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LulzSec Calls For PayPal Boycott, Spokesman Arrested
An anonymous reader writes "British police have arrested a 19-year-old man believed to be 'Topiary', the official spokesperson of the LulzSec hactivist group. The man was arrested at his home in the Shetland Islands earlier today (July 27), and is being transported to a central London police station." Also today, LulzSec has called for a boycott of PayPal saying “We encourage anyone using PayPal to immediately close their accounts and consider an alternative.”
Why would anyone listen to lulzsec? They've been very clear they have no agenda, and are in it for the lulz.
They have no moral or ideological stance, and no ground to stand on. Why would anybody take their boycott recommendations seriously?
Paypal has passed account closure information onto authorities for use in narrowing down Lulz members and supporters.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I'm not familiar with UK laws, what exactly did their spokesperson do that was illegal. I know "free speech" isn't as much a thing there, but how does saying things on the behalf of a group make you criminal?
If someone can point me to competing service that is accepted at my preferred retailers, I would gladly switch. Paypal provides a relatively safe mask for my bank account online, which means I trust 1 company to not have a security breach instead of a dozen or more. It's a fantastic service. I don't honestly care about anyone's perceived unforgivable injustices from a private, opt-in, and largely free to use company.
My other sig is clever.
lulz-- to arrested one
lulz++ to police
If you RTFA you'd know that his charges involve computer hacking, not messages he posted online...
okay, so PayPal shows again its evilness. but though I dislike the quality of the service (I will never use my account to actually store any money) I don't see any competition.
Can anyone advice a payment service with a similar acceptance and convenience?
Christ, with the slowness of BT, I'm amazed they even have internet out there yet.
And why should anyone listen to what a hacking group has to say about PayPal? I'll consider closing my account after LulzSec writes me a cheque to cover the revenue that I'd lose from my online business.
I wonder how many lulz you can have sitting in jail, or fined into bankruptcy?
How easy is it to say "and consider an alternative" without even giving one?
One of the problems with paypal is that it has no rival at all. Even if you do not take into account the fact that paypal is a de-facto standard payment method, there are very few alternatives.
I'm sure lots of people would ditch paypal for lots of reasons. I would. I use google checkout whenever I can, because I particularly have more trust in Google than in paypal, even if checkout is in some ways worse than paypal. But very few people offer checkout support.
I hope this guy knows that (almost) nobody will close their accounts because of his statements, but that this adds more weight on the "trend" that people are more and more dissatisfied with paypal and is seen as something "bad but necessary" and maybe "just good enough" in the eyes of many.
hmmm... hacking from an island where there are only 3 computers in the whole community is not the smartest move. I do understand however that the Shetland's have some of the best kept hedgerows in the UK
Their stance is that PayPal should be boycotted because the FBI is catching up to Anons and LulzSec folks who participated in a DDoS against them. The DDoS, if memory serves, was performed on ideological grounds in response to the Wikileaks fiasco. So, there's a barely coherent, strongly infantile ideological stance here ("Have us arrested for attacking your website, will you? We'll show you!"), but it is present(ish) nevertheless.
I thought there were enough reasons, from a very quick Google search, to never sign up for a PayPal account. If your money isn't being stolen by someone you've purchased from, PayPal itself is stealing it all by closing your account and never paying out.
It's been extremely obvious, for at least five years now, that PayPal is not a place to keep your money.
I live in Canada where there's no Amazon or Google checkout or anything. What's the alternative to Paypal? I'd gladly use it, regardless of what LulzSec wants me to do.
I was just waiting for an opportunity to help serve LulzSec's means, after they've posted my login/password all over the internet.
They more attention they attract from authorities, it seems like the more we see that they really do seem to be bored teenagers, rather than anyone with a political agenda. Their agenda is more against companies who slighted their group in some way than anything else.
Totally for boycotting paypal. And while we are at it, the traditional banking system as well. Though the latter will have to be phased out by most ppl. As far as I'm concerned they are all in collusion and get away with financial murder. My Hydro company doesn't care what kinda business I have or what I use electricity for. I could be electrocuting my neighbour's chi wow wow or using it to power my laptop while I type out the next unification theory that unites QM and EM. Nor does my telephone company care whether I'm using their service to organize a war or to donate to mother Theresa's new fangled organization. Fzuck banks! it's about time they were brought to their knees along with the MAFIAA and Big Oil, Big Pharma and all the rest of these old school companies with their monopolies, draconian business laws and models. The revolution will not be televised, it will be digitized. Thank god I can code :)
$action = empty(PHP) ? backToC() : unset(PHP) ; "when the concrete cases are understood, the abstractions are readily
The comments left as per spokesman for lulzsec sounded as if they came from a juvenile brittish whiny dropout.
"Way ahead of you" -women everywhere
I got jacked on eBay years ago - seller shipped me empty box with tracking number. eBay refused to do anything - seller had "proof" of shipment. PayPal refused to do anything - seller had "proof" of shipment. I got really pissed and tried numerous emails and phone calls spending hours and hours on the phone trying to get my PayPal account closed - never happened. Gave up. They will not close accounts. You can stop using them - but you can never get a paypal account closed. Anyone that says they have is full of shite.
A couple years later - I need a specific old car part - ebay it - and use my old paypal account to pay for it. Then started using it to receive online payments for a subscription site. I hate PayPal - but you can not close the account - and you will eventually use it again in the future unless you are dead.
Maybe what they're saying is that they've quietly hacked into Paypal, are currently wiping out their backups and disabling automated backup schedules, and will shortly proceed to wipe out the balance of all Paypal users.
Consider it an early warning? ;-)
http://lulzsecexposed.blogspot.com/2011/06/topiary-doxed.html
Of course, neither or both of the Swede and the Shetlander could be involved.
