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

In other news...

[Overzeetop]

Paypal has passed account closure information onto authorities for use in narrowing down Lulz members and supporters.

Shetland islands?

[Xest]

Christ, with the slowness of BT, I'm amazed they even have internet out there yet.

Paypal has no rivals

[Superken7]

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.

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: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:What alternative?

[m2vq]

Bitcoin is a great alternative. Bitcoin wiki has a huge list of stores and services from wide array of areas that accept BitCoin.

Re:Umm. No credibility

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Umm. No credibility

[kelemvor4]

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.

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.

Re:Umm. No credibility

[PopeRatzo]

So, there's a barely coherent, strongly infantile ideological stance here

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"

How did they find him?

[GameboyRMH]

If you don't know how to make yourself untraceable, don't do things that will bring the cops to your door.