[HN Gopher] PayPal has restricted our account after we invoiced ...
___________________________________________________________________
PayPal has restricted our account after we invoiced a key
containing "ALEP"
Author : jiripospisil
Score : 618 points
Date : 2023-03-28 07:48 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| richrichardsson wrote:
| A small independant record label I'm involved with had its Paypal
| account shuttered with around PS2500 balance because "reasons"
| and they've basically stolen it. Fuck Paypal.
| csours wrote:
| You're being sprayed with weed killer. It doesn't matter to the
| farmer that a few flowers are killed, it just matters that the
| weeds are kept down.
| seydor wrote:
| It may be anti laundering or sth
| dejj wrote:
| "Aleph who?" asked Ambassador Genscher.
|
| "ALEPH YOU ARE GOING TO DIE."
|
| Then there was light.
|
| https://unsongbook.com/chapter-34-why-wilt-thou-rend-thyself...
| auguzanellato wrote:
| It's interesting how inclined is PayPal to ban users for
| insignificant reasons, often without any appeal opportunity. Two
| years ago when I was 21 I was asked to provide my ID for account
| verification/AML purposes, I sent everything they requested and
| then got banned because when I opened my account _without lying
| about my birth date_ I was under 18. Support just told me to open
| another account under a different email address.
| [deleted]
| nomilk wrote:
| > The problem was named after an incident in 1996 in which AOL's
| profanity filter prevented residents of the town of Scunthorpe,
| North Lincolnshire, England, from creating accounts with AOL,
| because the town's name contains the substring "cunt".[1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
| blitzar wrote:
| I can not be the only one who is aware of the "Paypal Mafia" and
| hear tales of their giga brain level collective and induvidual
| genius and success - yet use their product and see only a total
| and utter failure.
| [deleted]
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| I avoid PayPal completely. I've had experience with them charging
| twice and pretending it didn't happen (never got a refund), being
| charged secret "fees", exchange rates 2x the market rate (which I
| only found out after completing the purchase). All sorts of
| actions which we'd usually call "scams" but legal department has
| probably signed off that they can defend in court.
|
| Additionally, *a lot* of scams operate exclusively with PayPal,
| because PayPal doesn't care as long as it's profitable for them.
| There's no risk of a bad reputation because you can't have a
| reputation worse than PayPal anyway.
|
| Oh, and PayPal has also many times banned activists because of
| simply disagreeing with their cause. Not because required by law
| or any similar obligation, simply their own will.
|
| We really need decent payment providers; it's sad how many have
| to rely on this kind of business because they don't realistically
| have a choice.
| hulitu wrote:
| Another one bites the dust.
|
| People, just don't use PayPal, Stripe and other "inovative"
| payment providers. They are doing this since at least 10 years
| yet people never learn.
| dsnr wrote:
| What's a good alternative to Stripe, that supports
| subscriptions, is easy to implement and has good documentation?
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| What are the alternatives?
| deluxeroyale wrote:
| This is horrifyingly bad. I have yet to this day read anything
| good about paypal. They provide a "free" service with the option
| to rob the user of their money at any random moment. What other
| options are there out there that provide similar services? Are
| all modern banking services this bad at their core or is paypal
| by far the worst? There has to be options that are at least
| partially run by sane humans.
| Ekaros wrote:
| PayPal and it's ilk are worse. At least with regular banks
| there is regulation against this sort of stuff. That is they
| can't just confiscate the money for long periods unless there
| is some external decision.
|
| PayPal and the others like it are not banks, as such they play
| by different rules worse for consumers. What is kinda
| horrifying is that nothing has been done about this despite
| PayPal doing exactly these things for entire history seemingly
| it has existed.
| cubancigar11 wrote:
| The horrifying part is the bank's incompetency. In India you
| can transfer bank account to bank account immediately even
| without UPI.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| PayPal is only not-a-bank in the US. They are an actual bank
| in EU.
| hgsgm wrote:
| PayPal isn't free. It charges about 3% of txn
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| If there is one single thing I would absolutely give to crypto
| (in its essential form, not through centralized, heavily
| regulated intermediaries like Coinbase) it's that something like
| the above and the many stories in this comment thread can be
| circumvented if one is relatively careful about managing
| transfers, keys and basic use.
