PayPal Freezes MailPile's Account

rysiek writes "Remember MailPile, the privacy-focused, community-funded FOSS webmail project with built-in GPG support? The good news is, the funding campaign is a success, with $135k raised (the goal was $100k). The bad news is: PayPal froze MailPile's account, along with $45k that was on it, and will not un-freeze it until MailPile team provides 'an itemized budget and your development goal dates for your project.' One of the team members also noted: 'Communications with PayPal have implied that they would use any excuse available to them to delay delivering as much of our cash as possible for as long as possible.' PayPal doesn't have a great track record as far as fund freezing is concerned — maybe it's high time to stop using PayPal?"

Comments

Who leaves money in a paypal account.

[queazocotal]

It's well known that they do this sort of stuff - not regularly sweeping it out to a bank account is a really bad idea.

Re:Who leaves money in a paypal account.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

regularly sweeping money into a bank account will also get your account frozen.

At least it won't get your account frozen with your money in it!

Re:Who leaves money in a paypal account.

[DrXym]

I use PayPal when I can because I don't like having to be hand out my credit card number to every web site I want to do business with or filling out my billing details each time. Also my card and address are in Ireland and lots of sites either don't let me enter the info properly in the billing details, or wait until I have entered the detail and clicked "Pay Now" to turn around and point blank refuse to process the order. I've even seen a few sites which whack a "processing fee" onto a credit card but not a PayPal purchase.

So it's convenient. At the same time, if Visa or Mastercard produced a system which worked as reliably I'd probably use that instead. PayPal is after all trying to be yet another middleman.

Re:Who leaves money in a paypal account.

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I like using credit cards since as dodgy as they are they are still less dodgy than PayPal. What is my liability limit with PayPal? Also can PayPal do charge backs like credit cards can?

Re:Who leaves money in a paypal account.

[brain159]

It's poor form to use a referral link that will personally benefit you in this sort of context. It diminishes your point, making you look like any other spammer or paid shill.

Re:Who leaves money in a paypal account.

[jythie]

Unfortunately, a lot of people use PayPal. Failing to use it reduces your customer/client/whatever base. While in theory it is nice to say "I will take a moral stand and use XYZ service instead", but in practice anything that decreases the ease of which people send you payments is a bad business plan unless you have a strong enough fanbase to overcome it.

There is also the problem that many services are integrated with PayPal, so if you want to use them and their systems you have to use PayPal too.

Re:Who leaves money in a paypal account.

[Oligonicella]

I agree it's spam, but it *is* on topic so your assumption it's just at shill troll is not a good one.

Re:Who leaves money in a paypal account.

[lightknight]

Agreed. PayPal has become synonymous with the word 'scam.'

The banks / credit unions should just drop the cost of wire transfers, and be done with it; the result would probably destroy PayPal in a week, provided the cost was low enough, and painless enough...

"Maybe?"

[geminidomino]

"High time to stop using paypal" was years ago. They've been famous for this scummy behavior since even before ebay bought them and forced you to use them.

Re:"Maybe?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does PayPal have any say in how the funds raised are to be spent? That is like the bank demanding an itemized weekly budget and a yearly fiscal and activity plan before they'll dispense funds from your account.

Re:"Maybe?"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll move to Somalia if you move to North Korea. I'd rather have no government than a totalitarian one.

Re:"Maybe?"

[gbjbaanb]

Hell, even with CASH transactions the government likes to take first and then asks questions

well, that's because cash is the easiest and most obvious form of money laundering, and we all know that criminal proceeds are laundered by terrorists to fund their evil activities, so when you next see someone using cash, just point to them and shout "a terrorist, a terrorist". If they complain, get a group together to chuck them in some water, if they drown they were innocent and will get 27 virgins in the afterlife.

(and before anyone says, that's witches... witches are so 10th century, terrorists are today's excuse for government control).

Oh, any Paypal is not regulated nearly as much as other credit providers. That's the problem - Visa, for example, is not allowed to freeze anyone's account unless they are suspected of being a wit... terrorist, or just disliked by the US government.

Re:"Maybe?"

[Jane Q. Public]

"High time to stop using paypal" was years ago.

No, it wasn't. What passed years ago was "It's high time PayPal was regulated as a bank."

Re:"Maybe?"

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you "own" property? Pretty sure you have a deed from the government saying you do. Without that deed, and the infrastructure behind it you're just one guy standing on some land. I hope you have enough friends to keep 24 hour guard, because I might get a few dozen friends with guns together who decide that we "own" your property now. Sucks to be you.

FE F1 F0.fm

[return 42]

I smell the NSA.

Re:FE F1 F0.fm

[tgd]

I smell the NSA.

I don't. I smell Visa and MasterCard... which is worse.

PayPal is on the hook for chargebacks when MaiPile doesn't deliver. They're on the hook based on their own internal policies, and the policies of the big card networks.