Nobody cares about Lulzsec.
BTW, the amount of info PayPal has is extreme. They use lexisnexis in fraud research. I wouldn't be surprised if they logged all the DDoS attacks and sent them to the FBI.
Here's the actual link to the original Anon / LulzSec / AntiSec / ...
http://pastebin.com/LAykd1es
But why should we listen to these LulzSec assholes who will probably just use a mass PayPal exodus hack whatever PayPal alternatives there are anyway & expose the details of users who tried to support them?
Now that LulzSec is calling for a PayPal boycott I feel even better about throwing some money at the "humble" indie bundle last night (for as much press as they get they should drop the humble) through PayPal.
Its possible to close a paypal account? If you thought it was hard to delete your facebook acct, try paypal for a real challenge.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
[slowly moves arm in front of and across body, chest high, while clasping hand] 'You are mistaken, Paypal is not the company you seek'
Police are doing it for the lulz too
Great fun being had by all
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Are they encouraging us to do so because they just don't like them, or are they're encouraging us because they're going to do something nasty and if we have money in Paypal we might lose it?
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I would boycott them because paypal sucks. They're one of the dirtiest business out there. They make other banks look saintly.
Nothing against the Islands but that is probably one of the LAST places I'd look for him.
"You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike."
The police, of course and for the benefit of society is more like Pokemon, "Gotta catch 'em all!"
Imagine this for a second. 6 people are able to do massive hacks around the world. Remove one or all of them, and expecting at least 6 more to pop up in a world population of 7 billion is quite nearly inevitable.
But this is different than terrorism. In terrorism, you have to have access to money, IDs, explosive equipment, and be willing to die for your crazy cause. All a hacker needs is a PC, a net connection, and time.
I'm convinced that police could theoretically arrest every single terrorist that does or could exist (that isn't blowing themselves up before arrest) given enough time. But I don't believe they'd catch every hacker even if they worked the entire age of the universe given current technology and trends. And one day, someone is going to pull off the mother of all hacks that will have devastating consequences... but...
It won't be a lone wolf. As many hackers as may exist in the wild, far more work for governments. Why? Not on principle, but because what could be better for a hacker than to hack all day, being paid, and having complete immunity for your actions. No, you can't go bragging on Twitter. But I doubt the hackers that took the Iranian centrifuges cared about bragging, because the entire world saw their work already.
I8-D
Lulsec spokesmouth arrested: news. In the bigger scheme of things, nobody gives a rat fuck what lulsec thinks about paypal.
Wait, your saying Paypals lawyers use the most popular and common legal database in the world? And not only that but their network gear has logs? Holy shit, with that kind of power they're practically unstoppable.
Only the top 1,000 IPs (for now). Makes perfect sense for PayPal, and its pretty easy to do. "Anonymous", huh. Idiots.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
I would boycott them because paypal sucks. They're one of the dirtiest business out there. They make other banks look saintly.
Paypal sucks, I've been boycotting them for some time. Lulzsec also sucks. I might open a paypal account after seeing this.
This Budlighty is for you Top. Love you buddy.
Doesn't really matter where you stand on this one.
There, fixed that for you
(you guys are screwed)
To get stuffed. That is all.
OMG who's next? Hide your children, lock up your wife! Or your dog, whatever.
Years ago we used PayPal to accept payment for the check printing software we wrote. We didn't use any form of protection (sadly) and it was a great way to steal software. Buy through PayPal, enter a dispute and the user had my software for free because PayPal WOULD NOT honor the software vendor. Because of one rather large dispute PayPal closed our account. The wild part was they closed the accounts of every member of my family (over 6 would be users) even though they were not REMOTELY connected with our commercial use of PayPal and NO member of my family can get a PayPal account to this day!!!!!!!
What do you expect from British law enforcement? These are the guys who took bribes from News Corp. "Barely coherent, strongly infantile" and "ideological" is how they roll.
Rupert Murdoch gets to enjoy his billions but a 19 year-old hacker is public enemy number 1. The Prime Minister is playing footsie with a News Corp hatchet man, but it's "LulzSec" that's the big threat.
Yes, I would say that the British government, and the FBI, are being "barely coherent, strongly infantile and completely ideological"
You are welcome on my lawn.
But why would I give a flying fuck what a bunch of assholes tell me to boycott?
Buy gift credit cards and use those online, they have a set limit. That's what I do. They have an activation fee and depreciate in value, but consider that the cost of insurance I guess.
Twinstiq, game news
ther are English police Forces, Welsh police forces, Irish police forces and Scottish police forces...
all have their own jurisdictions and there is NO SUCH THING AS THE BRITISH POLICE
never has been and never will be.....
Boycotting Paypal would be nice, but for a lot of people, it's impossible. Would you tell people to boycott the banks by closing their accounts and keeping all their money in cash under their mattress? That's basically what you're saying when you advise people to boycott Paypal, because like it or not, it's basically a monopoly in many online-payment venues. It's not that others haven't tried; Citibank tried something called C2it, but that was a flop and they shut it down. There's also Google Payments, which no one uses.
Unfortunately, if you use Ebay, or you have a small website selling stuff, Paypal is pretty much the only game in town for handling online payments. It's easy to set up, there's no monthly fees, and the per-transaction fees are the lowest out there for small quantities. Sure, if you have an online store selling $500,000 per month in merchandise, you can get a merchant account and pay lower fees than PP and the monthly fees won't really matter, but if you're selling only $1000/month (basically a hobby business) or selling your junk on Ebay, it's absolutely stupid to get a merchant account as the fees are so high.
Or what if you want to solicit donations for some cause, whether it's an open-source project or an animal rescue or whatever? With Paypal, it's easy and free: stick some "Donate" buttons on your website, and you only pay fees of 2.9% + $0.30 if someone donates, and if everyone thinks your cause sucks and never donates, you pay nothing. That's not so easy to do with merchant accounts.
