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.”

Comments

Re:do alternatives exist?

[Dachannien]

Exactly how did PayPal show its evilness this time? Their website was DDoSed, which is against the law, and they had evidence showing where the attacks originated, which they turned over to authorities. What's evil about that?

Re:Paypal has no rivals

[TheCRAIGGERS]

There is at least one rival. It is distributed, unforgeable and cannot be inflated by fiat. This digital commodity is called bitcoin. And it works today. It can replace paypal and credit cards in much of the commerce that occurs online.

Correction: It *could* replace paypal and credit cards. In much the same way that taping wooden nickles to a fleet of carrier pigeons after winning an ebay bid could also replace paypal. Oh sure, it's technically feasible, but nobody accepts it. And what is the value of currency that nobody accepts? That's right, zero.

So it's not so much a 'rival' as it is a 'possible alternative that might some day be useful if the stars align and it takes off.'

Re:What alternative?

[iamhassi]

The problem with Paypal is they're established and they have a 800# call center and they're in the US. I call this a "problem" because I don't like them but these problems make them the only half-way legitimate solution. There's tons of alternatives, Bitcoin, Google Checkout and something called AlertPay, but Bitcoin is not established and they have no customer support, AlertPay is in Canada (no US laws) and too new to know if they're legitimate, and Google Checkout has it's share of complaints and they don't even have a 800 number.

If Google can't seem to come up with a decent Paypal alternative there's no way in hell anyone else will. Paypal's been around 10+ years and they're linked to eBay, it would take a miracle for a reputable alternative to spring up and become dominate because the alternative would have to convince millions of businesses and customers who are accustomed to Paypal to switch. Also it's important to note that Paypal has never been hacked in 10+ years which is very important for a company that stories credit card and bank account info.