|
| Excepting truly major state-level interventions, almost nobody
| can stop you from collecting a payment from a third party or
| sending it to them, or keeping your payments collected secure
| from some bullshit arbitrary KYC corporate freeze. It works
| internationally, it works 24/7 and funds received are funds that
| are yours.
|
| Sure, the space as a whole is loaded with scammers, collapsed
| exchanges and etc, and its more technically difficult than using
| things like Paypal, but the essence I describe above is wonderful
| and should exist on a much broader scale as a basic right for
| people wishing to move funds and hold them. How you later convert
| them to fiat cash for daily spending is a separate debate.
|
| I can already image many people here in their bubbles of
| privilege decrying much of the above, or companies and
| governments not being able to randomly freeze funds and block
| their flow for individuals, but I invite you to deal with a
| corporate freeze of YOUR money, or simply live in a place where
| state-level corruption is endemic, frequent and hard to escape by
| any conventional means.
|
| Finally, Paypal truly is a hideous dumpster fire and deserves a
| slow, strangling corporate death. I look forward to a day in
| which that happens.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > If there is one single thing I would absolutely give to
| crypto (in its essential form, not through centralized, heavily
| regulated intermediaries like Coinbase) it's that something
| like the above and the many stories in this comment thread can
| be circumvented if one is relatively careful about managing
| transfers, keys and basic use.
|
| That's a very big "if"
|
| Cryptocurrency trades one set of problems for another set of
| problems. If you've ever seen the analytics for password reset
| at a large website (general, non-tech audience) and looked at
| the support statistics for account lockout help requests, you'd
| see why self-managed crypto is infeasible for any general
| market operations
|
| Tech people look at their own usage patterns and see that they
| can manage passwords and private keys just fine, but the same
| is not true for the general population. It's not even close.
|
| Crypto also lacks one of the big selling points of credit cards
| and PayPal: Disputed transactions. Disputes are terrible when
| misused by lying customers, but disputes have also saved me
| from some sellers who never shipped the items I bought. With
| crypto, my money would be gone forever. Other scammers would
| see that there was no recourse and would start running more
| scams. Buyers would notice that crypto transactions have higher
| risk and would lower their purchase price tolerance. Sellers
| would notice and would offer alternate services at higher
| prices. And we'd be back to everyone using PayPal and similar
| services.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| The number of exchanges with 'Multi Hundred Millions in losses'
| is higher than I'd like, to be honest.
| superzamp wrote:
| Well put. As great is the current financial system, seeing
| legitimate people and companies left on the sidelines for
| basically no reason aside factored in cost of applying the
| current regulation efficiently is quite maddening.
|
| Also well summarized by patio11 with [1]:
|
| > The actual probative value of SARs varies wildly; at the top
| of the spectrum, they can include sufficient investigatory work
| and documentation, produced by the analyst at the financial
| institution, to lead to convictions for e.g. human trafficking.
|
| > Across the financial industry, that SAR is wildly outnumbered
| by "Mohammed tried to do something, we didn't let him, and when
| we told him that he became agitated."
|
| > An example from here in Japan: an immigrant attempted to wire
| the equivalent of $600 to his cousin in Africa. He was asked
| the purpose of the wire and said it was for a tuition payment.
| Bank staff asked for supporting documentation like e.g. a
| tuition statement or student ID card for the cousin. The
| customer refused to provide that documentation. The bank
| refused the wire. The customer accused the bank staff of
| racially profiling him and raised his voice.
|
| > I was not a party to that transaction and, for clarity, it
| did not involve any employer or business partner of mine. I
| winced when reading a news report about it, because this is
| practically ripped from Compliance training. The customer is
| absolutely right and they are very likely getting a SAR filed
| on them.
|
| [1] https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/money-laundering-
| and-...
| [deleted]
| londons_explore wrote:
| I am almost certain they violated their own policies for telling
| you which word triggered their filters.
|
| Regular KYC procedure usually involves using a blacklist of
| disallowed words, and then if anyone triggers the filter, you
| block them, and ask them to submit any and all documentation they
| have for all recent transactions (but importantly, you _dont_
| tell them the transaction or word that triggered the check).
| Someone then reviews the documentation, and unless it explains
| the blacklisted word, the account ban stands.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| This is an asinine policy. Put yourself in the position of the
| counterparty, how is anyone supposed to resolve a disagreement
| using such a kafkaesque approach?