Given how many of the crowd sourced projects never come to fruition, it doesn't surprise me that there's pushback from the companies that handle the payments. (Especially now that so many of them are pushed as more than a simple donation and are really a pre-purchase of a product or service.)

Don't use US services

[Anonymous Coward]

They will betray you.

We need to push regulators to treat them as a bank

[Isca]

That's the only way to stop this nonsense. There will be new, different nonsense at that point but at least they will have to justify and backup what they do.

Don't feel sorry for anyone using PayPal

[hsmith]

It is a stupid service run by idiots who pull shit like this. It has been known for years. Why would anyone use it - at all?

Re:Don't feel sorry for anyone using PayPal

[Rob the Bold]

A bigger question is why. What do PayPal gain by "randomly" freezing accounts like this?

You'd think the goodwill hit would be more costly than the interest on the frozen funds for the time they hold the cash until forced to finally pay it back.

They've already got your customers in check, but they go ahead and take an extra pawn, because -- why not? Who else they gonna play with?

And yet, all this bad publicity -- for years and years -- and still no viable, widely accepted, competitor.

What right does PayPal have?

[OzPeter]

Aside from the fact that PayPal holds the money, what right do they have to demand a business plan from an indiegogo funded project? Is there a business connection between PayPal and Indiegogo? Or is PayPal just performing a dick move?

Re:What right does PayPal have?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because fuck you, that's why. Also, they keep bribing congressmen to not regulate them so there is no enforced law saying they can't do that.

Re:We need to push regulators to treat them as a b

[kintamanimatt]

PayPal in Europe is a bank and they still suck. The way to stop PayPal's silliness is to stop using PayPal.

Re:Paypal freezing is old news

[nitehawk214]

Paypal froze Notch's account after Mincraft went gold and began selling. Supposedly in just one day he managed to get over one hundred thousand dollars in sales which prompted paypal to freeze his account.

This is thanks to the US patriot act, bank secrecy act and possibly some other nanny state laws. Large transactions are red flagged and reported. The owner of the account must provide an explanation of what they are doing with the money. This is one of those risk mitigation plans we were talking about the other day which helps the US government find the "bad guys". Eventually paypal will unfreeze the account once they learn the money won't be used for terrorism, drugs, racketeering or other boogeyman bullshit. I feel safer already.

As if Paypal unfroze Notch's account out of the goodness of their hearts. No, the only way to get unfrozen is to have a huge crowd of fans making a big stink and generating lots of bad press. Does anyone remember Something Awful's Katrina fund? Paypal will try to steal your money, or at least sit on it for as long as they can to make interest on it. That this is a surprise to anyone is a surprise to me. (yes, that is what I meant to say there)

Indiegogo

[TheSHAD0W]

Considering how many Indiegogo campaigns this has happened to, I'm surprised the service hasn't switched to one of Paypal's competitors yet. Otherwise this is going to drive projects to Indiegogo's competitors instead.

Re:Who do people still use PayPal high value accou

[willith]

That's insane. If someone steals my credit card number, there's fast and quick legal redress. The most inconvenient part is waiting for the credit card company to overnight me a new card.

Paypal, on the other hand, can lift actual money right out of the checking account they insist on linking to my account and actually defraud me. There is literally no instance where simply using a credit card number is less safe than dealing with paypal.

Re:Few Alternatives... for now.

[fast turtle]

Paypal isn't a bank according to U.S. Regulations. Otherwise their doing this would get them slammed by the Feds in a hurry as it violates many regulations. In fact, under the Feds, they would be slapped down for Money Laundring and I'd suggest the Project Devs push RICO Charges in Federal Court against Paypal (Racketeering/Corruption) which if successful would give them punitive damages of not triple but six to ten times the amount of the monies stollen and the profit Paypal is making from holding that money to play with it. How much money is Paypal making by holding those funds as they are - Stocks/Bonds market - 2+ percent per day? That's a lot of money when you look at the totals.

It's this kind of action by Paypal that pushed me to drop all family accounts with them and to quit using Ebay. It's not worth the agravation and I did vote with my wallet.

Re:Depends on what you do via Gaypal

[whistlingtony]

Gay IS a widely used synonym for "bad". But of course, it is also used to describe sexual orientation. We all know this, and all the arguing about it is silly.

What is NOT silly is determining if we're going to let this continue. We all understand that using the word Niggerdly in polite company is rather gauche. Niggerdly has a meaning, and it's not very flattering. It's not a good word to use. Gay needs to become like that.

Lets find a new word for Bad/Stupid. We all have friends/coworkers that are gay. Lets show them some basic respect.

Re:Depends on what you do via Gaypal

[Zontar The Mindless]

Did you mean this word?

Yes, sometimes being one letter off makes a whole heap of difference.

Not that I would be inclined to use either one of them, since I have some idea what might (not) be good for me.