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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.”
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?
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.
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.
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.
What's a "chi wow wow"?
http://lulzsecexposed.blogspot.com/2011/06/topiary-doxed.html
Of course, neither or both of the Swede and the Shetlander could be involved.
If you decide to close your PayPal account, you should withdraw any funds in your PayPal balance and then follow the set of instructions below that match what you see on your account:
Log in to your account at www.paypal.co.uk
Click 'Profile' at the top of the page.
Click the 'Close Account' link located under 'Account Information' and follow the instructions. (Don’t see this step? Follow the instructions below.)
Or
Log into your PayPal account at www.paypal.co.uk
Click 'Profile' near the top of the page.
Select ‘My Settings’.
In the ‘Account Type’ section, click ‘Close account’ and follow the instructions.
We may ask you to confirm ownership of the account before it is closed.
Here's the actual link to the original Anon / LulzSec / AntiSec / ...
http://pastebin.com/LAykd1es
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
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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Moneybookers
Moneybookers are a bunch of thieves as much as Paypal. Only reason there's less stories about them is that they are much less used, but here's mine. I used it to receive money (same at Paypal). At some point, they decided I have received a lot of money (around 1000 EUR I think) over the past months, and that I had to send them proof of ID. They wanted a color photocopy of my Spanish passport, sent to a random address in the UK. Until I did so, I wouldn't be able to get my money which they just decided to hold.
I told them to just close my account (and well, deposit my money in the bank would be nice) but they replied back that I had to send my ID to close the account too. I'm not going to send a copy of an ID that can be used for a million things . So well, my account is still open, and they have my money. There isn't a timeout or something.
So please: Don't recommend moneybookers. They suck as much as paypal.
Been using it for many years. Never a single problem. I don't leave large piles of money in that account, but that's because I use their debit/credit card to spend that money on other things that I do ... and get a kickback for doing so. I invoice people, send money, process checkouts from multiple business entities, all with trouble or any hint of it. My customers gladly use it. And my experience is not an abberation. The handful of very noisy exceptions are.
All of that said, I use Square (squareup.com) for swipe-the-card type transactions. Terrific service, and customers can't seem to stop enjoying signing their charge with their finger on my iPad screen.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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
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.
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.
You are complaining that they are "stealing" your money even though you haven't given them proof of who you are.
If they want proof of ID, then they should ask for it up front - not when they have money and I have no option. Of course they won't return the money to the sender either.
Unlike PayPal, who you would also be sending your ID to, at a random address, Moneybookers is regulated.
Show me the regulation that says that they get to keep any money?
Your money is sitting in that account because you are a retard, not because they are thieves.
They are thieves. They won't give me my money and they won't give it to the person that sent it. And they demand that I send them a photocopy of a document that can be used to open bank accounts (real ones), apply to loans, and lot of other things. If you think I'm being a retard for not sending them that document, then will, go fuck yourself and send them yours.
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.
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.
He wasn't arrested because he "happens" to be the spokesman; he was arrested because he was also taking part in the attacks.
To young to be a "Man", Old enough to be a Soldier.
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." - Denis Diderot.
My dog is my wife, you insensitive clod!
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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
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 are complaining that they are "stealing" your money even though you haven't given them proof of who you are.
If they want proof of ID, then they should ask for it up front - not when they have money and I have no option. Of course they won't return the money to the sender either.
http://www.moneybookers.com/app/help.pl?s=laundering
Do you read things before you sign up? And why should they ask for ID before legally required too, you want them to go beyond what the law requires?
Unlike PayPal, who you would also be sending your ID to, at a random address, Moneybookers is regulated.
Show me the regulation that says that they get to keep any money?
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32006R1781:en:NOT
Your money is sitting in that account because you are a retard, not because they are thieves.
They are thieves. They won't give me my money and they won't give it to the person that sent it. And they demand that I send them a photocopy of a document that can be used to open bank accounts (real ones), apply to loans, and lot of other things. If you think I'm being a retard for not sending them that document, then will, go fuck yourself and send them yours.
They can't give you your money because doing so without documenting your identity is against the law. They can't give it to the person who sent it because that would also be against the law if they don't have your ID on record. They aren't thieves because they haven't kept the money for themselves, it is sitting there waiting for someone to provide the identification the law requires in order to transfer it.
And yes that ID is just what you would need to open a bank account. Which is obvious, since the bank wants the same ID for the exact same reason - the same laws apply to them.
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.
From the summary: "Shetland Islands" and "London". So what would you call a collaboration between Scottish police and English police if not "British police"?
Do you read things before you sign up? And why should they ask for ID before legally required too, you want them to go beyond what the law requires?
Have you read the very same link you sent? Where does it say that while my ID is verified I won't be able to have access to my money? According to that very page, the UK law doesn't require that they limit access to my money.
Show me the regulation that says that they get to keep any money?
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32006R1781:en:NOT
Where, please? Because I read it and can't find it. In fact, that document says that it's the information of the payer, not the payee, that should be available - and if it isn't, it can either be requested or the transaction be denied. So no, moneybookers doesn't have to keep the money.
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.
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/
That is until she sees this post...
Irony? Yea, it's like goldy and bronzy, only it's made of iron!
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.'
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.
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!