| barrkel wrote:
| I would guess it's some kind of abbreviation for Aleppo and
| falls into Syrian sanctions detection.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Acronym finder suggests "advanced laser eye protection".
| Google leads to some american military contract
| https://www.gentexcorp.com/gentex-awarded-navy-contract-
| for-...
|
| >Proven to be scalable to visor applications, the laser
| protective filter in the Gentex spectacles utilize the
| latest, most advanced laser eye protection materials
| developed for and tested by both the NAVAIR and USAF/AFRL
| advanced technology development and demonstrator programs.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| That's ridiculous. If I sell someone a framed photograph of
| Moscow am I violating sanctions against Russia? Of course
| not.
| jefftk wrote:
| It's the French name for Aleppo:
| https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alep
| phpisthebest wrote:
| And in the US that should be unconstitutional if we had a court
| system that actually upheld the constitution
|
| If the Government is creating a list of no-no words (which in
| itself is violative of the constitution) it should be required
| to publish them as "Secret Laws" are defacto unconstitutional,
|
| Further the government having a list of words I am not allowed
| to use, AND not allowed to know I am not allowed to use should
| be abhorrent to anyone the values freedom
| mpalmer wrote:
| This is about PayPal, not a government.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| The parent talked about KYC which is a Law / Regulation of
| the banking system. PayPal is required by law to KYC and
| comply with these types of regulations around governments
| lists of barred organizations, people, and nations
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| [dead]
| nullc wrote:
| It's about paypal acting on behalf of and as an agent of
| the US government.
|
| If it were just paypal they absolutely wouldn't care about
| the subject so much as to match random characters in
| descriptions, wouldn't give people zero recourse, etc.
| feoren wrote:
| [flagged]
| quantumsequoia wrote:
| PayPal [?] government
| user3939382 wrote:
| It is, given they're not classified as a bank due to their
| lobbying. The power of these corporations blurs the
| practical line between government and corporation.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| True, but we have regulations so that corporate actors
| can't just jerk people around and engage in fraudulent
| behavior of their own.
| hot_gril wrote:
| That's interesting. Venmo (ik still PayPal-owned but somehow
| not trash (edit: yet)) seems to protect you from this by
| rejecting your payments early if they contain bad words. I
| found this out when trying to pay for a Cuban sandwich.
| callalex wrote:
| Interesting, on Venmo I go out of my way to put obscene and
| offensive descriptions since I am viscerally opposed to their
| stupid social network feed insanity, and I have never had a
| payment rejected.
| coolspot wrote:
| FYI you can adjust Venmo settings so your payments will be
| private by default.
| hot_gril wrote:
| I mean bad as in illegal, not curse words. Wonder if
| politically incorrect words will flag you, though. Did you
| say "retard"?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Try putting "bitcoin" as a payment description...
| andylynch wrote:
| Quite. OP seems to have done nothing wrong but whoever at
| PayPal sent that message about 'ALEP' is skating on
| exceptionally thin ice with respect to sanctions laws and
| tipping off. Regulatory supervisors I've worked with would have
| outright said this was a criminal offence, and I'd expect their
| German counterparts would take a similar view.
| lakomen wrote:
| So, did you tell them it's none of their fucking business?
| growt wrote:
| So what's an Alep?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Lesson 1: _Never_ tell your payment provider anything about your
| transactions beyond the legal minimum. All line items on invoices
| should say "Payment for computer services".
| freetanga wrote:
| I only use them as an additional layer between an isolated debit
| card and the internet. Anything more is reckless.
| mcv wrote:
| What's insane is still trusting PayPal at this point. They've had
| this tendency to randomly block accounts for over a decade now. I
| wouldn't want to have them as a payment option at all, but I
| definitely don't want them as my only payment option.
| [deleted]
| mikrotikker wrote:
| Also they'll fine you $2000 for "misinformation" on any
| platform. They snuck it back in very sneakily after the outcry
| when it was announced.
| revelio wrote:
| Did they? I don't see it in their current AUP:
|
| https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/acceptableuse-full
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| What is the definition for "misinformation" that they use? Is
| it ok if I'm wrong about something from time to time?
