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PayPal Dumped Cloud Company After It Refused To Monitor Customers' Files (fortune.com)
German Dropbox rival Seafile claims PayPal dropped it as a customer after it refused to comply with the payment services company's demand to spy on its users' data. In a blog post, the company informed its customers that they can no longer pay for the service using PayPal -- the only payment method that Seafile currently relies on. CEO Silja Jackson told Fortune, "We're looking into alternative payment services, but currently we're running a cloud service and not getting paid." Founded in 2009, Seafile has over 250,000 users, many in universities. The service offers an open-source file-synchronization system that organizations can install on their own servers -- for a fee, if they want enterprise features -- and last October the firm decided to also start offering a paid version that's hosted on Seafile's German servers, for individuals and small businesses.
Nothing of substance has changed at PayPal since the old days. Check.
#DeleteChrome
All that sausage and the germans still have a low tolerance for this kind of shit.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Too bad its ruled by less than 20 chinese individuals.
When is Europe going to target PayPal for violating the Data Protection Directive. They love to target Google and Facebook for violations but seem to ignore what PayPal is doing which is far more dangerous. They will only do business with companies that violate European law.
All the strong-arm authoritarianism, none of the democratic illusions of choice!
Paypal officially fell into a black hole as viewed from my frame of reference a year ago.
PayPal Will Be Able To Robo-Text/Call Users With No Opt-out Starting July 1
All this shit they still do at this point amounts to Hawking radiation.
If your sole payment method was PayPal, I'm not sure I trust you with my data.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I thought Safe Harbor was overturned by the EU specifically to prevent this type of abuse.. and now we have Privacy Shield coming [specifics tbd] to which I would think Paypal must also adhere. They clearly intend no such adherence.
I assume that many companies sell goods that offer no opportunities for spying. Will PayPal dump them unless they add networked mics and cameras to their products to monitor customers?
Makes me wonder what other cloud storage providers didn't say no.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Issues with Paypal's policies aside, this is what can happen when you don't diversify your payment processing. If your one vendor dumps you, you're boned.
It's forgivable during the startup phase, but c'mon, you've been around since 2009 and have a claimed 250K users.
Paypal has been doing this for a long time.
PayPal does have its uses, but I have read stories about fraud on Reddit:
Without PayPal, you just call your CC issuer, reverse charges, call it done.
With PayPal, from what I was reading, you either eat the fraud, try to contest stuff with PayPal (which then they will just side with the opposing side), or contest the charges with the CC company, and have PayPal block your account, then pull the contested amount from a banking account.. Especially bad if you are using them for a merchant.
I personally have not had bad luck with them, but the stories other people have give me pause...
I don't think SeaFile will be any worse than it is now. In fact, if they picked up BitCoin, they would be a lot better off anyway.
I initially thought the summary meant PayPal wanted access to the customer data, but the story told me they just wanted analytics showing the file sharing website was attempting to combat copyright infringement.
I still side with seafile, but that's not nearly as douchey as I interpreted the summary.
...people still use PayPal?!? Who knew? Or cared? Them and Ebay, they're like the rummage sell of the Internet. (...Caveat emptor)
http://arstechnica.com/busines...
- needs a shrink or detox, probably busloads of people all over the planet!
Ever heard of
"Hypercapitalism and Digitization,
the total exploitation of humans...."
Milking and classifying every human for profit.
Acxiom - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
PayPal's philosophy is big part of that religion..
Wow... So, file-sharing is wrong and "out of China" is an aggravating circumstance.
And I read it on Slashdot, where people used to scream and fight anything suggesting that. And where referring to "out of $country" used to be a sign of "racism"...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Wow, Paypal might not have changed much, but maybe Slashdot is starting to change. I've been modded down in the past for suggesting that Paypal and the electronic bay of thieves were evil, apparently by people who like to use them and don't want to consider the moral implications. Now it comes out that Paypal, a private company, is trying to get access to files that I store on a German server (obviously I don't really, since I absolutely will never use Paypal), based on nothing more than the account was paid for through Paypal.
I'm shocked! Shocked that Slashdot users might finally be waking up to some of the abuses of this company!
