry, sir, McDonalds will not sell you hamburgers because of your registered political party."
• "No, you can't buy a Ford automobile because records show that you have donated money to the ACLU."
• "Because you protested the war, you can't open a checking account with Bank of America."
• "SBC has disonnected your telephone service because you've written software that is released under the GPL."

Do you want to live in that world? Or do you want corporations to have to treat individuals in a nondiscriminatory fashion?

[I'm obviously not claiming that the corporations I've named have any such policies; they were chosen arbitrarily as examples.]

tounge piercings, race, gender, religion... really

[way2trivial]

what's the distinction to be made from piercings to race? why can you refuse the pierced, and not the catholics?

morally, and or legally

Governments Fault

[logicnazi]

Almost certainly paypal had no choice in this manner. There are a great deal of government regulations about monetary transfers that prohibit anonymity. The failing war on drugs justified a great many rules restricting the anonymous flow of money (which didn't stop the drugs only encourage another criminal enterprise of money laundering) and the war on terror combined with the public prominence of the internet nailed the lid in anonymous monetary transfers.

Even if the significant government powers to stop and track sucpiscous monetary transactions don't explicitly bar paypal from allowing anonymous accounts (as the page suggests freenet was doing) the considerable influence of the government forces them to do so anyway. After all paypal relies on the patronage of credit card companies who we know would rather bow to government pressure than stick up for privacy. These E-gold type places can continue in the face of this opposition because they don't accept credit cards and they technically aren't transfering USD (rather ounces of gold) so probably fall under less restrictive laws. Most likely though they are simply too small to have been noticed yet.

Face it guys anonymous monetary transfers aren't going to be offered by a for profit company. Such companies have too much to lose by not allowing government scrutiny.

On a related note I wonder if Osama would pat up his 35 pounds of gold using E-gold.

Re:Governments Fault

[EdMcMan]

Read the website. An anonymous proxy was not used.

Re:Governments Fault

[evanbd]

Did you read anything about what happened? The Freenet project did not use an anonymizing proxy to access Paypal, ever. It appears that Paypal decided that since Freenet itself is something vaguely related to an anonymizing proxy, that they wouldn't let the project have an account. This has nothing to do with how the Freenet project used Paypal, and everything to do with the politics of what Freenet is.

Re:Governments Fault

[Oloryn]

Almost certainly paypal had no choice in this manner. There are a great deal of government regulations about monetary transfers that prohibit anonymity.

What's that got to do with it? There are no anonymous monetary transfers going on here, just non-anonymous monetary transfers to a project supporting anonymous file transfers, which is not at all the same thing. I don't think government regulations had a thing to do with this.

Re:Governments Fault

[logicnazi]

Well no I didn't read about this the only link being given in the article just being to freenets homepage.

Amazing how I got moded up to a 5 anyway despite adding completly useless and incorrect information.

Re:Governments Fault

[e-gold]

e-gold would NOT be useful to Osama (they take orders from courts, unlike actual gold bars/coins) and I doubt Osama's word anyway. It IS interesting that he refers to gold as a currency (it is) denominated by weight, but that doesn't mean he's willing to use a traceable book-entry system to contract for murder.

Freenet doesn't do murder -- they do free speech, and I've given them e-gold myself. Sorry I'm so late to the discussion, but if anyone wants to try e-gold just contact me with an account number and I'll click you some, which you can then -- if you like -- click to the Freenet project. You're correct that this was all political, but I think it's safe to say that e-gold isn't nearly as political as eBay/PayPal seem to be. Thanks.
JMR

Re:bashing paypal

[pla]

In all liklyhood, this is exactly what happened. Freenet could very well go and get another PayPal account and move on. But this is Slashdot, and so of course it has to be something shaky on PayPal's part in an attempt to kill off Freenet.

If I want to donate (less than a certain amount - $300, IIRC?) to a presidential candidate anonymously, I can do so.

If I want to drop a few grand into Santa's bucket around Christmas, I don't need to provide three forms of ID.

But if I want to donate $20 to Freenet, I can't do so anonymously?


Sorry, unacceptible. For large transfers, yes, certain tax laws apply. For small amounts, PayPal has no right to arbitrarily decide to freeze accounts without a damned good reason. Sure, they don't count as a bank, but they still count as a company holding my (or whomever's) money. If I overpay on my phone bill, MCI can't just "freeze" my account with a positive balance and tell me to go pound sand. Same with any other company. Same with PayPal - If they have posession of someone's money, they can't just randomly decide to keep it for themselves.

Hey everybody! Let's get a few things straight.

[bersl2]

OK. Let's clarify what I said.

PayPal has legal justification. Pending their side of the story, PayPal probably does not have moral justification.

But it's not as though we should blow up the whole world over this! In the grand scheme of things, PayPal is a small fry! If it's alright with you, I'd rather expend more of my limited sanity on bigger moral crusades, like Bush/Ashcroft. Or Microsoft. Or software patents. PayPal isn't going anywhere. More importantly, PayPal isn't actively seeking out trouble! They can be avoided.

[exhale]

Thank you for making me rant; are you satisfied now?

Re:Hey everybody! Let's get a few things straight.

[cgenman]

Thank you for making me rant; are you satisfied now?

Not yet, I want you to dance too.

PayPal might not seem like a big fry if you don't do a lot online, but when it comes to online transactions between entities too small to directly process credit cards, Paypal is in a monopoly position. Furthermore, as they have gone out of their way to not be a bank, they can pretty much do whatever pleases them irrespective of potential damage to their customers. Everyone that relies upon small internet transactions for either a portion of their income or a portion of their entertainment realizes that this is a ticking time bomb that's just waiting to blow up in all of our faces. It's not worse than Bush/Ashcroft or Microsoft, but to the people derive sizable percentages of their income using a service with exactly zero accountability it is a big story.

And finally, why would you comment on a story only to say that it isn't worth comment?

Re:Hey everybody! Let's get a few things straight.

[bersl2]

To contradict myself. To start an argument. To be macroscopic. You don't want to know. Because I felt like it. Hysteria! Take your pick.

Hell, I should be studying right now, or something. As we all know, they key to ridding the world of evil is through n-degree homogeneous differential equations.

So what is the problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Paypal is sending them a check for their remaining balance."

So what exactly is the problem here? Paypal isn't ripping anyone off or witholding funds. They may do business with whoever they wish. When the freenet guys signed up with Paypal, they knew what they were getting themselves into. Unless they skipped the EULA.

Re:bashing paypal

[Anonymous Coward]

a) Most of the targets are in Romania or similarly difficult-to-get-at areas.

b) These types of SPAMs that attempt to get users to give up their usernames/passwords all spoof large domains that have large traffic. We dealt with on the order of 100k (100,000) reports a week from our users, often routed through thousands of different IP addresses. Even if law enforcement *could* get at the scammers out of country... do you REALLY think they'd follow up on each one of these?

Or might it not be more efficient (if only *sigh*) to just tell people not to be so dumb as to GIVE THEIR USERNAME AND PASSWORD OUT TO SOLICITATIONS?!?!

Credit Cards

[stimpleton]

Since I am a non-US merchant, my PayPal account is verified via credit card. Welp, 2 months ago I got an email about "unusual account detail access", and the account was on hold, by PayPal admin.

Here's the kicker: I asked that the acocunt be shut and all account details deleted. They could not do that and needed to investigate.

Since that time, many transaction appeared on my car for Online Casinos etc Presumabely by the person that hacked the PayPal account..

It ended with cancelling my card with my bank and claiming back all the transactions I hadnt made.

Lesson: Unlike many online merchants that (supposedly) delete your CC details after each transaction, PayPal dont, and have your number and details.

Re:Credit Cards

[mabu]

Lesson: Unlike many online merchants that (supposedly) delete your CC details after each transaction, PayPal dont, and have your number and details.