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Wrongthink of any sort.
| mikrotikker wrote:
| I don't think they set one. Its better for them if its
| vague.
| max51 wrote:
| part of the problem is that they used a definition so large
| it could include anything that may be offensive to a paypal
| employee.
| than3 wrote:
| Afaik, there is no definition, its arbtitrary so they can
| charge anyone.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Selectively and retroactively enforced, probably.
| Bellamy wrote:
| That's why I deleted my account and won't use PayPal again.
| uncletaco wrote:
| They blocked my account and now the only way I can pay my
| balance down on Paypal credit is over the phone.
| djbusby wrote:
| Stripe does the same BS.
| behringer wrote:
| we use both (and cash) so that they don't go through the same
| BS at the same time (hopefully).
| scrollaway wrote:
| Every single financial company that facilitates transactions
| does the same thing. They all use the same backend products
| to do AML, and comply with the same laws.
|
| It's not like they do it for fun. The denominators are
| whether those companies implement decent recourse if you're
| flagged. Stripe does; PayPal doesn't.
| josu wrote:
| A simple and effective alternative has been around since
| 2009.
| cheeze wrote:
| Counterargument: As a customer, I much prefer PayPal (or Google
| Pay, or Apple Pay) over some random integration where I need to
| enter my credit card.
|
| It's not a dealbreaker for me, but if the PayPal integration
| exists, I'm using it 100% of the time. I'm already logged in,
| it has my payment instrument saved, and I don't have to worry
| about security as much.
| throwaway346434 wrote:
| And you are enableing the problem.
| perbu wrote:
| No. They're stating the preference to use Paypal if the
| vendor offers it - as opposed to entering CC numbers.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Which can be seen as enabling the problem, but whatever,
| people are gonna use the easier thing.
| dustymcp wrote:
| Thats not the only reason, if you never get your stuff
| you can handle that from paypal UI, you cant do that with
| alot of CC companies and have to phone somebody that
| might or might not respond in time, this is the sole
| reason why i prefer paypal over CC.
| berkle4455 wrote:
| Probably try to pay with a Discover card too.
| mcv wrote:
| Credit card is also bad. That does not make PayPal
| acceptable.
|
| It's frankly ridiculous that these are the only two widely
| supported options for international payment. It's easy to
| make something better, but somehow much of the world seems
| stuck with the two worst options.
| brazzy wrote:
| > It's easy to make something better, but somehow much of
| the world seems stuck with the two worst options.
|
| You got some interesting cognitive dissonance there...
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I don't think you know what cognitive dissonance actually
| is.
| hot_gril wrote:
| It's not easy to make something better. Electronic payments
| are gonna be regulated and tracked to the fullest whether
| it's PayPal or someone else. The only digital solution is
| cryptocurrency, and love it or hate it, it has big hurdles.
| OJFord wrote:
| Counter-argument: as another customer, I much prefer anything
| but PayPal, which even pretends to offer guest checkout that
| you'd think might be no worse, but then actually creates an
| account 'for you' and emails you forever.
|
| It might be a deal-breaker for me, and if another option
| exists, I'm hsing it 100% of the time. I don't need to log
| in, password manager or browser has my payment instrument
| saved ready to auto-fill, and I don't have to worry about
| security or privacy as much.
| cheeze wrote:
| My take (with no real data): your counter-argument is a
| tiny group of people, mine isn't.
|
| Most people have a PayPal account. Your "emails me forever"
| is not a real concern for 99% of users.
| OJFord wrote:
| > Most people have a PayPal account.
|
| I extremely doubt that. Maybe in the US?
|
| > Your "emails me forever" is not a real concern for 99%
| of users.
|
| I'm not saying that is itself much of a problem, just
| that it isn't a guest checkout. It's not the accountless
| WorldPay/SagePay/Stripe/... alternative it presents
| itself as.
|
| (As a result, more people have a PayPal account(s) than
| know it or want one. They refuse to delete mine without
| proof of identity, which I certainly didn't provide
| during checkout when it was created 'for me', so is not
| warranted and I'm not going to provide to allow my
| 'delete' request to result in net more of my data
| held...)
| riceart wrote:
| Your metric is asinine. I use PayPal only when absolutely
| necessary and/or basically low value items where I don't
| care too much. I have a Facebook account too, doesn't
| mean meta still isn't screwed.
|
| And why is this a popularity contest or that the
| uniformed public's (or your) opinion matters? People do
| dumb financial shit all the time. In the US at least,
| PayPal puts you at a disadvantage from a fraud protection
| standpoint since they are yet another unfriendly, large
| essentially unregulated middleman to deal with.
