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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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]

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

[dcam]

Banks are regulated. Paypal isn't.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[loggia]

Hear, hear.

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

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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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.

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...

[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.

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.

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...

[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...

[zarthrag]

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

You must not live in Oklahoma! :P

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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...

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...

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....

[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....

[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: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.

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!

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.

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...

[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.

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: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

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: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.

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?

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.

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...

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...

[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.

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

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: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:Patriot Act?

[sangreal66]

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

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,

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: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: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.

Deals Blow?

[Stogeboda]

Drugs are bad mkay..

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.

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

[Too Much Noise]

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

oh, wait ...

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

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: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!

So I cancelled

[rsletten]

So I cancelled my paypal account in protest and gave them my reasons in their survey. Did you?

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.

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

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!?

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.

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

[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

[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: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: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

[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: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: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.]

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!

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: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: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?

[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: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: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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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: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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

$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.