I don't want to spoil your party, but I seriously doubt any merchants ever delete the billing info. I know of no accounting system or computerized payment processing system that ever deletes transaction information intentionally. Maybe in the manual terminals, and maybe people who use windows and have to re-format and re-install every three months, but aside from that, it's a safe assumption that no matter where you do business, every merchant you've ever given your credit card number to, probably has a record somewhere of it. That's a scary thought, but I believe credit card fraud is not the big plague that it's made out to be. Getting CC information is no big deal; using it without getting caught is.

Re:Credit Cards

[Anonymous Coward]

In some countries merchants are required by law to delete such information after a certain period of time. (Whether they actually do is another matter, of course).

Re:Introducing the latest nazi type ... *drums* ..

[OldManAndTheC]

The Latin Grammar Nazi

Did anyone else get a mental image of a guy with a thin mustache wearing an unbuttoned shirt and jackboots, holding a cigar in one hand and a textbook in the other? Saying "Olé!"?

No? Just me then...

The New Idea

[Mulletproof]

From the homepage:
"Without anonymity there can never be true freedom of speech..."

Funny how that's not true in real life...

Re:The New Idea

[EdMcMan]

Why not?

I must be missing something.

I feel their pain

[ThousandStars]

I once used Paypal too, since I figured that they must be okay since everyone else used them. I paid for the mistake in time and money. In a comment a few months ago I detailed my negative history with Paypal, and I can only say that I rue the day I didn't know about sites like Paypal Sucks and About Paypal. Yeah, I went the litigation route and got a little money back, but after that horrible experience I vowed never again.

I'm sorry to hear that Freenet relied on Paypal, and I can only hope they have lawyers at the ready -- because Paypal only speaks one language.

Re:I feel their pain

[MacWiz]

It's the only one eBay knew to teach them.

Oh the irony!

[yoshi_mon]

Good - freenet shouldn't exist anyway (Score:3, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 17, @10:38PM (#9179744)

Link spoofing

[OldManAndTheC]

Arguably, scammers are getting very clever at their email attacks. They'll send you an email with a link like this:

I imagine someone's already considered this, but couldn't browsers and e-mail readers check for this kind of link spoofing? One method could be to check the text of the link against the URL - another could be to look for commonly spoofed domains (eBay, PayPal, banks, etc.) in the link text and check it against a database of good domains. Then a bad link could be marked as "suspicious" in some way. Just a thought ...

They act like one -- Exactly

[ThousandStars]

Paypal isn't, technically, a bank, but in many respects they act like one. Therefore, I don't think it is unreasonable for customers to expect them to act like one. I no longer use Paypal after a bad experience with them, and have since learned that, as you put it, "They're been freezing/witholding/cancelling accounts willy-nilly ever since they started." That's nasty, unethical behavior; banks once did similar things -- until the government stepped in to regulate them. Since Paypal keeps acting like a bank but without any of the safeguards, I don't want to do business with them, and I encourage others not to either.

one of the many Paypal catch-22s

[mabu]

I ran into a problem with Paypal recently, explifying how they're they're there for you until you really need them.

I purchased a product from a merchant online (sleazebag named Big Impressions out of Arkansas (avoid these losers). They took my money and then didn't ship the product when it was ordered. I complained for several weeks and was blown off. By the time I complained to Paypal, it was just past 30 days from the transaction and Paypal refused to investigate because the transaction was 30 days old, so I got screwed.

Based on my research, in the absence of any terms, a merchant has 30 days (domestically) to ship a product, but Paypal requires you to report the problem within 30 days, so by the time the merchant legally screws you, Paypal doesn't have any responsibility to investigate. It's totally useless. Thanks for nothing Paypal!

Re:one of the many Paypal catch-22s

[The Whinger]

I was stuffed in a similar way by PayPal. I purchased something from a guy on-line, paid via PayPal. The item was delivered and it was unlicensed software. I sent it back immediately. The guy wouldn't provide me with a refund. Contacted PayPal and they said that their protection agreement only covers delivery. Great - so the guy could have sent me a turd and they still wouldn't have dealt with it.

Oh - and it was www.0800software.org.uk ... avoid!

Re:one of the many Paypal catch-22s

[LifesABeach]

Contact the F.B.I. you've been robbed.

Hell hath no fury like a miffed teenager

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see... "That sucks", "Nazi-like authoritarian", "threat to the system", & "jackboot of authority." ...and all that just in the first paragraph.

Who modded this as "5 interesting"?

Re:Hell hath no fury like a miffed teenager

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously other miffed teenagers...

No. Its all about the donations nowadays

[Anonymous Coward]

No, and that's the whole problem. The project has become a donation-sink.

Not if you use a service like MBNA's "ShopSafe"

[RKBA]

Not if you use MBNA'a "ShopSafe" credit card service. Please note that I have no vested interest in MBNA whatsoever, except as a happy customer. If you have a regular MBNA credit card, what MBNA does is provide software you can install on your computer that automatically connects up to their credit card "NetAccess" service (you have to log in with name and password each time) and lets you generate "disposable" credit card numbers as needed (much like Spamex.com does with their disposable email address service that I also use :-).

I generate a new credit card number for each and every Internet transaction, and the MBNA ShopSafe software lets me set the maximum amount that can be debited to each disposable credit card number as well as the expiration date (up to one year in the future). The way I handle PayPal is to generate a disposable credit card number with an expiration date of one year and a reasonable credit limit (say $500 for example, or whatever you want). If I were to ever want to rescind my credit card information from PayPal, I do not even have to contact PayPal at all - I just start up the ShopSafe software and tell it to delete the particular disposable credit card number that I provided to PayPal so that no further charges can be charged to that account number. I'm very surprised that as far as I know, MBNA is the only one who provides this type of service, so they have no competition in this area.

Re:Not if you use a service like MBNA's "ShopSafe"

[MikeDX]

Cahoot Online bank also provide a similar service, in this case they call it the webcard. You can generate a credit card with a restricted credit limit, which is then valid for up to 2 months. I use this for each online transaction and have started doing it for telephone transactions too.

I had thought up until now that Cahoot was alone in this field, but it looks like other banks may well be catching onto the idea that their customers do not actually want to be scammed by companies abusing their CC information.

Cahoot accounts might only be available to UK residents but i'm not 100% sure.

Re:Not if you use a service like MBNA's "ShopSafe"

[eimhin]

Allied Irish Bank have offered the same service for a few years now.

Re:Not if you use a service like MBNA's "ShopSafe"

[anaradad]

Citi also provides disposable credit card numbers, as does American Express.

Re:Not if you use a service like MBNA's "ShopSafe"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to find out more about MBNA's ShopSafe card, but unfortunately the only links I can find for it on their web site take me to the login page for the service. They don't appear to offer information about it to any who's not already a customer.

No problem, don't use them

[Anonymous Coward]

Well... I would not trust my money to some US dot com. FreeNet does. They don't follow the rules of the US dot com, so they get burnt. What's the big deal here?

Use Western Union or something like that to transfer funds.

Until reputable banks get off their asses and build a CHEAP (as in not ~50 USD added costs) worldwide paying mechanism, we can be sure things like PayPal appear in all their goodness and badness.

Re:tounge piercings, race, gender, religion... rea

[cduffy]

Well, legally, folks with piercings aren't a protected class. Minorities and members of religious groups are.

Don't ask me why, that's how the law works.

Have you ever been on Freenet?

[Anonymous Coward]

I installed Freenet and played around with it a bit. While I appreciate what they are trying to do, (free internet and all) I uninstalled it shortly thereafter because I don't feel comfortable with pedophiles using my computer's hard drive as a store for their kiddie porn. Actually, kiddie porn (and the occasional mp3) is about ALL I found on Freenet. I decided that this is a project that I cannot morally support (at least with my bandwidth) and perhaps PayPal made a similar moral decision. It's just like a brick and mortar store; they have the right to refuse service to anyone. I just wish PayPal would be a little more moral with the rest of their business transactions.

Re:Have you ever been on Freenet?

[Anonymous Coward]

I uninstalled it becuase its so fucking slow. I mean, there is slow, then there is freenet.