| hot_gril wrote:
| He's saying what most customers do, and he's right. Most
| people prefer PayPal. Otherwise it would be easy to drop.
| [deleted]
| riceart wrote:
| They also conflated PayPal, Apple Pay and Google pay, so
| I'm not sure I agree that what they were saying is "most
| people prefer PayPal". PayPal has a tremendous market
| share - not sure I'd agree that it's really a preference.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Prefer it over credit card, I mean. And most customers
| won't treat occasional emails as a dealbreaker.
| crtasm wrote:
| I'd wager that a significant amount of that "prefer" is
| from it often being the first/default option at checkout.
| hot_gril wrote:
| If it's the first option, it's probably cause it's
| preferred by customers. It doesn't do anything good for
| the seller. Little Snitch in particular has credit card
| on the LHS and PayPal to the right, which kinda suggests
| PayPal being secondary.
| warent wrote:
| Count me among the many who prefer the superior UX that
| PayPal provides.
|
| They're also excellent as a singular source for managing my
| subscriptions. If I ever forget what I'm subscribed to or
| want to cancel things, you can do it all in one place with
| PayPal just blocking further payments from processing from
| that business.
|
| If people want PayPal to stop being used, then update your
| bank technology so the UX isn't so ass. Then perhaps we'll
| switch.
| dustymcp wrote:
| Also the fraud management is great, so if you do get
| cheated on paypal then you can near always get your money
| back. I would never start a business on it but as a paying
| customer it just works for me.
| iagooar wrote:
| A friend of mine once got his PayPal account suspended (and never
| got it back) because he transferred money to another friend with
| the title "NS" or "Money for NS". The NS referred to "Nobelhart &
| Schmutzig", a Michelin-star restaurant where the two went for
| dinner and one of them paid. It obviously had nothing to do with
| National Socialism, but PayPal did not care.
| breakingrules wrote:
| [dead]
| codedokode wrote:
| I hope all people here who love AML/KYC and hate crypto and
| believe it is only for criminals and current legal system is
| absolutely fair will wholeheartedly approve this lawful decision.
| hot_gril wrote:
| The more I dealt with PayPal, Stripe, and other payment
| processors at my job, plus my personal bank and Venmo, the more
| I appreciated Bitcoin and Ethereum. Takes a while to realize
| the full scope of control the governments have via money alone,
| both as a currency and a payment method. And the abuse of
| power. That PayPal rule against "misinformation" is the reddest
| flag.
|
| Maybe cryptocurrency isn't the best answer in the end, but
| there needs to be _some_ alternative even if only to pose a
| threat to the status quo.
| leokennis wrote:
| Yes...one false positive on transaction screening certainly
| justifies replacing the current banking model with a payment
| system almost exclusively used by scammers and criminals.
| max51 wrote:
| You can go back to forum posts from >10 years ago and paypal
| locking accounts with funds in it was a common problem even
| back then. Even if you had 50k$ in your account, they would
| reply to you with a one liner saying they can't discuss the
| ban. The only to get your cash back was to sue them. A lot of
| people were speculating that they were intentionally locking
| accounts with the intention of stealing the funds.
| seydor wrote:
| If bitcoin wants to go anywhere, it must acquire weapons,
| including nuclear ones.
| [deleted]
| yashg wrote:
| In this particular case Paypal is acting stupid, but crypto
| still has only one valid use case and that is for criminal
| activities. Current legal system may not be absolutely fair,
| but it does not need to be replaced by a vastly inferior, slow,
| planet destroying ponzi.
| [deleted]
| HeckFeck wrote:
| trustless and distributed is superior even if not widely
| adopted yet, think SMTP vs the postal service
| hot_gril wrote:
| I get the point, but SMTP is far from trustless and only
| debatably distributed. Sad things have happened with it.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > In this particular case Paypal is acting stupid
|
| So calling it 'acting stupid' totally negates the
| stranglehold that Paypal and Stripe have on a majority of
| online commerce and payments and totally liberates people
| from their unregulated tyranny then...
|
| ...
|
| Things dont change their nature by 'rephrasing them
| differently'. Unregulated private tyrannies that dominate
| people's lives are still unregulated private tyrannies.
|
| There is a time and place for each argument and there is a
| time and place for conceding the argument. This is one of
| them:
|
| No one can ban anyone from crypto. If your business wallet
| gets stolen, you suffer some losses, but you can create a new
| wallet, add it as your payment option in your business or
| personal account at your site or wherever, and just continue
| your life.