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
PayPal is a bad idea even for a simplistic personal transaction. But what "organization" uses PayPal of all things? It's absurd. If they can't handle a credit card transaction then they shouldn't be an online business. I can just see someone from IT shouting over the top of the cubicle, "Hey, anyone have the PayPal password so I can renew our cloud?"
Recently so many people are taking spying/data collection to a whole new level including the dreaded MS. And the government benefits so they won't add policies to control them themselves unless there is a big public stink.It's unfortunate that Snowden's effort didn't get more public reaction. It's nice to see some companies trying to do the right thing. Be nice to use them to keep others in the industry honest. what about GoogleWallet or Authorize.net?
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
It's getting increasing hard for companies selling anything involving sexually explicit content to find credit card payment processors. Paypal will drop anyone on the rumor they sell something a little naughty. Looks like they'll also do it on the rumor there might occasionally be a copyright violation. In the United States the DOJ is pressuring banks to hassle and close the private bank accounts of anyone associated with the legal porn industry, including the performers.
With the death of cash, I guess the purse strings can be used to hold adults to arbitrary moral restrictions.
Especially a thing when you make an obviously illegal demand.
Government Left Hand: You damned well better make sure you are not knowingly an illegal file sharing service!
Government Right Hand: You damned well better not be spying on your customers' stuff!
What porn is it when someone takes it from both ends simultaneously?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Why was this voted "informative"? This comment is meant sarcastic, if you only read the article.
Seafile offers software that allows you to operate a private service akin to Dropbox. They are open source, so they have source packages as well as precompiled versions of their server and client for download. Their business model consists of offering a version of their software with additional features that costs money. They also offer paid support.
The German company by a similar name (Seafile GmbH in Germany vs. Seafile Ltd. out of China) started offering space on Seafile servers operated by themselves last year.
Spying on their users is not only impractical, since the client offers encryption, but also illegal in Germany, where the servers are located.
Like Dopbox, Google Drive and similar services, Seafile offers file sharing via a web link, of course, which makes illegal file sharing possible, but also pretty dumb, since German law has legal options to force Seafile to divulge the identity (only paying customers, remember?) of someone providing a link to a file on the server space they rented, if the file contents are illegal in some way.
So why the "Informative" tag on something so entirely misleading?
It was literally crafted by the CIA.
SpyPal
Wait, is this the same PayPal that is owned by EBay, the company that has for years refused to do anything about the selling of copyright infringing software through their site, instead offering an "official" complaint system which is just completely ignored, and continues to do nothing about it to this day? Are they afraid of a little competition?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
The time has come.
Maybe the Credit card Companies will not do business with then either.
There is always Bitcoin.
I think paypal is doing the right thing here. There seems to be two possibilities: 1) either the service is legal, 2) or the service is illegal. If the service is illegal, Paypal is in tough position, since money trail is going directly to paypal. This means they''ll be responsible of the illegal behaviour. Given paypal's size, they might have significant problems with deadlines for checking that their organisation is on ok legal position. Thus their position kinda makes sense.
The cloud company on the other hand, does not seem in very good position. Their position is that they're not allowed by law to monitor what happens in their own network. This sounds completely bullshit. All the german privacy laws is guaranteed to not apply for a request like this, where paypal is asking their position on their legal status. Given that the company refused to give any position on the legality of their file service, paypal's decision is exactly the right choice. Their best choice would be to provide the statistics that paypal is requesting.
By that logic, pointing out, that welcoming refugees from countries with a comparably flagrant disregard for women's rights may not be smart, is Ok too.
And yet, Donald Trump, who suggested a freeze of such immigrations, was widely denounced as just that — a racist everywhere, Slashdot included... But bashing the entire China is Ok?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Issues with Paypal's policies aside, this is what can happen when you don't diversify your payment processing. If your one vendor dumps you, you're boned.
It's forgivable during the startup phase, but c'mon, you've been around since 2009 and have a claimed 250K users.
MAYBE, because of the line of business they're really in, nobody else wants to give them a merchant account either, or has similar requirements.
Payment networks don't want to facilitate illegal activities because many things are regulated through legal requirements imposed on financial institutions. Or they simply want to avoid having new compliance hurdles created by self policing.
Online gambling is regulated partly through payment networks, not surprised if illegal file sharing is or could be too...
That's easy to say but the problem is there are no real alternatives.
