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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?"
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.
"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.
I smell the NSA.
They will betray you.
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.
I don't get it.
I hear stories like this all the time.
Why do people insist on using PayPal for high value accounts?
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
I cancelled my account years ago due to their fishy tactics.
Why, yes! I AM new here.
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?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
As tiresome as it is to read the same kind of PayPal horror story, I hope they keep coming. The world needs to be continually reminded not use PayPal because of they way they treat their customers. Why people voluntarily continue to use PayPal is beyond me. There are an increasing number of less evil alternatives.
I hope PayPal becomes a relic of the past, like AltaVista and other things I can no longer remember.
Sometimes there are services that don't have another option for online payment *other* than PayPal. It kind of sucks, but there it is. Just make sure you never keep any money in the account. PayPal's been pulling this kind of shit for years. I'm surprised no one has taken them to court over it yet (or if they had, why it hasn't made the news).
--- Journals are boring; Go to my web page instead
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.
Gay isn't a synonym for bad.
PayPal in Europe is a bank and they still suck. The way to stop PayPal's silliness is to stop using PayPal.
Shit man, that was 14 years ago. You know, when they started abusing accounts under protection of "not a bank".
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Why do people use PayPal at all?
Mainly as a convenient means to avoid giving credit card numbers to those I trust even less than them. Nothing beyond that.
You'd have to be a fucking moron to use them at all. Why would anybody with a brain give their banking information to this company, even for a "low value" account?
That's why you don't give them your normal bank account. Instead you create a separate checking account (which you can get from some banks with no monthly fee) and link that account to PayPal. Regularly transfer the money from that account into your real account. That way, if PayPal does decide to do something stupid, the amount of damage they can do is strictly limited.
If you're an eBay seller, this is the only sensible way to go.
Anyone who is funding any project that the US government does not like should know better than to use Paypal at this point.
Paypal is a tool of the US government, for whatever reason(s). and this is hardly the first time they use Paypal as an attack vector.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Gay has been used as a synonym for bad for a long time. The PC police may not like it but that doesn't change the facts.
The sellers, not the buyers, are effected by paypals overly-liberal freeze-the-funds policy.
Because of this, even though there are alternatives to paypal, most sellers continue to accept paypal or they will lose customers that prefer paypal.
The policies of paypal will eventually put them out of business unless they change their ways, but its a long way down unless they start messing with the buyers too.
"His name was James Damore."
It's not just Paypal they have to worry about. Look at what normal financial institutions did to Wikileaks. Mastercard stopped procesing payments, and Julian Assange's swiss bank account was frozen. If you challenge the powers that be, you will be retaliated against.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
I am not a crackpot.
Consider this situation: Someone pays a business with a credit card through PayPal. Then he files a chargeback, claiming that he did not receive a service. PayPal wants to verify that the business is actually providing the service for which it is charging people. PayPal breathes down businesses' necks when Visa breathes down PayPal's.
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.
The sheer amount of hate that banks, financial services and operators like Paypal have generated in the population at large is amazing. Exorbitant fees, slow transfers, arrogant customer service, publicly funded bailouts for amounts that almost defy imagination, systematic fraud reaching to the the highest levels of most governments of the world, few to no prosecutions of financial crime - the world of finance and banking it is a stagnated corrupt market that needs some serious competition, a bright light and a clean sweep.
Bitcoin is a tiny flicker of a spark in the dark rotten world of finance - not even in its infancy. Sure like any currency it can be stolen or used and abused to perpetrate fraud. Sure it is damn inconvenient to use or exchange, hardly anybody accepts it - but despite all this there is an army of people and entrepreneurs, early adopters with more joining every day that are willing to bend over backwards and work through the teething problems simply because it could almost possibly eventually bring much needed change to the almighty financial sector to which our economies now serve (as apposed to the other way around).
If you think mass media can drum up a propaganda campaign so the Military Industrial Complex can have their profitable wars, wait till you see how far and loud the corporate media "journalists" will willing to go when the financial sector stands to lose absolute monopoly over our currency for online global payments.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Because "everything else" at Amazon doesn't include old-school retro hardware.
Please, point out where I can get early-80s computer hardware at Amazon. Say, a TRS-80 Model I Expansion Interface. Or S-100 memory cards.
Sorry. Asides from lots of usually fruitless google searching, there's no real market for retro hardware besides Ebay.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Did you actually demand your money back from PayPal? I think people should do exactly that now ... because of the money being blocked. Then donate it by another means.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Google Checkout will be retired on November 20, 2013
For sellers of "digital goods" (whatever that means), Google Wallet will remain open. For sellers of physical goods, Google recommends Braintree. I'm under the impression that Google was shamed into closing Google Checkout for physical goods after one of Microsoft's "Scroogled" ad campaigns, which protested the fact that sellers could see buyers' postal codes.
You mean I can sell items on Etsy or Amazon like the ones I sold on eBay for a nice profit?
- A rare Tadpole Alphabook laptop computer
- Multiple more common Alphaservers and VAXes
- A small collection of trumpet mouthpieces, some used, some new, all different sizes
- Two different trombone mutes
- A nice sounding pair of Klipsch rear channel speakers with a big dent in one of the metal grilles
- A 50 year old Vincent Bach trumpet case (no trumpet!) in nice shape but smelling a little stale
- A bunch of old OS/2 software
None of that is craft stuff, and most of it is either used or one-offs.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
And giving PayPunk the card number is better?
They won't let you delete all your card numbers from your PayPal account. You have to leave at least one.
The only work around is to cancel the card.
Actually, you can be used by PayUpPal without giving them a credit card number. They just go out of their way to make life difficult for you.