Maybe paypal was doing them a favor.

Re:Have you ever been on Freenet?

[cruachan]

I too did exactly that. While in theory I support their attempts to provide a completely uncencored service, in practice any political etc. content is swamped to the point of non-existance by the paedophiles.

It seems to me it doesn't have to be that way. The blurb for freenet goes on and on about it being complete freedom of information or nothing. That's rubbish, it'd be hard true, but if filters to prevent paedophile images etc were built into the system at core then it would gain a lot more acceptance than it has. At the present it's too easy for freenet to be painted as purely as a distribution network for kiddie pr0n - which is unfortunatly true - and the uncencored political benefits are lost as collateral damage.

Re:Have you ever been on Freenet?

[Cro Magnon]

Frankly, I'm not sure what the point of Freenet is. If I want to rant that Bush (or Kerry) is a fucking idiot, I can do so on the regular web. And if this country truly becomes an anti-free-speech dictatorship, they'd shut down Freenet anyway. And I have no interest in CP, or illegal warez, or plotting to overthrow the government.

Re:tounge piercings, race... [improved]

[cduffy]

Well, legally, folks with piercings aren't a protected class. Off the top of my head (and it's been a while), race, ethnicity, gender, religion, maybe country of origin, and a few more are, but that's about it. Folks can discriminate against you all they want, as long as they aren't doing so because you're in a protected class.

Don't ask me why, that's how the law works.

Re:bashing paypal

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

The only way to know that it's fake is to look in the URL bar

Even that's not enough against some possible threats and against some that are already in the wild.

Several browser vulnerabilities make URL spoofing devastating. You can put the wrong address in the address bar of most IE versions by combining a user@malicioushost format with an embedded %01%00 in the URL. You can theoretically write scripts for other browsers that cover the URL bar with an arbitrary graphic.

Let me plug a couple of sites. Antiphishing.org has hot news and tips about these scams. My own security advice for Aunt Tillie blog suggests treating email like a phone call. Don't give out your password/credit card number/launch codes unless you're the one who placed the call/started the transaction. Just the standard consumer advice about phone scams, in other words. Slashdotters, of course, should read the HTML source to find out how the latest technical tricks work :-)

Re:tounge piercings, race, gender, religion... rea

[Anonymous Coward]

The Civil Rights Act lists groups that are protected classes. People with piercings aren't listed.

Re:Introducing the latest nazi type ... *drums* ..

[ctr2sprt]

You're kidding, nobody has posted the Life of Brian bit yet? And you call yourselves nerds!

Better services than Paypal available

[Anonymous Coward]

In the meantime paypal has a horrible reputation and I would not even consider using it. There are a number of much better services out there that are actually reputable and reliable. Also, most other services accept money orders now and do not require credit cards anymore. I know enough people who had their credit card info stolen through paypal and I wouldn't take that risk. Seems like paypal is completely out of the race now.

Re:Introducing the latest nazi type ... *drums* ..

[chgros]

caveat Paypal means "let Paypal be wary". What you were probably looking for is caveatis Paypal(um)
Or, more likely, cave Paypal (as in cave canem, beware the dog) Subjonctive is used in place of imperative for the third person.

Classic sampling bias error

[Solandri]

You are a merchant. You deal with many customers but few merchants. Of course the vast majority of the fraud you experience will be by customers.

A customer deals with many merchants but few or no customers. Of course the vast majority of fraud they experience will be by merchants.

Get a real merchant account

[Animats]

If you want to accept credit card payments, get a real merchant account. It's not hard. Or sign up with a donation processing service, like Click and Pledge.

report "phishing" scams to the FTC

[nothings]

FTC Consumer Alert: Is Someone "Phishing" for Your Information? Not that I have any clue how often they prosecute.

Re:Introducing the latest nazi type ... *drums* ..

[Too Much Noise]

You uncovered me, sir! my mild subjonctive was in fact a diversion for the real message:

*more drums*

cavete grammaticos

*ducks*

Easy fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy fix for this: rather than futz around witrh Paypal, you could have just called your credit card company and told them you suspected your card number might have been compromised and gotten them to issue a new card.

I did this recently when a certain warehouse club I shop with had a problem with credit card info potentially being exposed. I had no strange charges show up and no prohlems, and in theory, my card should not have been in the batch that was exposed, but why risk it?

My bank had a new card to me in a couple of days. No big deal.

Another victim of PayPal account freezing

[radd0]

This sounds like a trend...

I too have been subjected to PayPal "review" this afternoon. Twice in one day they asked me to re-confirm my personal information, which I did successfully each time. Then an hour later I received an email that they are freezing my business account until I can provide them with:

1. A bank statement and signature card

2. A valid photo ID (drivers license or passport)

Without any warning whatsoever they have disabled any ability to send outgoing payments, but will accept incoming no problem (while it collects interest on their account).

My favorite part?

"Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail to this adress will not be received and therefore, not answered."

No voice phone number to reach them at, not even an email address. Just a fax and a web form. Talk about customer service.

I too will be focusing my business transactions elsewhere.

Re:Another victim of PayPal account freezing

[harlows_monkeys]

I too have been subjected to PayPal "review" this afternoon. Twice in one day they asked me to re-confirm my personal information, which I did successfully each time

Hmmmm.....you sure you haven't been phished?

Re:Another victim of PayPal account freezing

[radd0]

Hmmmm.....you sure you haven't been phished?

Yes, I've checked my hosts file, etc., and I'm certainly getting this information directly from the horse's mouth.

Re:bashing paypal

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

But if I want to donate $20 to Freenet, I can't do so anonymously?

Well, then. I guess you can't do it through PayPal. PayPal is not required to accept payments by anyone if it does not want to. Send fREEserve cash in a letter. No problem.

Re:No. Its all about the donations nowadays

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously somebody has no idea what they're talking about. We've been seeing several new build releases per week on the unstable branch alone for quite some time now, thanks to Toad.

Yadda. Blah. Mumble.

[slaida1]

That Bladerunnerish phuture has certain appeal to it, OTOH... So go ahead, take'em all away, all power to megacorps and just maybe I'll see some "dark" vision of future come true in my lifetime.

Anyway, it's kind of fun to really fight for something but nowadays there's nothing to fight for except puny "think-of-all-the-ramifications!", OMG just think what'll become if this cornerstone, this brilliant core of freedom vanished! OMGOMG!!!11

Warning

[Doc Ruby]

Warning: PayPal, the unregulated global banking monopoly, will steal your money whenever it deems opportune, and keep it as long as it deems appropriate to its purposes, perhaps forever. It will not be accountable for the theft. It happened to me, and I'm still not sure why I got my money back, suddenly and without warning, more than a year after the 6 months its spokesdroid emailed me that it would. They are the enemy, and they must be destroyed.

All the More Reason

[Greyfox]

To write your Congressman demanding that they regulate this terrorist money-laundering organization.

donations

[Anonymous Coward]

I note that none of what you say really applies to the case where donations are being accepted via credit card (as per Freenet accepting donations via Pay Pal). So long as you leave the received money in a holding account for a cooling-off period, there is no chance that a charge-back is going to cause you any direct loss. Also, it seems rather unlikely that a stolen credit card would be used to make a donation, and the cooling-off period would also cover that unlikely eventuality.

I never had the time to sign up . . .

[Arioch of Chaos]

I've been thinking about getting a Paypal account for years. I've even started the sign up procedure twice. However, the user agreement is about 60 pages long, if you count all the documents that are incorporated by reference. There's no way I'm reading all that!

Re:tounge piercings, race... [improved]

[drinkypoo]

It depends on where you are. In some places people have successfully sued when they got fired or even didn't get hired over their appearance. This mostly happens in California, where the law is kooky. Frankly I think that the only way your appearance should matter, besides not looking filthy or something, is if you are a counterperson, floor employee, et cetera. But, the reality of the business world is different from the way I would like things to be.

Nice try.

[warrax_666]

Even if it worked ideally, it means your server could be passing, say, child porn.