Other's like Google and Amazon payments are very US-centric and German payment providers are only mildly popular locally. So you end up having to integrate multiple providers which costs time, money and is prone to losing customers due to too much choice.
On top of that, consumers demand Paypal. There is no way around it.
> There is always Bitcoin.
No there isn't. Bitcoin has too much of a barrier of entry and is too unreliably.
Even as a very tech-savvy user I couldn't be arsed to use it. I mean even finding out how to get coins is a shitshow. You end up wading through some outdated wiki with allegedly possibly-trustworthy exchanges of which half have shut down and whatnot. Not to mention the unpredictable value fluctuations. It's a novelty at best.
> If they can't handle a credit card transaction then they shouldn't be an online business.
The internet is bigger than the US and not every country uses credit cards. They aren't popular in Germany for example (where this company is from) and Paypal is to my knowledge the only payment provider that works globally and offers more than just credit card payments.
And, it looks like alternatives might be SofortÃoeberweisung or Giropay, but they apparently don't interact with Deutsche Bank, which seems the only German bank allowing retail USA customers. However, Deutsche Postbank owns BHF (USA) Holdings Inc. since 2001. Perhaps they could use this to provide some retail customers access to these payment services. It's a sure bet that Paypal could use some competition.
Normally, I'd be shouting '$corporation is evil', along with the Slashdot echo chamber but think for a moment about what a strange request this is. Can you imagine any other corporation saying "before you give us money you have to tell us everything about your customers". I can't imagine why PayPal would try that. Yes, I can; three letters, NSA. The issue was raised yesterday in a Slashdot post, 'what would the FBI do in Germany'. I suspect this is the answer: If you want to do business with a US company, you have to allow spying. Once again, the USA is pretending they own the internet.
it's time for a corporate death penalty
PayPal is much more than just peer-to-peer transactions. They offer businesses a credit card processing service called PayFlow, which is used by many large tech companies to collect customer payments. It's really not that unusual for merchants to have only one credit card processor.
As a German company, it should be very easy for them to handle payments by all European customers as standard SEPA bank transfers. The commission should be lower, and the money arrives the next day at the latest.
Just have a checkbox that says [ ] I agree to Paypal spying on my content and files as a condition of paying with Paypal.
It's not exactly difficult is it?
Sure, they'll need an alternative, too, but at least that deals with the PayPal problems and associated legal issues.
I still don't get why people use PayPal in the first place. It is expensive, the seller has to fetch his proceeds from an external account, it makes both the customer and the seller dependent on a third party that has been known to be unreliable, dishonest and capricious in many cases and it makes all transactions go through the U.S., with all the legal risks that involves. It is not even any more convenient than a normal bank transfer. Why do merchants offer PayPal and why do customers choose it?
Moneybookers fits that description too, I think. However, why have a third party payment provider at all? Why not just accept payments by bank transfer? It is free, it is more convenient for the customer, everything goes straight into the company's account and there is no third party involved.
My emphasis. Paypal do not say who's laws they are enforcing, I suspect that they are talking about the laws of the USA; they are not interested that their (Paypal's) customers might have to obey different laws. Paypal might even be obliged to demand that their customer obey laws of the USA regardless of which jurisdiction their customer is subject to. For all we know Paypal might have received a NSL (National Security Letter) as the FBI/NSA/... is interested in some of Seafile's customers -- we will never know.
> it is more convenient for the customer
I don't think it is. For example when I sell stuff on ebay 9 out of 10 buyers use Paypal instead of bank transfers.
I too am often tempted to use Paypal when buying stuff because it is more convenient: a simple login to a website vs. having to go to my online banking site, dealing with all the security measures like mobile TANs, having to fill out the transfer details myself, etc.
Those problems only apply to the seller though. It's "free" for consumers and Paypal almost always sides with the buyer. It's also faster than bank transfers (no two-factor authentication or whatever your bank uses, completely automated checkout without transfer forms to fill out).
Merchants have to offer Paypal because customers like it (and don't care or know about all the problems).
Idiot AC. From the info posted on the website Paypal not only wanted the files monitored (a violation of EU laws) but also demanded a list of file types that the user was saving on the system. What the hell does Paypal need to know if I'm saving pictures in .JPG or .RAW format for? What bad thing is ging to happen if Paypak decides that I'm saving files of the "wrong type"?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.