The real issue here is that the US, unlike a lot of other countries, allows businesses who act like commercial banks to not be regulated like commercial banks. That's actually something the CFPB is supposed to be doing, is adding duck-typing to the laws around customer disclosures, access to accounts, etc.
Some examples of businesses who sometimes act like commercial banks but don't get the same regulations as commercial banks:
- Mixed commercial and investment banks like BofA.
- Mortgage brokers
- Payday lenders
- Check cashers (often linked to payday lenders)
- Credit card issuers
- Gift card issuers
- Anyone who allows users to have an account with a dollar value that they can withdraw or redeem later
I am officially gone from
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.
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.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Don't confuse your little corner of the internet with the real world. In the real world, you're a tempest in a teacup, son.
Right [1], back [2], at ya [3], son.
[1] The 2012 Harris Poll Annual Public Summary Report (PDF)
[2] Banking Stinks Like Cigarettes and Politics: Survey Shows Contempt for Industry
[3] Banking Sector Is Slowly Replacing Big Oil As The Most Hated Industry
The Harris poll asks consumers for their opinions on six key attributes of the 60 ‘most visible’ corporations in the United States. Rating companies’ social responsibility, emotional appeal, products and services, workplace environment, financial performance and vision and leadership, the Harris RQ survey seeks to get a snapshot of corporate America’s reputation among consumers.... Banking and financial services scored terribly.
...
But the banking sector has screamed up the charts, and not counting the always-hated federal government, it was No. 2 with a bullet as of Gallup's most recent poll, taken way back in August 2012. Fifty-three percent of Americans surveyed had a negative view of banks in that poll, up from just 18 percent in 2007, before the crisis. The percentage of people with a positive view of banking has plunged to 25 percent from 50 percent in 2007.
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.
Paypal has no right to withhold funds on demand of this information, that money belongs to the organization.
As a U.S.-born U.S. resident with a B.Sc. in computer science, I sort of feel locked into U.S. services. What other country would let me use its services instead?
If you get the M.Sc., you will know answers to all questions!
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.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The whole system is broken, that's what's missing here. A couple numbers and a name contains all the information needed to withdraw money from my account, that is the real problem and it is seriously backwards early 20th century thinking. There is no reason that information should fly around unencrypted, heck it's written in plain text on my credit card for crying out loud, why does no one think that is an issue!? The sad thing is that something like Google Wallet, that has enough brains to be password protected and provide strong encryption, should have been the answer to all this, but the banking system is so incredibly backward that rather than encrypting the data in a way that makes sense (with one time pads a la secureID) they ended up broadcasting the same unencrypted string of data that can be copied right off a card.
To summarize, the solution to the problem of buying from someone you don't trust with your CC information isn't to use paypal, it's to overhaul the CC system to the 21st century so that you aren't sharing the actually CC information with anyone but the bank to begin with.
Niggardly and the other word are false cognates.It's not a good choice of word these days because it will most likely be mis-understood by a significant number of people.
Gay is interesting since it's use for homosexual is just as much slang as it's use for bad. meanwhile, bad==good and many years ago it was noted that you gotta be hot if you wanna be cool.
While it certainly was a slur against homosexsuals to use gay for bad at one time, it's not clear that the association is intended anymore, though like niggardly, it may be best to choose another word to avoid mis-understandings.
Care, no...
Actually I do. I could care less about the project, who gives a fuck. Another bleeding heart FOSS is your friend bullshit waste of time and money.
But clearly since PayPal provides a crowdfunding platform they have a right to ask for LEGITIMATE reason to continue to fund a project if there is some question to how the money is being used, or no real information about the progress of a project.
I am tired of people rising to the defense of open source and crowdfunded projects without thinking. There is no reason to assume that you can be handed thousands of investor's money and then have no real business strategy, budget, or timeframe to deliver on your goals. If your investor asks for progress, you fucking provide it. If your investor is calling you out, you better cover your ass with legitimate paperwork.
So suck it up MailPile. You thought you could create some crowdfunded bullshit project, take the money from tens of thousands of people that will just throw anything at FOSS out of some vapid belief it matters and then provide what; a reskin of some existing open source mail program and call it a day?
Hey, if MailPile is legitimate and well organized that information should be trivial and readily obtained so feed it to PayPal and tell them to shut the fuck up. But if its a bunch of stoners thinking they got away with ripping off a bunch of retards through PayPal, they should guess again.
I think PayPal is clearly in the right here to ask for some information about how the money is being spent considering they offered the opportunity to have this project funded through their organization.
Bam
https://developer.paypal.com/webapps/developer/docs/classic/lifecycle/crowdfunding/
Time to RTF-Guidlines
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I stopped using PayPal a few years ago. I forgot to renew the card it was associated when it expired. When I tried to update the details PayPal had blocked the account and refused to re-active unless I provided photographic ID. What, pray tell, do PayPal want or need with photographic ID? So, I, being the level headed and rational individual I am, smelled a huge fetid rat and stopped using their 'services.'
One good reason is to prevent forgotten/inactive accounts from being fraudulently reactivated for nefarious purposes (id theft, money laundering, whatever). Asking for proof of identity seems like a good security measure to me, not some nefarious scheme to - well what were you afraid of exactly?
I'm beginning to realize that despite genuine problematic behavior on their part, a lot of the PayPal hate seems to be the result of knee-jerk "I didn't get what I want so they suck", a whopping dose of conspiracy angst and just plain not thinking things through to understand why. I sure as hell don't trust them indiscriminately, but I don't think they are the great evil that some make them out to be. For the vast majority of their customers, they seem to do just fine, otherwise they would be out of business.