That said, my biggest gripe about Paypal is their website: it's ridiculously slow, and you can't print reports. For instance, if you want to generate a PDF showing all the activity for the last 6 months or year, you can't. You just have to manually step through the transaction history, page by page, and print-screen for each page. There is a place on the website to go to generate reports in PDF, and if you go there and tell it to generate a PDF, it just hangs, because their site is soooooo slow, and eventually your web browser times out.
MoneyPak? Hey Slashdot! Can I renew my subscription with that? If not, why not?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
From PayPal's terms of service for Germany (my translation): ...] By publishing on any of our web sites. Such a message is considered delivered 24 hours after publishing. [... regular mail or phone]
"1.5 Messages from PayPal to you: You agree that Paypal can contact you in any of the following ways: [... e-mail
1.6 Messages from you to Paypal: [...] must be mailed to the following address: [...] Luxembourg"
This alone is enough reason for me not to use Paypal. I severely doubt it would stand scrutiny in court, but I'm not going to bother.
That's awesome that his punk ass was arrested. Hopefully he'll get several years in prison plus have to pay monetary damages.
What an asshole. So are the rest of them.
My dog is my wife, you insensitive clod!
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If they were outraged by Paypal's closing of accounts tied to Wikileaks, perhaps they should have just called for a boycott in the first place rather than resorting to DDoS attacks. So that, you know, they could avoid being arrested.
"But, what about the LULZ???????!!!!?!?!"
Oh right.. I forgot, you're not a credible activist group or social commentators. You're a bunch of punks with free internet access and lots of spare time.
I just found the box to change my sig. Um.... [timeless witticism].
I'm already boycotting ebay and paypal.
If you don't know how to make yourself untraceable, don't do things that will bring the cops to your door.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"Hey Everybody, stop using PayPal - they're evil!! Use these alternatives that we are pointing out to you. And of course you can trust US, cause we're the same people who DDOS and hacked credit card companies."
As if. Anyone stupid enough to leave PayPal to go wherever the nice hackerz tell them deserves whatever happens to them.
I wouldn't judge a group by the people that get arrested. Else, you could assume that Al Qaida is a bunch of dirt poor loonies that somehow found a few explosives. By default, what gets arrested in a group is the decoys and expendables.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Last night I explicitly chose not to buy something online because the vendor only accepted PayPal payments.
He lost a $425 sale, I lost the chance to buy an item I wanted. PayPal lost credibility with the vendor; they had none with me from the outset.
I agree that they're in a largely monopoly position. I hate that but it doesn't make me play with them. Fuck 'em, and their obnoxious anti-consumerist scams.
What do you expect from British law enforcement?
I don't know, maybe the creation of some false flag organization called "LulzSec"? That allows them to go around arresting people claiming they are "part of it", when, in fact, it's some government lackeys running the whole thing?
Come on, people! Hal Turner? You know they do this stuff! Look at this post from their Twitter page:
What 19-year-old would even know that song from the 1970's? Or anybody under 40? Much less use it as a reference.
Government is shutting down hundreds of websites whenever they want to just for selling fake handbags, yet Lulzsec still has an active Twitter account? Give me a break!
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
You seem to misunderstand what a Ponzi scheme is.
Not all Ponzi schemes are up front about, basically, "pay us X dollars and we'll give you X * 110% from the next suckers." They often pretend to be legitimate investment or trading ventures. Among other things because most people get wise to up-front promises of infinitely sustainable giving guy A the money from B and C, after one or two collapse. You only get a very narrow window of opportunity to pull one off on new suckers, such as the ones that swept Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism, then people learned to avoid anything that up-front says it's a Ponzi scheme. You have to disguise it as a legitimate business investment or some legitimate service or whatever.
But, really, look at historical examples.
E.g., the Ivar Kreuger scheme didn't promise to be an up-front Ponzi Scheme at all. Kreuger owned a very profitable matches production and had a monopoly on it, owned banks, etc. By the time of his fall, he was at the head of more than 200 very profitable (or rather over-hyped as incredibly, fantastically profitable, although Kreuger was running deeper into debt) companies. On the surface lending some money to Kreuger was kinda like lending money to Microsoft. There was no way a multi-billion corporation would default on a few million they owed you with interest, right? The problem is that the whole debt added up to vastly more than actually those factories were worth, and in fact his reputation of paying back such debts and with good interest was really a Ponzi scheme where the money came from the next suckers lending him a few millions.
Other schemes gave certificates of value, shares, or a contract to get a house built for much less than the normal cost. (Which during the bubble used to be quite a lot.) Most of them are, at face value, things you can trade and which have a very visible value. E.g., you sure can trade value certificates or shares around, and there's nothing to keep you from selling a contract for a house to someone else. You can even check the current price for a house with that many rooms, and all.
Using a variable, market-driven value instead of promising some exorbitant return per week is also not that uncommon. See those house contracts for example. Sure, the lamest Ponzi schemes for idiots do promise fixed, too-good-to-be-true returns, but the more sophisticated ones avoid such blatant give-aways.
The real characteristic of a Ponzi scheme is basically that it's fiat currency without anyone actually guaranteeing its worth. Behind those Kreuger IOUs, or bonds, or value papers, or house contracts, or bit coins, there is no real tangible product or shares in some real company or anything of real value. You can get any money out of a Madoff investment only as long as someone else is willing to buy more investments, because Madoff didn't actually buy any shares or anything of actual value. The only return is basically robbing Peter to pay Paul. For a Paul to get some money out of Madoff, some Peter must be convinced to pay some money for whatever tokens or papers Madoff gives for those money.