Yes, but it also means it could be passing, oh, I don't know... information about a planned organized revolt against an opressive government or inside company information from a whistleblower about e.g. pollution of ground water. Welcome to the double-edged sword of truly free speech.

If I ran a server and someone was engaged in such nefarious activity, they would be "censored" pronto, as in rm -rf *-

That's certainly your perogative (and you would probably be breaking laws if you didn't). Incidentally, I would certainly also do so.

-how in the world can not knowing what's going on (the Sgt. Schultz method?) be an improvement?

It's the difference between being a common carrier and not being one.

If I participate in FreeNet, I'm basically saying: "Here is some disk space and network bandwidth, use it for whatever (and I mean whatever) you want -- I neither care nor do I want to know what you use it for.". IOW, I'm donating resources for good or bad.

Not knowing (or being able to know) what is actually stored on your computer gives you (morally, if not legally) common carrier status.

But nice try.

Re:Nice try.

[pavon]

Yes, but it also means it could be passing, oh, I don't know... information about a planned organized revolt against an opressive government or inside company information from a whistleblower about e.g. pollution of ground water. Welcome to the double-edged sword of truly free speech.

And this oppressive government would let people use free net. Yeah right. I'm sorry but I have yet to hear a single real problem that FreeNet actually solves. Anywhere that does not allow free speech would consider encryption of any kind, including FreeNet, a crime. Anywhere that FreeNet is allowed, there are already other avenues for either private or anonymous speech, and so the only communication which needs to be both private and anonymous, is that which is deemed nearly unanimously to be bad (like child pornography).

I agree with the idea in principle but in reality, FreeNet has no real uses except for garbage like child pornograpy.

What about the routine anonymous proxy users?

[samj]

I routinely use anonymous proxies in order to secure the 'last mile' part of my browsing with SSL - the part I care about the most (I don't care all that much about what someone on the other side of the world sees - it's more those at this end - eg employees - that I'm concerned about). I've written to PayPal and left a voicemail so as to confirm whether or not I too am at risk of business disruption courtesy these short sighted policies. I think I'd best just get me a merchant account.

Re:bashing paypal

[admbws]

I think you might find, if you read the small print, they do have the right to freeze your account, and they don't need a good reason, although any clause that empowers them to effectively "confiscate" your money would almost certainly be ruled invalid in court.

Re:bashing paypal

[gujo-odori]

I feel your pain.

I work for a large spam-filtering service, and as a writer of filters, I'm one of the people who reads the spam report inbox and the false positive report inbox. We see a lot of phishing scams for Citibank, Paypal, eBay, Fleet Bank, etc. We are pretty good at filtering these things out, too.

As a consequence of our being pretty good at filtering them out, I also regularly find them reported as false positives, and every time I see one of those, I always wonder to myself "Did he click on the link and enter his userid and password before or after he reported this as a false positive?"

The first time I ever saw a phishing mail, just like the first time I ever saw a 419 mail, it was obvious just from looking at it that it was a scam. I find it kind of scary that so many people can look at something so ridiculous and have no idea at all that it's bogus. There truly are a lot of people who will believe just about anything.

Caveat Paypal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let the Paypal beware?

So what did you do. . ?

[Fantastic Lad]

Did your bank/s fix the problem? Did you get your money back? What happened?

-FL

Re:So what did you do. . ?

[shaitand]

Yes in the end they all paid me back. Although in the first case with providian several checks bounced because of it, the charges from those caused the account to below (I had about 15 outstanding checks bounce as a chain effect of the initial charge) and the bank refused to refund the charges for those. It ended up costing me alot more than the wrongful charge was in the end.

My current bank at least didn't give me much trouble, as soon as they discovered I failed to understand why it should be ok for them to charge against my account under someone elses name simply because they've chosen to automate the system they refunded immediately. Only took 2hrs on the phone to get it resolved with them and they refunded instantly once it was.

With all three I had to fight though, my current bank was just the least fight.

Re:So what did you do. . ?

[sprekken]

Although in the first case with providian several checks bounced because of it, the charges from those caused the account to below (I had about 15 outstanding checks bounce as a chain effect of the initial charge) and the bank refused to refund the charges for those. It ended up costing me alot more than the wrongful charge was in the end.

That is fucked up. Seriously. Yell louder, and make some serious demands. In my experience, they will always waive the charges if you sound serious enough. It is their fault the charges occurred, therefore it is their responsibility to cover those charges.

Re:So what did you do. . ?

[shaitand]

Believe me I did yell. They refused, after the 4th or 5th supervisor hung up on me I gave up and dropped my account.

Remember:

[Ketnar]

Paypal is out to make money - Not out to make YOU money.

That being said, we dropped paypal service completey. Sorry, but if some snotty little brat can call paypal and just 'complain' about my account (this happened!) and LOCK IT FOEVER without /any/ proof of /any/ wrong doing..

Then these people are a little trigger happy.

F*uck em, F*uck em with a 10 ton anal probe. There are better ways out there now, and paypals stupid, braindead methods of screwing their customers is going the way of the dodo bird, the popularity they have from 'before' they went south is just going to take a while to burn off.

FYI: Of the accounts they lock, they only 'pay out' so many of them. (You have to break some arms to get it, too.)

Why else do you think their reports and whatnot always look so great? Shaving a little off the customers to make ends meet better.. :P

[/bitter]

rights-infringing

[N3wsByt3]

I'm always surprised to see those kinds of remarks. Seems to me like it's comming from a viewpoint that establishes the business/marketrule of the capitalistic system above all else.

Alas, I neither agree, nor accept this as a premise: one can not absolve all practises like that on the grounds of pure capitalistic reasoning. Businesses that disregard their contracts do not live in a closed bubble, and the social impact is always there, which is why there are laws too.

And it doesn't matter if they say 'we can change it whenever we want'...well, duh, of course they would *like* that, but imagine companies or businessmen could say that whenever thyey want, then, clearly, clients or customers would soon have no rights at all. It's difficult enough as it is, to legaly fight a company that has the power to hire scores of the best lawyers.

Most companies still try it though, and even here you see a lot of them claiming that, if you purchase something online, you can not just change your mind and return it, or have to bear the costs of returning it when it's delivered damaged/not working, etc. Their defence is the same: "But it says so clearly in our contract!" Well, good try, but the courts (at least here) have ruled otherwise: it still remains an infringement of your rights, even if it's put a hundred times in the contract.

So, you see, it's not as simple as saying "it was in their contract, so they are in their right".

Re:rights-infringing

[Anonymous Coward]

You're misusing the term "rights".

Um, if a company was actually infringing on someone's rights, that's one thing. I don't think you can argue that anyone's "rights" are being infringed here.

Further, using your example, forcing you to pay the return costs or be unable to return a broken item, may be illegal, but it is not an "infringement of your rights". You don't have a "right" to return broken merchandise, but we have put in place a law that says you can.

Re:rights-infringing

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have a "right" to return broken merchandise, but we have put in place a law that says you can.

In that case you have no rights. They're all based on laws...

Re:rights-infringing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm always surprised to see those kinds of remarks. Seems to me like it's comming from a viewpoint that establishes the business/marketrule of the capitalistic system above all else.

The buisness/marketrule is above all else. On what planet do you live on where that is not the case?
Can you tell me of one system that has provided better for more people then any other that has lasted long enough to improve society without slaughting millions? Do not bother I already know you cannot answer that.

funny

[N3wsByt3]

Alas, in rl, paypal claims it isn't a bank, and it DID close down the account.

Re:funny

[nacturation]

There's a difference between closing down the PayPal account and closing down the bank account you have associated with your PayPal account. PayPal can close your PayPal account at any time, but it can't close your actual bank-provided bank account.

That's why everyone should open up a separate bank account for use with PayPal. There is always a slight risk that you could be a victim of fraud -- either someone scams PayPal and you end up paying, or someone steals your account login. With a separate bank account, your risk is minimized as they can't take out money if you don't keep anything in it. Credit cards are always an issue, but fortunately you can easily dispute any charges there.

Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

"PayPal is not required to accept payments by anyone if it does not want to".

So if they decided not to accept payments from black people, gays, or jews then you should have no problem with that. Same goes for rent, housing and employment for you too I guess.

now that you mentionned it

[N3wsByt3]

Well, trying to understand why the majority of the world hate the USA wouldn't be a bad move, indeed.

maybe so

[N3wsByt3]

I do not think Ian meant paypal closed anything else then there paypal-account, however.

It still sucks, ethically. And I'm not even sure it would be legal (in my country) for a company to just cut all your contractual obligations one-sided, whether they say so in their contract hundred times or not.

There have been numerous tries of companies to dissolve their responsability and claim they can do so because it says so in their contract, but the courts thusfar do not seem to agree with the that ultra-capitalistic viewpoint that, if it's in the contract, companies have the inherent right to do so.

See also an earlier post of me for examples.

Re:maybe so

[nacturation]

The post I initially replied to stated (original emphasis unchanged):

"When they say the account is frozen, they are talking about your bank account (as well as your paypal account)."

assuming

[N3wsByt3]

What else would it be used for? Any indications?

Granted, I have urged many times that they would put out a 'finance'-page, which openly discloses the monetary 'ins&outs'. It still isn't there, but I do not have the feeling anyone, not even Ian or Toad objects to it, it's just a primarily technical issue, notably finding someone who has the time and willingness (and capability) to write some shell-scripts so it can be automated.

Anyone feel like giving it a try? :-)

Re:Maiden name and ID theft...

[Technician]

Now, many banks, unfortunately, use this data, Social Security Number and mother's maiden name, to identify customers

Prevent fraud! Think of Mother's Maiden name as PASSWORD. Talk to your credit folks. Most will allow the use of a password consisting of alphanumeric text instead of your mother's maiden name. Use something like telephone5649. It makes it easier to fight fraudulant accounts (ID theft). Call the suspect account holder and ask if a password or name is being used. Tell them if it's a common name, then it's an ID theft account. Let them know you use a password instead. Do it for all your accounts. I found most CC companies and banks permit this. It makes seperating the legit from the fraud simpler.

PayPal Semi-Alternative www.virtualbank.com FDIC

[dave1g]

www.virtualbank.com

Check it out on www.brankrate.com for virtual bank's money market accounts.

Unlike PayPal they are FDIC insured and the interest rate is 2.15% compared to PayPal's 1%

THIS IS A REAL BANK.

While it doesn't provide the money transfer features that PayPal does, its better safe haven for your money. And still nice and accessible from the internet.

I'm not sure if you can hook up virtualbank to paypal like you can other bank accounts, but it seems feasible.

want alternatives

[hey]

I wish there were some good alternatives to Paypal.
Some people mention Amazon but write it takes a larger cut.
Ideas?

ah well

[N3wsByt3]

That explains it. A -1 post is way below my treshold. ;-)

He was clearly talking crap. At least about this Freenet/paypal issue.

There is little ambiguity about the fact that a paypal-account is meant. There is a lot more ambiguity about what 'use of a proxy' means. Both Ian and toad deny they have used a proxy to access the account, and developping a 'proxy' seems an absurd reason to freeze an account.

The US supreme court disagrees with you

[Sanity]

Even the US supreme court recognises the importance of anonymity in political speech. The Federalist Papers, precursor to the US Constitution, was written anonymously. If its authors were forced to "own" what they wrote the British would have jailed them in a split second and Americans would probably still be paying taxes to the queen of England.

ermm, no

[N3wsByt3]

Freedom of speech does not hinge on responsability. The one is perfectly possible without the other, as Freenet proves.

If someone can make you accountable for what you say, you unevitably create the possibility of shutting that person up, and thus, censorship.

The ultimate question thus becomes; do you want to risk censorship if it gives you accountability? That's the trade-off. Obviously, you prefer the latter, while I prefer the lack of censorship above being able to make someone accountable for what he says.

bullshit

[N3wsByt3]

To see CP on Freenet, you still have to search for it actively (of course, if one clicks on 'pedo&hitler', one might assume what the content is going to be).

And that you can't decide what is in your store or not is paramount to the anonymising purpose of Freenet.

And if you "didn't find anything else" I'm left wondering where you looked. I've found a lot of stuff that wasn't CP, in fact, the vast majority isn't, contrary to what FUD-people claim. Granted, I'm on the unstable build, but as far as I have noticed, the stable build does not differ much.

Re:bullshit

[cruachan]

Didn't search. If you use any of the site list pages I looked at then CP links are prominently displayed. True not all links are to CP, but more than enough to give a very stong impression that one of, if not the, main use for Freenet is as a CP distribution network.

This argument that if you want uncencored freedom of information then you have to accept CP is completely spurious. CP is a record of a crime being committed against a child, and a vile crime at that. There is no valid argument that says that you have to support the greater political good by supporting crimes against children.

In other words Freenet needs to walk away from Omelas.

slander

[Anonymous Coward]

there is a perception that slander is just criticizing or saying negative things. thats not true.

slander is lying to hurt someones reputation. its only slander if its untrue and you know its untrue when you say it.

(and by slander i mean defamation in general)

PayPal ALTERNATIVE: WebMoney

[Anonymous Coward]

digimoney.com
www.wmtransfer.com
www.webmoney.ru

It's the same company. They are far more secure than PayPal and a lot more flexible. Russian innovation at its best.

Dont know why

[soul_on_fire2001]

http://denied.nextel.com/?URL=freenet.sourceforge. net/&IP=168.73.245.58&CAT=NEXTEL

FreenetFUD

[N3wsByt3]

Indeed, and the word of importance is 'supporting'. No one on Freenet is supporting it.

Certainly, things like digital photography, email, encryption, proxies, yes, the internet itself makes it more easy for pedo's to make or distribute CP.

One would be hardpressed to say they 'support' it in the strict sense, however, and when using the broad sense, it would basically mean (when following the same reasoning) that you should abolish all of the above technologies.

And now for the actual content/FUD: when you start the node, you get the Fproxy page. There, you have 5 activelinks, which exist of indexsites. Indexsites represent the total amount of what can be found on the network, much as google/yahoo/altavista with the www (though they use also a searchengine, which isn't possible on Freenet yet).

Those indexsites give a big list of all links, which, I repeat, is in a vast majority NOT about CP. Furthermore, they are shown in a random fashion (depending on the section) between all the other links. Therefor, it can not be called 'prominently displayed'.

Furthermore, there already has been done some research of the content of Freenet by external parties, and they came to the conclusion that CP made out 4% of the total amount of content. Hardly a 'major use', thus, even by a far stretch.

This is what I mean with the typical FUD. Yes, CP can be found on Freenet. It probably can be found on the regular net too. And yes, it can be seen as a drawback, as I have said myself on my Flog. But I dislike the disproportionate reaction of some hysterical 'save the children' people. Fact is, the percentage of CP is minute, and the more people would insert other content in it, the lesser that percentage would become in comparison.

Re:FreenetFUD

[cruachan]

Support can be passive as well as active. I simply fail to see why it isn't possible to build into the freenet software/protocols some sort of mechanism to prevent CP being distributed.

The position you outline above basically seems to say you don't approve of CP, but you do believe paedophiles have a right distribute CP.

Re:FreenetFUD

[N3wsByt3]

"Support can be passive as well as active."

E.g. 'passive', when meaning that the service could be abused, is valid for all other technologies I mentionned above too. The USA government at one time failed to see why encryption couldn't be used where they had the key of. It didn't work out that way.

First of all, all information is stored encrypted; there is no obvious way of 'filtering' particular content out. You can't just filter it like MIME-types, after all. Pure 'visual' recognitionsystems are known to give a lot of false negatives and erronious positives; it is extremely difficult to create one, and I don't believe there is a good one in existence, not even on the www. I also don't think it's the job of Freenet to divert it's limited time and resources to such a project, certainly not in this stage, even if the developers were willing to do it. Furthermore, it would have to be client-sided - in which case you could ask the same of the MS-OS/webbrowser; why don't they implement a visual recognitionsystem so that people don't get to see whatever it is they don't want to see?