|
| With these unregulated private tyrannies, you cant.
|
| > planet destroying ponzi.
|
| 2010s called. They want their proof of work back. What decade
| are you living in. Dont keep repeating invalidated arguments.
| That looks like religious zealotry.
| rvz wrote:
| > In this particular case Paypal is acting stupid, but crypto
| still has only one valid use case and that is for criminal
| activities.
|
| Just no. PayPal has always acted like this and shut down
| people's accounts for vague reasons. Stop cheerleading for
| them.
|
| Criminal activity on a public and traceable blockchain makes
| crypto worse for criminals to use. That is why scammers and
| criminals are using Zelle and the banks for their criminal
| enterprise. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/business/payments-
| fraud-z...
| chatmasta wrote:
| If Little Snitch accepted crypto, and people paid with it,
| then they would not be facing this problem. How is Little
| Snitch accepting payment for its services not a valid use
| case?
| hot_gril wrote:
| This isn't a particular case, it's how all payment processors
| work under the same regulations. Planet-destroying is a valid
| concern, and that's why there's proof-of-stake.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| > but crypto still has only one valid use case and that is
| for criminal activities.
|
| Many years ago, I used bitcoin to pay for web and e-mail
| hosting. Heck, there were several pubs in town offering the
| option to pay with crypto. I was paid for remote freelance
| web development work using bitcoin several times, none of it
| criminal (one example: a car dealership sales portal
| customization). All of that was above board, reported to
| government, taxes paid, etc.
|
| Providers moved away from it because of sentiments like this
| becoming prevailing (lots of people used it for illicit
| activities of course) which is a shame.
|
| Public sentiment has nothing to do with what the tech can
| actually be used for.
|
| That said, the environment impact caused is the larger
| concern to have IMO.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > Providers moved away from it because
|
| I would say people moved away from accepting bitcoin for
| beer because it's wildly fluctuating value made it
| unsuitable for use as a day to day currency, and because
| they realized it was a gimmick whose inconvenience (for the
| vendor) was not worth the limited interest in using it as
| such.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| Yeah, fair, becoming a vehicle for speculation was maybe
| a bigger factor.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > it's wildly fluctuating value made it unsuitable for
| use as a day to day currency,
|
| Coinbase has the option of immediately converting crypto
| payments into fiat, eliminating that problem.
|
| > and because they realized it was a gimmick whose
| inconvenience (for the vendor) was not worth the limited
| interest in using it as such.
|
| This is the bigger issue.
|
| Even if it's an online vendor where having to wait an
| hour for the transaction to get 6 confirmations isn't a
| problem, they still have to either integrate with another
| payment processor like Coinbase to accept the payment, or
| spend money building their own. In any case, it's cost
| and infrastructure to setup and they're probably unlikely
| to see RoI.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > Coinbase has the option of immediately converting
| crypto payments into fiat, eliminating that problem.
|
| Sure. You want to update your bitcoin prices what,
| hourly, to make sure you are charging what you meant to?
| I'm not sure that coinbase service exactly eliminates the
| problem. But I'm sure that is a useful service for some!
|
| But yeah, we're on the same page. Overall... it is not a
| convenient thing for an ordinary business to take as
| payment for ordinary daily things.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > Sure. You want to update your bitcoin prices what,
| hourly, to make sure you are charging what you meant to?
|
| That's one way to do it.
|
| The other is to charge in USD just like you normally
| would. When the customer opts to pay in Bitcoin, they get
| sent to Coinbase which will convert the price into
| Bitcoin immediately and tell the customer what the
| balance is in Bitcoin. The exchange rate won't favor the
| customer, as it will include some amount extra to cover
| the possibility of the value dropping before the
| transaction is confirmed.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Providers moved away from it because it became unstable due
| to rampant speculation, wash-trading, and market
| manipulation, combined with the fact that hardly any
| customers used it.
| mcv wrote:
| How many years ago? Because I also remember how some years
| ago a major Bitcoin conference stopped accepting payment in
| Bitcoin.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > crypto still has only one valid use case and that is for
| criminal activities.
|
| Sometimes, criminal activities are justified when all you do
| is to protect yourself. For example, when you live in a
| lawless area, and you need protection against bigger
| criminals. Peaceful countries with overall working systems
| are just one side of the world.