And I honestly don't see why bit coins wouldn't qualify as such.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I've been boycotting them for a long time. Problem is, they think I have an account as a seller on e-bay, and won't stop sending me emails related to that account (including banking information.) Try calling PayPal on the phone some time, when you want something actually accomplished. The fact that there are websites devoted to posting the constantly-changing unlisted numbers for PayPal ought to be a clue that it won't be simple.
Or better yet, the only way to send in a complaint is to login to your PayPal account and go through a menu - which is kind of impossible if I am complaining because it isn't my account. Sending e-mails to abuse@paypal or fraud@paypal just gets you a message to log in to your account if you have a problem. When you get them on the phone, they will even make claims like "Paypal.de is not actually affiliated with PayPal, you should report that to the phishing department," "oh, I see the problem, I'll take care of it right away and call you back," (which is a complete lie), or "there is nothing I can do to get my company to stop sending you emails."
It seems like the only way to fix the problem would be to use the "forgot password" option (because the account is set to MY personal email address), log in myself, and fix it that way (figuring out the correct email address for the seller was trivial), but I'm sure that is guaranteed to lead to a "hacking" prosecution.
Ok, how else do you expect that vendor to accept payment? As far as I can see, the vendor has two other options:
1) merchant account. These cost big money and favor big merchants. If that's what you demand, then you shouldn't even be looking at small merchants, you should be only going to Amazon and the like for your purchases. Do you hate small merchants?
2) money order. Did you bother to ask the merchant if he accepts these?
FYI, I run a small hobby business, and I only have Paypal buttons on my site. However, if you bother to read the "Policies" section, you'll see that I also accept money orders, which once in a while someone will do (it's very, very rare). That's perfectly fine with me, as I can screw Paypal out of a couple dollars in fees, but you have to email me first to inquire.
oh come on. i saw that "What 19-year-old would even know that song from the 1970's? Or anybody under 40? Much less use it as a reference" stuff before, too. i'm under 40 and i know it well. i know of three versions (and i know that there are more out there): the original, which i heard growing up because, like, you know, my parents would listen to it?; the execrable westlife version from about 8 years ago which a british 11 year old would definitely have heard; and a me first and the gimme gimmes version from about the same time.
i don't know why people keep trotting out the "lulzsec could NEVER have heard of this song!!!!!!" argument because it's utterly vacuous. there are many ways they could know it. it's a famous song; their parents would know it. it's also been covered and rereleased - and by westlife, no less, who may be unknown in the states (thank your lucky stars) but were definitely not unknown in britain.
Google Checkout.
Which trading site with auction-style listings do you recommend that takes Google Checkout? Google Product Search (formerly Froogle) is more like eBay Stores: fixed-price listings only.
From the summary: "Shetland Islands" and "London". So what would you call a collaboration between Scottish police and English police if not "British police"?
The Conscience of a Hacker
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." - Denis Diderot.
Wow.. seriously? Your argument is they couldn't be real because they're too young to know the lyrics?
Makes me wish for the old days of good strong arguments like the Chewbacca Defense.
A merchant account doesn't cost anything more than a percentage, which is exactly what PayPal takes. A merchant account would be much cheaper per transaction. The only reason a business would not get one is because the bank or dealer has no reason to trust the merchant with an account.
So Murdoch conspired with Cameron, the FBI, Gucci, Twitter and Terry Jacks to create a fictitious organization so they could arrest teenagers for selling counterfeit purses on eBay?
Somebody should alert the authoriti... oh, right.
When I was 19, my favorite music was Delta Blues made 30 years before I was born.
It's easier to pressure some low-rent ISP than to close down an anonymous twitter account.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Well taking into account simply that the first group call themselves "WebNinjas", and to date have had this information out there for some time but seems to have come to nothing, and the second group managed to shoot dead a Brazilian who was going to work on the tube by firing at his head 7 times point blank because they thought he was an arabic terrorist then I'd put my bets on the neither option.
ddos is for kiddies,
http://thepiratebay.org/user/LulzSec sql dumps are more interesting
It's possible. But there is a difference between the trigger-happy meatheads of Special Branch and whichever force pinned things on the alleged topiary.
Boycotting Paypal would be nice, but for a lot of people, it's impossible. Would you tell people to boycott the banks by closing their accounts and keeping all their money in cash under their mattress? That's basically what you're saying when you advise people to boycott Paypal, because like it or not, it's basically a monopoly in many online-payment venues.
Uhm, really? A trivial Google search implies otherwise:
http://blog.webdistortion.com/2010/07/28/paypal-alternatives-e-commerce/
http://www.screw-paypal.com/alternatives/top_pick.html
Also fascinating, from an in-person-sales perspective:
https://squareup.com/
The real characteristic of a Ponzi scheme is basically that it's fiat currency without anyone actually guaranteeing its worth.
How is this any different from, say, US Dollars? How does an organization go about "guaranteeing its worth"?
Last post!
That is until she sees this post...
Irony? Yea, it's like goldy and bronzy, only it's made of iron!
That said, my biggest gripe about Paypal is their website
My biggest gripe with PayPal isn't their website, or their fees: My biggest gripe is that they behave like a hybrid between a bank and a payment processor without any legal limitations that are placed on either of them.
I am officially gone from
I don't know about the US but here in the UK, if you want to accept card payments you pretty much have to pay monthly for the privilege. Some banks will also demand you get a business account, which you also have to pay for. That's on top of what they charge per transaction. Accepting only Paypal and money orders works out cheaper for most small Internet businesses.
The only reason a business would not get one is because the bank or dealer has no reason to trust the merchant with an account.
No, one of the reasons businesses don't get an account is because they can't, for the majority it's cost vs benefit.
A merchant account has more than just a % cost.