Primitive filter-progs like that exist (netnanny, I believe), but they aren't mass-used, and they are developped by third parties. Similary, since Freenet is Open Source and can be forked, everyone that feels that strongly about it can fork it and make a recognition-filter-system. I suspect they will have a hard time, however, because a popular way to distribute images in Freenet is by use of a container (which is basically a zipped file).

Also, the main reason why Napster lost in court is because the court found that they could recognise and censor illegal material, and thus had an obligation to do so. If Freenet were to apply one censor-mechanism of the content, how long would it take for companies and governments to demand they censor other things as well?

"The position you outline above basically seems to say you don't approve of CP, but you do believe paedophiles have a right distribute CP."

The position I take is, that it is impossible to censor one thing, without creating the possibility of censoring other things. I also believe that technologies can be abused, but that that is true for all technologies; yet it does not mean they are 'supportive' of the abuse.

I would agree, however, that it would be most usefull if Freenet could use a google-like searchengine, instead of indexsites. Apart from the gain in user-ease, it would also mean 'save the children' people or the RIAA would not get offended as much or as fast by the visual appearance of what might be a working activelink to a Freesite that might contain illegal material.

The most easy way would be to create a js-based searchengine, but as yet, Ian vehemently oposes that. Feel free to urge him to change his mind. :-)

we've had no problems with paypal

[Anonymous Coward]

& we have no use for robbIE's ?free?(to beg/panhandle)net/.

you'd think that they'd (robbIE/lairIE et AL) stolen enough already what with the proxIE servaNT stock markup scams, gnu online dating, etc..., & would be able to stop begging for more&more monIE all the time.

all is not lost.

consult with/trust in yOUR creators..... free, as in, from felonious corepirate nazi unprecedented evile execrable.

tell 'em robbIE?

Closed my account

[pether]

Really supports the Freenet idea, information should be free whatever it is. So closed my paypal and they could get some money from conservative f**ks instead.

Re:bashing paypal

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe a large percentage of Freenet's donors, being generally privacy-minded types, used proxies when they logged into PayPal to send money to the project? PayPal is known to freeze accounts which have been sent fraudulent funds, whether they know it or not; maybe now they're freezing accounts which receive funds sent from someone using a proxy.

Yes that it very likely what happened. Historically, Paypal's practice has been that any time an account receives a suspicious transaction, the recipient is assumed to have stolen the money, and the recipient's account is frozen.

Re:Introducing the latest nazi type ... *drums* ..

[biljir]

> I'm sorry, we had to outsource the sanskrit grammar nazis to India.

> oh, wait ...

Only makes sense. That is, after all, the home of the original Aryans.

Paypal are an Electronic Money Institution

[lga]

I also do not knw any country on this planet where PayPal registered as a bank.

In an email recieved from paypal on the 12th January 2004:

In June 2003, we applied to the UK's Financial Services Authority (FSA)for authorisation for PayPal (Europe) Ltd. to operate as an Electronic Money Institution (ELMI) in the European Union. This process is still in progress.

That sounds pretty much like they are trying to be a bank to me.

Re:Paypal are an Electronic Money Institution

[SillyNickName4me]

I'm Dutch, not Brittish, but seeing how you are talking about EU rules that should make little difference.

Your average creditcard company is an Electronic Money Institute, but difinitely isn't a bank, and you can only get a card from them when you link it to an account on a 'real' bank.

Neither will this make Paypal a bank, it will amke them more comparable to a card company with regards to their liabilities and such.

And yes, they are trying to be like a bank, however, without officially becomming a bank (so far) and really, much of what they have been doing would not be possible when registering as a bank.
(for example, they would simply not be allowed to charge different fees for non domestic transfers according to EU rules, somethign that makes that I can transfer money free of any fees to any place within the EU nowadays when using my bank for example)

For that matter, try getting an accoutn with Paypal without having a bank account at a regular bank.

Re:Paypal are an Electronic Money Institution

[lga]

Neither will this make Paypal a bank, it will amke them more comparable to a card company with regards to their liabilities and such.

Fair enough, I didn't know what the distinction was between an ELMI and a bank. I do think that paypal would like to be one though.

(for example, they would simply not be allowed to charge different fees for non domestic transfers according to EU rules, somethign that makes that I can transfer money free of any fees to any place within the EU nowadays when using my bank for example)

That hasn't worked out too well for me. I have a dutch postbank account (I live in Amsterdam some of the time) and an english co-op bank account and both charge me a fortune to transfer money between them, although I haven't transferred holland -> england in a few months. I think they must be getting around the rules by charging for the currency conversion when they can't charge for the international transfer.

Re:Paypal are an Electronic Money Institution

[SillyNickName4me]

> charging for the currency conversion when they can't charge for the international transfer.

Yep. besides, they are only required to charge the same fees for a transfer regardless to where it goes within the EU, not to make it free.

But agreed, Paypal would like to be a bank, and esp. would like people to treat them like one...
Of course without really having to comply with the banking regulations and supervision.

Re:Paypal are an Electronic Money Institution

[Elentar]

The distinction from my point of view is whether a government is involved in a regulatory capacity. Credit card companies and banks are regulated by the government and face penalties for screwing with customers or not following the special laws that exist specifically for their industries.

Paypal is not regulated in such a way. When something bad happens, the only recourse of the consumer is to hope that Paypal reimburses them - failing that, they can only go to the courts and hope they can afford to fight it out.

Paypal is not the only instance of a new company wielding enormous unregulated power:

- Google controls the prosperity of tens of thousands of small businesses worldwide through it's decisions related to advertising and search result scoring. Overnight, some people are driven into bankruptcy and others find themselves wildly successful whenever Google changes something.

- Ebay facilitates the seemingly legitimate sale of vast numbers of stolen goods, most of which garner a much higher return than the traditional fencing methods. Scammers also proliferate their schemes with practically no protection for unaware buyers. Is "Caveat Emptor" all we need?

- Microsoft still nearly single-handedly decides digital rights and de-facto standards issues with software decisions that are pushed out to the huge market of Windows users.

- Slashdot brings massive bandwidth bills and costly server repairs to anyone who dares to publish news for nerds or stuff that matters.

Without a doubt, each of these companies has brought something incredible to our society, redefining the way we transact business, locate information, even the interface to technology and our files and data. When telephone service was first introduced and operated by a single company, it no doubt seemed incredibly advanced and was welcomed by the people at that time. But it was a monopoly and by nature would not have become the marvelous communication networks that we have today without the advantages of market competition. And the breakup that brought it all about was enforced by our government, who also created laws to govern that specific industry.

Until that happens, we'll just have more stories of people getting burned by big business, and politicians who take fat contributions to avoid doing anything about it. Corporate ethics are a critical - and missing - piece of the American business environment. And Paypal isn't any different.

-Elentar

Re:Paypal are an Electronic Money Institution

[SillyNickName4me]

A few comments on that...

Google is powerfull but far from the only search engines around.
If you have a proper website with real content and real links tn it then most of the changes they make have a mild impact only.
If you want a better guarantee I suggest asking about their advertisement program.

If you depend somewhat on people finding you on the web (like I do) it is also a very good idea to aim for more then google.

With regards to phone companies, I'd tend to agree but with the sidenote that despite much longer lasting monopolies for national telcos in Europe, there is little doubt about their networks being quite a bit more advanced.

Re:Introducing the latest nazi type ... *drums* ..

[ectoraige]

Nobody expects the Roman Rectification!

This could be down to

[SpaceJunkie]

Freenet was originally a nice idea, and unfortunately became a haven for nasty kiddie pr0n. Paypal have recently been in court over cases saying they were funding kiddie pr0n stuff- when in effect they were receiving payments for them. Since this point - I suspect that paypal have stamped hard on anything they think is vaguely connected- and might get them into furthar trouble. I hate to say it- but I agreed with freedom of speech until I saw freenet.