| aftbit wrote:
| Unfortunately, Visa, PayPal, banks, and more are not required
| to accept all payments for all legal activities. Instead,
| they are permitted to block users engaged in legal-but-risky
| behavior. Typically when they do so, there is no serious
| right of appeal (to an external body). Thus, there are plenty
| of valid use cases for crypto payments for services that are
| legal but too risky for banks.
|
| For a list of examples, see the categories used in Operation
| Choke Point:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
| everfree wrote:
| In your opinion, why is sidestepping PayPal not a second
| valid use case?
| mcv wrote:
| There are far better options, though admittedly not as
| widely supported as they should be. In Netherland, there
| are a lot of ways to simply use direct bank transfers. You
| can buy at a webshop using iDeal, which handles the payment
| through your own bank. You can send someone a payment
| request that will simply transfer it straight from their
| bank to yours. All of these are far superior options to
| relying on either an unreliable third party, or a slow,
| expensive payment system using its own wildly fluctuating
| currency that consumes the energy of a small country.
| everfree wrote:
| It must be nice to live in the Netherlands.
|
| > slow, expensive payment system using its own wildly
| fluctuating currency that consumes the energy of a small
| country
|
| You don't have to use Bitcoin, you can e.g. use a
| stablecoin on an Ethereum roll-up.
|
| It's not slow; transactions finalize within 1 minute (and
| soon, less). It's not expensive; it costs less than 10
| cents (and soon, less). It doesn't fluctuate wildly,
| because it value is stabilized using one of several
| mechanisms. It doesn't consume the energy of a small
| country, because it does not use proof of work.
| mattdesl wrote:
| Why does an Ethereum L2 have to be slow or planet destroying?
|
| IMHO most Eth L2s already show more promise than PayPal as a
| future payment rail tech, despite them all basically being in
| beta state. Much lower fees, faster transactions,
| permissionless withdrawals, fully programmable, negligible
| energy usage now thanks to PoS.
| hot_gril wrote:
| L2 shows promise, but I don't believe it works till I see
| it used at scale. Sorry but there's just too much hype, and
| I often say the same thing about other tech like Tesla FSD,
| the Metaverse, or all of Google's side bets.
| msm_ wrote:
| Do you recommend any "Ethereum L2"s? I'm only vaguely
| familiar with the concept, and didn't hear about a single
| Ethereum L2 in the wild. Quick google led me to Arbitrum,
| Optimism, and Boba. Do you honestly think they may compete
| with PayPal in terms of usabilty, fees and transaction
| speed in the near future? Are there any caveats (other than
| their immaturity)?
| mattdesl wrote:
| If "near future" is 3-5 years then yes. Four interesting
| protocols in early development: Optimism, Arbitrum,
| zkSync, Scroll. These already all compete with PayPal in
| fees & transaction time, but not in UX, features, and
| widespread use. In theory they could provide similar
| frontend web UX, but with the option to hold tokens non-
| custodially so you could withdraw & exit the protocol
| without having to ask permission.
|
| (IMHO it's likely that other tech/protocols will emerge
| in 3-5 yrs that supersedes the protocols in development
| today.)
|
| Lots of typical crypto caveats - eg: USDC on an L2 is
| centralized around Circle's ability to redeem. Protocols
| can have bugs that make coins go poof. Non custodial
| ownership is harder for many users than asking PayPal or
| a bank not to lose their funds. L2s specifically are
| typically run by a single sequencer who could
| _potentially_ disrupt your ability to use the network
| smoothly (but then you could use an escape hatch to
| permissionlessly get your funds out if that happens).
| TimJRobinson wrote:
| Fees and Transaction speed definitely - with new upgrades
| coming out in the next year (EIP4844) L2s can handle
| thousands of transactions per second.
|
| The UI is really up to the apps, the good thing is there
| are many teams working on payments so there will be
| plenty to choose from to find the UI you like, and people
| will be able to pay via the same wallet. Stripe already
| has USDC payments on crypto rails and Visa is working
| with Starknet to integrate with these L2s too.
|
| All the L2s with their usage, security, speed and
| tradeoffs are at http://l2beat.com
| [deleted]
| antibasilisk wrote:
| >crypto still has only one valid use case and that is for
| criminal activities
|
| And we will be thankful for that when we are all classed as
| criminals.
| codedokode wrote:
| It looks like Paypal is acting in full accordance with laws
| and regulations. Since when complying with regulations is
| considered "stupid"?
|
| > planet destroying ponzi
|
| I don't see how Bitcoin is a ponzi scheme.
| eli wrote:
| A lot of people mad at paypal but this is how the US sanctions
| regime works.
| Ekaros wrote:
| This opens very fun avenues for naming yourself if you ever start
| organisation branded as terrorist one. So many fun 3 letter names
| and acronyms you should make. Maybe VAT or TEL. Or just pick
| something existing USA.
| teddyh wrote:
| Maybe "OK"?