There are:
Monthly access fees
Monthly PCIDSS fees
Monthly interchange access fees (per card network)
Monthly interchange volume fees (per card network)
Per transaction cost fixed
Per batch cost fixed
Per transaction cost % (discount rates)
Per transaction cost % (qualified/non-qualified)
And that is just what is listed on the summary page on my statement in front of me. We move enough volume that this is cheaper - but personally i am happy with Paypal for accepting CC's on my own as i don't have to deal with the head aches listed above.. and to be fair.. while for work it is cheaper and even 1% can be thousands of dollars. personally that is cents and random and rare.. it just doesn't make any sense to maintain a merchant account if you are non consistent low volume.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Actually I never claimed ponzi schemes were up front. In fact, I would posit that NOT being upfront *IS* what makes a ponzi scheme a scheme. If I actually TELL YOU "hey I am going to take your money, and pay you back from future investors doing the same".... then there is no ponzi scheme. Its stupid, but no fraud is going on. One of the essential features of the scheme is... the fact that it pretends to be something that it isn't. The money from future investors is used to HIDE OR OBSCURE the fact that there is no real value.
What really sets bitcoin, or any currency, apart from this is just that, its just a token, and nobody is hiding that fact. A bitcoin is nothing more than an entry in a distributed ledger. The ledger says "this many went here, that many went there". If that is a ponzi scheme, then accounting is a ponzi scheme.
What about a distributed ledger used as a virtual place holder for trading (which is what all money is) makes it a ponzi scheme? If paypal changed the $ symbol to something else and changed the word "deposit" to "buy palbux" and "withdraw" to "sell palbux" would that magically make them a ponzi scheme?
Fundamentally whats really different is, there is no "rob peter to pay paul". Bitcoins are sold on open markets. I may buy them from you, and trade or sell them to someone else. I pay, or get paid, no more or less than we agree upon. Nobody is out there saying "this is what they are worth". The only "indicator" is...what people are actually trading them for.
So basically...its traded exactly like any other commodity, it just happens to be a virtual commodity, used as a placeholder for trades. Just like cash, except without a federal reserve.
So how is that a ponzi scheme if a) it is upfront b) has no central authority setting prices or "robbing peter to pay paul".
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Please tell me you've bothered to contact the actual seller and tell them about the situation....
I thought they disbanded a few weekends ago? *Insert Twilight Zone Music*
What a bitch.
I'll agree with you that *only* accepting PayPal is silly, and bad business. My little side business doesn't make much, but I've got three payment options available, and I'd work with someone who was really interested in something else, if the amount made it worth the time required to set it up.
Still, not accepting PayPal at all would be financial suicide. I'd lose 95% of my sales (assuming I can't afford a merchant account, which I can't), an no amount of other third-party options provided could make up for that.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
So I should Boycott a legit company, because that company is getting help from the FBI to arrest people who has wronged them. The people who wronged them was because because they didn't like because of ending service to an organization that was priding themselves on releasing illegally obtained secret information, which was in conflict of the companies contract, and failure to do so would have the company legally responsible to part of the crime.
I wish I liked PayPal more, if I did I would try to put more business threw him, in support of their actions.
This sort of hacking people because of a political stance is bad. It is along the same mindset as terrorist who kill people in organizations they disagree with, with the exception of actually killing people you damage services you incontinent a lot of people. Sure it is better then Killing people but still it is the same mindset of cause wide scale problems effecting many people who are innocent of said problems, and it exacting revenge not justice.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Your gripe should be with the corrupt US Federal government that doesn't bother to regulate any businesses any more these days, and with the voters who are responsible for this mess.
I think I trust the hackers more than PayPal... Well, I trust almost everyone more than PayPal.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
LulzSec are an irritating, ineffective and unhelpful hactivist group.
Can we boycott them and consider an alternative?
The only payment methods accepted for most eBay US categories are PayPal, Moneybookers, ProPay, Moneybookers, and Internet merchant accounts with the credit card companies. Google Checkout is not on the whitelist. PayPal and Moneybookers have blocked payments to WikiLeaks, and all the rest charge sellers a monthly or annual fee.
I don't know about the US but here in the UK, if you want to accept card payments you pretty much have to pay monthly for the privilege.
Use 2CheckOut.com. It's a one time $49 set up fee, and then 5.5% plus $0.45 per transaction. Steep, yes, but you can get set up same day and there's no monthly fee.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
I quite PayPal in 2000. They started reporting my legal purchases, from Canada, to the FBI (something about hijacking satellite signals). My only acceptable transaction on eBay is Visa or US Post Office Money Order.
On the other hand, I have no respect for LulzSec. I wouldn't boycott anything for them.
I stopped selling on ebay for reasons like this. The buyer could file any complaint and paypal would reverse the transaction and the buyer would have the merchandise and their money back and very little incentive to return the merchandise. Also common was buyers reporting they never received the merchandise, paypal reverses the transaction, after a few lengthy phone calls a fax of the shipping receipt and week later they did return those payments.
How would he contact the actual seller, if the account's e-mail contact is his own address? (Maybe the Ebay account that uses the paypal account has different info, though, I guess.)
I agree. What were the alternatives?
Guns ("Accept my currency!") or commodities ("If you give me X of my currency, I'll give you these cows"), I imagine.
Huh? Were you buying pirate cards for DirectTV or something (not that I care about anyone doing so, just wondering)? And how did you know they were reporting this; did they say so, or did the FBI contact you?
You have no knowledge of what you speak.
I would suspect that if you're in the US that the CAN-SPAM Act applies to this situation. Log all your attempts to get them to stop sending your emails, and then forward the information on to the FCC. I was unable to get Domino's to stop sending me text messages advertising their shit pizza. I went through their online complaint system twice and kept getting the messages so in the end I called up customer support and explained the situation to them very clearly, and was sure to add that I would no longer contact them to be removed but instead would start filing complains with the FCC. The texts stopped....