Re:This could be down to

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to say it- but I agreed with freedom of speech until I saw freenet.

Ok, so you disagree with freedom of speech - I assume you are booking your tickets for China since they don't have any pesky freedom of speech there.

Re:This could be down to

[SpaceJunkie]

Okay - I agree with freedom of speech as long as anonymity is not a requirement, as long responsibility is taken for what is said.
I agree with freedom of speech for an individual - but this should not be allowed to override acts of gross indecency - like child pr0n. I think that freedom of speech should not cover corporate entities- who need to be entirely responsible for what they say. The press should be allowed freedom of speech, but they should not be able to use this to allow them to invade privacy and publish it.

You see- the problem is that you are thinking in extremes - total cencorship (China) is a severe regime, and is not good. The other extreme, total freedom of speech, allows people to say anything anonymously, and not have to face the consequences of something entirely wrong, and distasteful.

There are some things (peadophiles for instance) that are quite simply wrong - and there can be no justification for such acts.

I'd actually like to use PayPal

[Mawbid]

...but I can't.

I signed up in order to donate a few bucks to Wikipedia when they solicited donations for a backup server.

When you first sign up with a credit card, they don't know if you're using a stolen card so they invented this clever scheme of determining whether you're the real card holder. They charge the card two bucks, and you check your statement and see a charge from "PAYPAL XXXX", where XXXX is a 4 digit code. You tell them the code to prove you received the statement. Neat huh? Yeah, well, I only got three digits.

I tried using the three digits alone or suffixing or prefixing a 0, no dice. Support didn't (or pretended not to) understand the problem. I spent two bucks and got nothing in return. Instead of sponsoring Wikipedia, I effectively sponsored PayPal.

Has this happened to anybody else?

Re:I'd actually like to use PayPal

[jerdenn]

You could have either called the credit card company to ask them for the entire transaction number, and they would have given it to you, or asked to void the transaction. Either option would have worked.

make another

[jago25_98]

Got a problem - give me a call and you can route your money through my account; either that or use mine exclusively or make another one

RTFTOS...

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the F**king terms of service!

Seriously, it's ALL in the Terms of Service.

I hate idiots that fail to read
instructions or terms of service,
and then blame their own ignorance
on the service provider or software
author with FUD and hatred.

Oh no, I opened an attachment from
an unknown or untrusted source!!

it must be microsofts fault!

That >
http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/ ua/ use/index_frame-outside

is a damn huge list of what's acceptable
and what isn't, and what'll happen to you
if you violate the terms of service.

I suggest you actually READ it.
before you start bitchin' about how

"evil" Paypal is.

info, tech, and truth.

[jeff13]

... so this is the truth about information and technology. If you use technology you must offer all you are openly. If you keep secrets you will be shut out. Because only terrorists have secrets.

AMEX too

[zarniwoop102939]

American Express has also been doing this for ages.

Since you have their business address...

[Phil John]

..., the paypal transaction details and no recording of a delivery by post/fedex etc., maybe you should take this up with your guys equivalent of the british trading standards agency (IIRC it's called the better business bureau).

After that, talk to a solicitor/lawyer about taking these guys to a small claims court for your moolah back. Ok, it may cost you a bit and may or may not be worth it, but when a company screws me over I like to screw em back, harder and in places they don't wanna ;o)

Discover also has this

[djaj]

Since Citi and Amex have already been mentioned.

Re:Discover also has this

[Richardsonke1]

Discover does not do this. You can create a temporary credit card, but you can not put a limit on it. The only thing it does is let you set how long you want it to last (unless they've changed it in the last few months). I use MBNA and I like signing up for things that want my credit card in exchange for a free trial of something. I give them a $1 credit card, and no matter what, they can't charge me any more than a dollar if i forget to cancel or whatever.

Re:Discover also has this

[Anonymous Coward]

How's that porn treating you?

Re:Discover also has this

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, my hand is cramping, but the lipstip lips I painted on them (to simulate a threesome) are doing nicely.

hehehe

[Anonymous Coward]

last time a company screwed me over I phoned up the BSA and claimed I worked there and 90% of company computers were using pirated versions of windows and office. I wish I could have seen their faces during the audit. Ahhhh...sweet revenge :o)

MBNA, Citi, AIB - all use Orbiscom

[blorg]

Orbiscom are an Irish company that have pioneered single use credit card numbers, and provide the technology to MBNA and Citi among others. As another poster mentioned, AIB has been providing this service for a number of years now and it's invaluable (although I don't see them promoting it much any more). It works through an application that sits in your tray; you just call it up when you want to pay, enter your username/password, set a limit, and it gives you your single use number. I think they were one of the first banks to provide it; the application is called an 'O-Card' and is as much Orbiscom branded as AIB.

Apparently AMex has stopped offering the service; this article also points out the problem of using such a number to purchase travel if the original credit card is needed to pick up the tickets.

Re:MBNA, Citi, AIB - all use Orbiscom

[PurplePhase]

Not that you're an expert (though you give the best sources!), but my question is: does this show up on or otherwise effect a person's credit report?

8-PP

Re:MBNA, Citi, AIB - all use Orbiscom

[blorg]

I don't see why it would, as far as the person you are paying is concerned, it's a completely normal credit card transaction. They'd only notice a problem if they tried to charge your card twice. On the other end, it just appears on your credit card statement like any other transaction, I don't even think it is highlighted in any way.

The only problem I can think of is if the number got rejected for some reason and that ended up causing non-payment of a bill, and you didn't notice.

I did have a problem once - I ordered a New Scientist subscription on the internet with a single use number and (a few weeks after it started arriving) got a letter saying the credit card had been declined. Possibly they ran an authorisation check first (which used up the single use?) before charging it, or possibly they just left it too late to run the transaction through. (I think the form just collected the number, I don't think there was any 'live' checking on their server.)

Re:MBNA, Citi, AIB - all use Orbiscom

[RKBA]

... it's a completely normal credit card transaction. They'd only notice a problem if they tried to charge your card twice.

Actually, that is in fact a minor problem that you need to be aware. It turns out that some companies actually do in fact submit their charges twice . The first time is simply to verify that the credit card number is real and not overlimit, etc, but no money is transferred and the "test" debit automatically disappears in three or four days. Later on when they're ready to ship whatever you ordered, they charge your account for real, and transfer money out of your account. If they put through the actual debit thru shortly after the "test" debit, you will indeed see a debit amount equal to up to twice the amount of your actual purchase.

I couldn't understand what was going on until I discussed it with the folks at MBNA, and they tell me it's common practice. There is even a special name for the first fake "test" charge to verify that your credit card number is valid (although I forget what it's called). My solution was to usually (except for very large purchases) allow a credit limit of twice the value of my actual purchase. The alternative is to try to explain to the retailer why they must only put the charge through once.

Re:MBNA, Citi, AIB - all use Orbiscom

[Hognoxious]

The first time is simply to verify that the credit card number is real and not overlimit, etc, but no money is transferred and the "test" debit automatically disappears in three or four days.

I think you're referring to a "preauthorisation" and certainly with ING (a useless bunch of 'tards) they don't disappear after three or four days, nor when the real payment goes through. Recently, travelling on business, I found my card maxed out (yes, I generally have a good idea what my balance is), and the reason (it only took 2 hours and four phone calls to find this out) was three preathorisations, two duplicates from the hotel I'd stayed in the previous week (checked out, and bill paid) and the other was from the week before that.

Re:Introducing the latest nazi type ... *drums* ..

[rbullo]

Actually, the Aryans probably came from the area just south of the Caspian Sea. They migrated from there into Europe and India.
Weather(sp?) or not they actually invaded those areas is being debated.

