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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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.)