Though this may not apply to your situation, it might be worth a shot :)
5.5% is something like half the profit margin for the small merchant I'm working for. Not only that, 2CO by and large does not work with Central American banks (or many other countries). Most of the world is not in either the US or the UK. Shocking, I know. If you can tell me a real alternative to PayPal here in Costa Rica, I will implement it tomorrow.
There's a lot of fine print on the 2CO site, btw, 5.5% is more like a minimum fee.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Ehmm... They are legit but their morals are a bit screwed up...
They did not even close down a wikileaks-specific account but a charity account... For more information:
http://anon126.blogspot.com/2010/12/paypal-visa-and-mastercard-card-anti.html
But of course... A whistle-blowing organization that shows politicians in a bad way is much worse than other organizations like the KKK...
Last night I explicitly chose not to buy something online because the vendor only accepted PayPal payments.He lost a $425 sale, I lost the chance to buy an item I wanted. PayPal lost credibility with the vendor; they had none with me from the outset. I agree that they're in a largely monopoly position. I hate that but it doesn't make me play with them. Fuck 'em, and their obnoxious anti-consumerist scams.
Fuck you you cheap bastid. Just admit it; you didn't have the dough. And, genius, exactly how the fuck are they a monopoly? Do you even know what that word means?
I engaged in an email conversation with the vendor to find out what he accepted.
His choice.
Note that $425 purchases are not what I'd call a small purchase. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect someone taking those sums to accept more reliable payment mechanisms than paypal.
Exactly. The example Moraelin gave of Kreuger is a Ponzi scheme because he borrowed money and passed it off as growth to new investors to sucker them in. Much as Maddof did.
"The real characteristic of a Ponzi scheme is basically that it's fiat currency without anyone actually guaranteeing its worth."
That's not a characteristic of a Ponzi scheme. No commodity has anybody guaranteeing its worth. The dollar and euro are up and down like a yoyo, the housing market crashes on a regular basis, people lose their shirts on gold, and even the so-called safest such as national bonds are not risk free as seen by the Greek default on its debt.
Bitcoin may be immature but it has nothing to do with a Ponzi scheme. As TheCarp says, it is simply a currency albeit a virtual one (then again the dollar and euro are practically virtual if you compare to the trillians moved electronically to the tiny amount of printed notes).
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
I engaged in an email conversation with the vendor to find out what he accepted.
That's good; if he doesn't want to make an exception for a good-size order, that's pretty dumb if you ask me. As a (very small) vendor myself (I just have a little hobby business where I sell some unique parts in small quantities), I have no problem with a postal money order. It's as good as cash, plus it avoids those stupid Paypal fees. On a $425 order, that's $12.63. I think that's worth a drive to the post office or bank (of course, I have to go to the PO pretty often anyway to send packages).
Note that $425 purchases are not what I'd call a small purchase. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect someone taking those sums to accept more reliable payment mechanisms than paypal.
I'd agree. If orders that size are common for him, I'm surprised he doesn't have some other kind of credit card account, a merchant account, etc. At my tiny business's size, those things aren't worth it (but then, most of my orders are about $30), but for a business with more cashflow, it's probably a good idea and can get you lower fees.
Still, not accepting PayPal at all would be financial suicide. I'd lose 95% of my sales (assuming I can't afford a merchant account, which I can't), an no amount of other third-party options provided could make up for that.
If I were a merchant I'd have to seriously consider accepting paypal payments. I'd still really try and avoid it.
For £20/month you can get a major UK bank to do the card payments on your behalf, including the cost of 350 transactions a month. For someone selling items at £0.20-£2 that's probably not great; for someone selling a dozen £300 items a month that feels reasonable. I'm sure the US has similar opportunities.
I'd have been willing to walk into a bank, take a transaction charge and either send an International Money Order or a initiate a SWIFT payment. I do it from time to time for other things; it's a hassle, but it's possible. In the UK I can do a direct electronic transfer for free.
Oh well, his choice.
if he doesn't want to make an exception for a good-size order
The comedy is that $300 is about median for the items he sells, and most of the stuff cheaper than that you'd buy ten at a time anyway. I'd guess his average order isn't far from the price I would've been paying, and many items hit four digits.
Paypal gives him convenience and remarkably little else - his skill is clearly in making stuff and not the business side of is business :)
And yet their customer service is shit, I guess all those logs only are good for witch hunts, I mean fighting terrorist child pornographing pirates.
But... the future refused to change.
Neither do you.
You cannot be serious. You just compared suicidal "terrorists" with a data breach? Congratulations you are...
Nevermind. Just imagine what word goes there.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
Erm, when we were collecting less than $10k/month, often less than half that, we had:
(1) Monthly fee in the tens of dollars;
(2) Per transaction fixed cost;
(3) Per transaction discount;
(4) Fine per chargeback.
(2) and (3) were cheaper than Paypal. (4) was a stickler but good incentive to carefully check data and identify+refuse suspicious orders.
What's so expensive now?
...insightful? what word would you use?
-- Flame me and I will happily flame you back. Bring it!
What 19-year-old would even know that song from the 1970's? Or anybody under 40? Much less use it as a reference.
Someone that's been to a football match? "We had joy, we had fun, we had [opposing team] on the run..."
Go Bitcoin. All Slashdot-hysteria on the amount of stories aside, it does solve the problems with Paypal (and others)
"Why would anybody take their boycott recommendations seriously?"
For the Lulz? (runs)
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Most of the world is not in either the US or the UK. Shocking, I know.