Cahoot and Discover too

[blorg]

Sorry to reply to my own post, but the other two providers posters have mentioned, Cahoot and Discover, also use Orbiscom, along with (to quote from their website) "Discover, MBNA, Citibank, ABN-AMRO, Abbey National, Credit Lyonnais, Swedbank, Citi EU and Nippon Shinpan".

Here's a list of their clients for anyone who is interested.

Security Issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dose anyone know if mabey freenets account was suspended for security reasons because it was accessed through an anonymous proxy (freenet). I know why Freenet has it's purpose but when your a company like paypal where you have people phising for passwords on a regular basis smees like the last thing youd want to let people do is access acounts through a route that could not be traced. I'm open to other ideas on this. IF this is such a security feature it probably says somewhere in paypals fine print. Has anyone looked?

Example in our Town

[SeanDuggan]

We have a skating rink in Newark, OH, Roll-A-Way Skating Center, which practices something very similar to this. As I understand it, the owner has been operating his rink for a few decades and he still enforces rules that ban profanity, short shorts, tank tops, mesh shirts, and public displays of affection. (Yes, you can get thrown out of his rink for kissing. It's in the rules posted on the wall and I've seen it happen) As far as I know, he does not have any posted rules on piercings, but I would not be surprised if it eventually makes its way onto the signs (he's got some practical grounding there given that a falling person can put a fair scrape in the finish of a rink... he already bans studs and chains on clothing). In his case, he operates the rink as a family business and therefore feels it appropriate to be sure that his patrons are non-offensive. Probably also helps that we're a small town...

Fraud

[AcmeShells.com]

Paypal is well known and not used by many businessrd due to frauds.. People getting the goods or service and ordering a refund via paypal. Paypal needs to do something about that.. until then I use EpayCheck to take care of that messy fraud shit.

$550

[ralphus]

Why is it that Freenet can only scrounge up $550 in donations? I sure hope that everyone reading this thread is incented to donate at least a dollar. Freenet is one of the few bright things I see about the future of the net if it is successful. Even if not successful and ultimately shut down it will invoke important dialogue about free speech and freedom of information.

Please donate some $$$ to Freenet in any way you can.

Disclaimer: I'm not involved with the Freenet project, I'm just a semi-anonymous advocate.

I'm a victum of Paypals' Business Model

[LifesABeach]

And I have the EMails to prove it.

I think I know a little something about VISA, Master Card, Discovery, et.al. types of electronic transactions. Were I work, its what we do to pay the rent. Electronic commerce transactions are ISO-8583 protocol rules. If you can get past the first 27 bytes of a message transaction, then the following bytes make some sense.

The story goes, that I'm in contact with a Canadian Company to buy their product. The Canadian company says they use Paypal. I've never used it, I've heard some weird shit about Paypal, but I figure 'WTF', its not my problem. I get on Paypals' tagged site and start filling out the blanks. The reply message comes back saying that they now need my bank account number? I call up Paypal to ask why? What was the replay message back for this faulty transaction? Oh, the transaction was OK, but for 'Security' reasons, transactions over $2000 require my bank account number? WHAT?! Security?! Will all the worlds leaders disappear if this goes down wrong? No, its so Paypal can wonder in to MY BANK ACCOUNT if it thinks it needs or wants to!

Let me tell you about this 'Paypal Security'. For VISA, and anyother kind of electronic transaction; if you get a "Transaction Completed, Approved" message, the deal is done. This deal didn't go down because my bank account doesn't need to be known. VISA will stand by their word to their merchants, I'll stand by mine to VISA. Anything else is Theft, and Fraud. And Paypal can kiss this transaction good-by. A $7000.00 deal dead because I think Paypals' need to wonder through my bank account at their plearsure is a wrong thing.

What still upsets me is that Paypal is not telling the truth. You DON'T NEED TOP GIVE YOUR BANK ACCOUNT INFORMATION FOR A CREDIT CARD TRANSACTION!!! Think about it, when was the last time you had to give your bank account number for a tank of gas, or pair of shoes?

And if Paypal reads this and thinks I've lied, or tarnished their 'good' name. I'm more than willing to make a public forum on this. I would not settle out of court. Period.

Now I've got to go to my wife and tell her she's not getting wood floors in our home. And she's meaner, and faster than I am.

Excuse Me?

[Noxx]

Paypal Deals Blow to Freenet

Ok I know Freenet is relatively secured and all, but is it wise to taunt the Drug Enforcement Agency like this?

oh wait. got it. nevermind.

Bout time.

[/dev/trash]

I'm opening another paypal account, to show my support.

Re:Freenet problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Freenet sure is a shady concept. To find out why, go to: http://dgarnier.etudier-online.com/

3.4.4 The Law
Users might be anonymous, but a computer always belongs to someone. Freenet contains potentially illegal content; so all the files cached by a node are encrypted. A node operator cannot discover what its own node is doing. Therefore she cannot be held responsible and no proof can be presented against her: Freenet provides deniability. It might seem a bit naïve, but at least in a democratic country this is a protection strong enough.

A subpoena is stronger than encryption any day.

Thats what you get...

[Anonymous Coward]

for putting all your money into the control of others. Criminals and secret agents have the rigt idea of caching something away for emergencies. Personally, I have a lock box with at least $500 and a 9mm glock in it around my house.

Quote:

Re:Introducing the latest nazi type ... *drums* ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it too late to invoke Godwin on this thread?

(anything anything, just make it STOP....)

Re:Introducing the latest nazi type ... *drums* ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually just cave PayPal.

PARENT is WRONG! MBNA is EVIL!

[Anonymous Coward]

MBNA is one of the worst offending credit cards for behaviour and scams. If you give them any information about you they will hound you night and day with telemarketing calls, and that is not the worst of it.

MBNA has been the subject of class action lawsuits:

• MBNA Canada Bank Named in Class Action Lawsuit
• Google Search for MBNA Suits
• Fleet, Citigroup, MBNA Impose No-Lawsuit Clause On Cardholders
• MBNA credit card interest Class Action

I suggest you stay far away from them!

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

just what i was thinking

Payment Plan Needs...

[Anonymous Coward]

"What we need is a replacement for paypal"

I hope Google does some sort of payment business since they seem to be expanding rapidly into everything (email, groups, etc.).

Any payment plan would need to:

1) Allow for micropayments, perhaps up to 1/1000ths of a penny.

2) Allow for guarenteed transactions (certified checks) so no more charge back headaches.

3) Allow for donations.

4) ???

Feel free to add ideas.

A scam by and other name

[Azhrabi]

Paypal holding on to people's money for longer then they are supposed to is a scam. It is a common scam. It's done by every insurance company I know of. Yes, the person gets their money-eventually. In the mean time the company holding the money keeps right on making profitable interest. And if the average person out there is just going to say "To h3ll with it!" that's even more profit in their pockets. Just because this is common practice does not mean that it isn't a scam.

Want to know why your doctor (or at least a rapidly increasing number of them) won't accept insurance? This is part-not all by any means-but part of the reason.

Which is not to say there are not people out their trying to abuse the system-and I do not condone abusing it, but this system at least is set to abuse us.

-What am I, diced troll food?

Forget Freenet, develop/donate to I2P instead...

[Anonymous Coward]

Checkout http://www.i2p.net

and

http://invisiblenet.net/supportMain.php

Re:Introducing the latest nazi type ... *drums* ..

[tbjw]

I don't see your point.

In 'caveat emptor', the verb is in the active mood, so the emptor is being beware. In caveatur paypal, the verb is in the passive, so the subject (paypal) is suffering the being beware (by whom paypal is being beware is left unspecified).

So 'caveatur paypal' should mean, roughly, 'one should beware of paypal'. Of course, this trnaslation is poor because there is no transitive verb in english with a direct object to translate cavere. But not to worry.

Re:Introducing the latest nazi type ... *drums* ..

[Too Much Noise]

[way way offtopic by now :-) ]
I see, you were looking for something like 'let paypal be avoided'. I was kind of slow that night. But then, let the imperative be used - and make it cavetor ;-)

with your permission, we should let the sleeping Latin lie now.