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!

"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.

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.

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: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: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.