Not shocking at all, but if you'd bothered to read everything, you'd have seen that I was responding to someone who explicitly said he was in the UK.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
What does Google payments asks from you? As the GP says, I don't have a paypal account and I'm not planning on having one. I have used Google for quite some time (even more now that they release offers.google.com) and I haven't had any troubles. To be honest, from the very beginning, I thought that paypal was somewhat sketchy and never trusted them, and consequently, I just don't trust sites that only take paypal (that's probably just me)
I haven't used paypal or ticketmaster and I haven't had any problems in my life.
There what you do, and why you do it. Most evil people are not murders, but they are evil because the work to disrupt society. Terrorism and this type of hacking are about disrupting society.
And if by hacking into the wrong system and someone dies I doubt the hackers will loose any sleep, they will justify it as they shouldnt be dependent of that data source. Just as a terrorist can justify civilians deaths as they were working for the target.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Ill hop off of paypal as soon as i am given an alternative. with that, i mean not pointing to similar companies - a real alternative that is as good as paypal. i mean it.
Read radical news here
Yup. Paypal wants to pretend to be a bank, yet they claim the right to seize (and freeze) the assets of any customer that they choose. I came across a primarily web-based gun company recently that states that they will not take Paypal because they don't want to risk Paypal deciding "guns are evil!" and seizing the money that was supposed to be sent to the company.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
I called Paypal and informed them I wanted to cancel my account. A guy asked why, and I said "Because of your company's treatment of Wikileaks".
He puts me on hold to check my account, comes back 3 minutes later, and tells me my account has been cancelled, and that if I ever wish to become a customer again, I would have to submit a request in writing.
3 hours later, I could still log in to my account.
I called Paypal again and asked them what the deal was, and they said nobody had done anything to my account. I got the name of the representative I talked to, but that was the end of that. I fear I'm probably on a government watch list now just for mentioning wikileaks to them.
Has anyone else been able to log in to their account after Paypal claimed it was canceled?
Yeah.... just no.
It creates more problems (as a buyer, I find chargeback to be a good feature of CC and paypal transactions in case I get ripped off), it can take several days to transfer other currencies in and out, transactions are not free as bitcoin fans like to claim, and it's really seriously unstable.
The US dollar has neither though. It has no intrinsic value (it's not a commodity), it's not tied to anything with an intrinsic value (not commodity-backed).
"Guns" (law) ensure that the dollar is accepted everywhere, but that doesn't ensure that it has any "worth", since prices can be set to anything (if it costs $100M for a single apple, does the dollar have value?)
Last post!
The one thing that's different about the US dollar is that it's what the government accepts for tax payments.
AlertPay is your basic PayPal-style alternative. Covers most countries. Transfer to your bank account, etc. I'm hoping they get a little bigger just to prevent PayPal from becoming a monopoly.
http://alertpay.com/
GunPal, now known as GPal, is only available in the US, so it's probably not so good for digital goods. But it allows transactions PayPal doesn't.
https://www.gpal.net/
(Btw, it's hilarious how they rebranded GunPal to "GPal - friendly payments".)
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
When you have to pay a vendor who has a PayPal account, you don't have to log in with a PayPal account as the buyer.
Instead, you can just pay with your credit card (unless they just changed it).
Since you're protected if you pay with your credit card, was there any other problem?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Plimus (http://plimus.com) is an alternative for vendors that I've had generally good experience with over the years.
Unlike 2checkout, there's no setup fee (so you pay nothing to open or maintain an account).
Also 2co requires a different $49 account for every different domain you sell from. Unlike them, and also unlike PayPal, you can open as many Plimus accounts as you need.
Your customers can pay with credit card, bank transfer, check, PayPal, even purchase order. They pay you via check, PayPal, or bank transfer.
Finally, they also offer subscription management, file hosting and delivery, software license management, localization of currency, subdomains (you.plimus.com) and customization of templates.
Cons: I believe they are oriented towards services and digital goods, as opposed to hard goods.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
I wish I could do away with PayPal, namely because it would be nice to have a payment processor that doesn't discriminate against guns and gun parts.
This place used to be called gunpal but I guess they wanted to tone down the name.
I wish them luck.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
How is this any different from, say, US Dollars? How does an organization go about "guaranteeing its worth"?
"This note is legal tender for all debts, private and public."
I know that I can use my dollars to pay my mortgage, taxes and electricity bill. The government guarantees that by law.
Do you have the same assurance for BitCoin?
Hawala is the best alternative.
Why would anyone listen to lulzsec? They've been very clear they have no agenda, and are in it for the lulz.
They have no moral or ideological stance, and no ground to stand on. Why would anybody take their boycott recommendations seriously?
Boycotting paypal is the right thing to do. Not because some internet people told you too but because they have screwed over a large number of people, organizations, and charities in the past. If you use paypal it's only a matter of time until someone says you ripped them off them then they will 'investigate' which really means taking all money in your account and keeping it. Lots of totally innocent people have been ripped off this way.
Paypal sucks, I've been boycotting them for some time. Lulzsec also sucks. I might open a paypal account after seeing this.
Stupid people always do the opposite of what they are told just to prove they have some supposed independence and free will.
You really want to deal with a company that you know will rip you off just to prove some stupid point?
Boycotting Paypal would be nice, but for a lot of people, it's impossible. Would you tell people to boycott the banks by closing their accounts and keeping all their money in cash under their mattress? That's basically what you're saying when you advise people to boycott Paypal, because like it or not, it's basically a monopoly in many online-payment venues.
It's a bad comparison. You can always change your bank should they do anything you don't like. I've done it and it's a pretty painless procedure where I live. You should let your bank know they can't do whatever they please every so often so they don't get complacent.
You can't change to another paypal and they abuse their customers because they know it.
