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.

Comments

So...

[93 Escort Wagon]

Nothing of substance has changed at PayPal since the old days. Check.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

EUDP laws in Germany prohibit any activity such as that running out of datacenters hosting German citizen information. If the company is legit, there was no way it could comply with PayPal under those restrictions imposed by the EUDP.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

I did not, in all likelihood, read the article.

Indeed. Seafile is an illegal file sharing site run out of China. They may call themselves a "cloud company", but that is really stretching the definition. Paypal is not asking for any user-specific data, but just anonymized aggregate statistics about file types and traffic. Of course, if Seafile did that, they would 100% match the profile of illegal file sharing (because that is what they are), so they refuse and pretend to be a victim standing up for principles. Paypal was going to cut them off, no matter what, so at least this way they garner some free publicity. Whatever.

What?

Seafile is a German company that sells licenses to software that lets you run a Private Cloud (file synching/sharing server).

It's like DropBox you run yourself.

Yes, Seafile does offer a hosted version, where you run your private cloud on their servers, but they do not encourage or make easy the sharing of illegal files, any more so than any other file syncing platform (again, the obvious comparison is DropBox).

Do you think DropBox is an illegal file sharing service?

Re:So...

[hackertourist]

Paypal is not asking for any user-specific data, but just anonymized aggregate statistics about file types and traffic.

As if that's an acceptable demand. The information Paypal gathers should not go beyond the transaction itself.

Hawking radiation

[epine]

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

Most of the changes unexciting, but one provision has consumer rights groups up in arms: PayPal is granting itself the ability to use automated systems to call and text users. These robocalls could happen for something as serious as debt collection or as frivolous as advertisements. What's more, the company grants the same rights to its affiliates. Activists are questioning the legality of these changes.

All this shit they still do at this point amounts to Hawking radiation.

And nothing of value was lost

[OverlordQ]

If your sole payment method was PayPal, I'm not sure I trust you with my data.

Others

[The Raven]

Makes me wonder what other cloud storage providers didn't say no.

Old News

[jklovanc]

Paypal has been doing this for a long time.

Awefuly clickbatey summary

[Malenx]

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.

I've been modded down for saying Paypal is evil

[frovingslosh]

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!

Wrong tag, what is the matter with Slashdot??

[Britz]

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?