Some online merchants are actually very very accommodating, if you just ask. One merchant I perused didn't have any overseas shipping options so I just emailed and asked if they could ship overseas. I got a very nice lady who organised everything for me personally and I got what I wanted.
Its easy to become jaded with all the bad customer service we receive, but sometimes if you persevere you are rewarded.
Neat, I'll remember that.
I've used email tarpits in the past for slimeballs that just won't stop emailing me. It's always funny to see their mail connections strong out to 10 minutes or so per connection only to get dropped and them to attempt redelivery in a few seconds.
The police forces across the UK have cross-border powers to make arrests without warrants in many situations. They are not as compartmentalised as, say, the US County forces. Additionally, there are several national special police forces including the Serious Crimes and British Transport agencies.
The US dollar has neither though.
You seriously just claimed that the US has no guns?
"The buyer could file any complaint and paypal would reverse the transaction and the buyer would have the merchandise and their money back and very little incentive to return the merchandise."
Except that that's not true. When the buyer lodges a dispute, the seller has an opportunity to respond. If the seller responds that he will refund the money for a return of the merchandise, the buyer is then obligated to return the merchandise with return receipt (or equivalent) before PP will issue a refund. I know this because I had to go through it as a buyer with some defective merchandise, and I had to ship it back at my own expense before PP would refund my money. They were hardly unfair to the seller.
Not really. Some of the Ponzi schemes in Eastern Europe in the '90's were also up front that your money comes from the next suckers. E.g., "Caritas" in Romania was candidly open about how it works and where the money comes from.
It turns out that when the marks think that your being open about it makes it totally legit, that can work too. In that case, the marks were just out of a communist regime which regulated the hell out of market, money and investments, and most really had no clue how anything else would work or not work.
I guess adding some fancy "crypto" and "mining" and other stuff like that, is also enough for at least two categories:
A) the techno-utopian nerd who'd buy into any shit as long as it's high-tech, and genuinely believes that giving a million monkey networked computers is somehow going to revolutionize anything and result in anything else than still a million monkeys shitting on the keyboard. You know, the O'Reilly of Web 2.0 fame kind of idiot who can look at Google and not see "it succeeded because it has a business plan and a source of income" but some idiotic "because it networks TEH PEOPLE!!!", and
B) the computer illiterate kind for whom its being some high-tech incomprehensible BS masks any other aspects.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Actually, figuring out the seller's correct address was trivial. Emailing the seller had no effect, even when I translated it into her native language. Her physical address and phone number were also easy to find, but I don't speak German and doubt that would have an impact.
Emailing the customers who contacted me and informing them that the person they were trying to buy from was apparently an idiot and that I could not recommend doing business with her usually got them to go away, but every few months someone new tries to buy the products. The fact that nobody has successfully purchased the products in over a year has not affected her seller ratings or caused the store to come down.
An update: out of curiousity, I checked the listing. I guess ebay did take down all of her items. They still list her as a seller, though. Looking through the Paypal emails, it looks like for the past few months I haven't gotten anything related to people trying to buy the items, just emails from PayPal telling me that about new ToS and that by maintaining an account she accepts the new terms.
Huh - hadn't thought of that.
"Give me this many money-tokens, or I will use the guns", combined with a limited supply of money-tokens? Sounds like it's got enforced worth after all.
I concede.
Last post!
Yes, but what if there were only one bank? That's sorta where we are with Paypal. Many sellers only take Paypal, and many buyers have Paypal accounts and don't want to set up a new account with someone else they've never heard of just to make payment.
Exactly. Not everyone has their website already set up for every possibility, so you need to ask. Small merchants in particular may not have the resources to set up their websites exactly the way they'd like, unlike Amazon, so there may be more things available if you ask.
Google Checkout? I mean, if everywhere gave the option for both PayPal and Google Checkout maybe we could get a bit of competition going on.
I use flooz for all my online transactions.
If it is good enough for Whoopi, it's good enough for me!
You might *think* that say, using "anonymous proxies" or TOR endpoints (weak in DNS centered apps that call out to their OWN potentially bogus servers) are "the answer", but... they're not.
Nothing REALLY IS, don't fool yourself otherwise.
E.G.-> I mean, for example, do you *THINK* that all of the TOR endpoints &/or "highly anonymous proxy servers" out there are setup by online criminals only? Guess again - a HIGH %-age of them ARE SETUP BY LAW ENFORCEMENT AS HONEYPOTS!
Plus, face it:
The MAC Address + IP Address you use (the 1st is really the "key" one) are the ticket to that also for tracking/tracing you also! As was said in "The Matrix":
" We've survived by hiding from them, by running from them. But they are the gatekeepers. They are guarding all the doors, they are holding all the keys. "...
(Yes - Even if you "spoof" either one, & with the right type of router, you can)...
* No folks - don't be STUPID:
There's TOO MANY "links in the chain" for "true 100% anonymity" to be real is why, & the above lists how/why.
APK
P.S.=> You're honestly BETTER OFF just NOT "f'ing around" online, because sooner or later (Kevin Mitnick proved this much when he "pissed off" the "Cyber Samurai" in fact as "the prototype" example really)? You're going to get "nailed", no questions asked... especially if you "step on the wrong toe(s)" of your "foes"!
The BIGGEST single mistake ANY criminal makes, is ego/pride, & underestimating his opponents... especially the LAW!
You're outgunned from the "get-go" really is why!
I.E.-> They're more well-funded, with LEGALLY LEGITIMATE access to whatever they need pretty much, & thus? You cannot be stupid thinking you'll "outsmart" them...
(In the end?? If you are screwing around online, "hacking/cracking"??? Believe you me: THEY WILL GET YOU!)
... apk
Maybe not true for any complaint, but we had Paypal reverse transactions on us while the buyer was in possession of the merchandise, so it did and can happen.