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Just name your terrorist organisation "payment".
| fundad wrote:
| "cop"
| thinkingemote wrote:
| There's a national bank in France with the same 3 letter
| initials as a (now defunct) very right wing policital party in
| the UK. BNP
| seydor wrote:
| Many women named Isis
| hot_gril wrote:
| Oddly I've wondered about this too. The entire world somehow
| respected ISIS's declared name "Islamic State," or IS for
| short, which is a common word.
| jonathonlacher wrote:
| Reminds me of when I was locked out of my Venmo account for
| paying a family member back for a meal at a Cuban restaurant.
|
| I put "Cuban food" in the description field and it didn't like
| that.
| devrand wrote:
| Same thing happened to me. I tried to Venmo request friends for
| "Habana Outpost" and it got flagged for review. I just withdrew
| the requests and resent them as "Outpost"
| agilob wrote:
| > Now they ask us to provide an explanation of the reference to
| "Alep".
|
| WiseTransfer blocked my transfer because they didn't like my full
| name that they got from Monzo (Mozno has partnership with Wise).
| They blocked my transfer, hold it hostage until I contacted them,
| spent a few days hanging on phone, emailed them etc... they
| wanted to know what my surname means. I made an international
| transfer to buy a conference ticket. I don't remember the precise
| dates, but I spent full days on phone, emailing dozens of people
| and took me 3-4 weeks to revert the transfer. They. wanted. to
| know. what. my. surname. means.
|
| Edit: I filed a complaint to Monzo and Wise, and stopped using
| both.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Just curious, why would you spend days resolving this? What was
| the amount of money here?
|
| But yes anyone who has worked with the list of sanctioned
| persons circulated by the US government understands what a joke
| this is. Last time I looked Saddam Hussein was still on it,
| despite being dead for most of my life at this point. I've also
| been informed by at least one C-level exec that it was vitally
| important that we prohibit North Korean internet users from
| using our website.
| livelielife wrote:
| > _I 've also been informed by at least one C-level exec that
| it was vitally important that we prohibit North Korean
| internet users from using our website._
|
| that's an order I would break; to do that goes against the
| principles of the internet.
|
| I suppose I'm not getting hired any time soon.
|
| yea, I'm not 'obedient' enough... I have principles like open
| internet, shared culture, freedom, and so on.
|
| what's worse, I feel for Korean culture, split in half by
| AmeriRussian "interactions".
| butt____hugger wrote:
| North Korea has a LOT of sanctions against them, if you
| provide them services you could go to prison.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| It's not an order, embargo laws exist in every modern
| country. Doing business in embargoed countries just means
| prison time and fines. I don't know if you realize this,
| but almost nobody in NK has internet...
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| But internet principles say that government intelligence
| services and e-privateers should have access to every
| port!
| vinaypai wrote:
| The word you're looking for is naive.
| livelielife wrote:
| WHEN THE LAW IS CORRUPT, TO BREAK IT IS JUSTICE
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Revoking or reforming a corrupt law is justice. Breaking
| it is individual privilege.
| peyton wrote:
| Really? Lots of privileged homeless people these days.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Yep. And lots of homeless people who are even worse off,
| because they didn't break the law.
| [deleted]
| Koshkin wrote:
| DURA LEX SED LEX
|
| (Of course, sometimes it takes breaking the law to change
| the law. Revolutions, for example, have never been
| lawful. Governments may even praise a revolution -
| especially the ones that brought them to power, - yet
| they would always make sure that any future revolution is
| illegal.)
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > I feel for Korean culture, split in half by AmeriRussian
| "interactions".
|
| Germany reunified. Korea might have as well had it not been
| for North Korea's invasion of South Korea, and China's
| support of North Korea as a buffer zone.
|
| And why no blame for Japan?
|
| And what "internet principles" are you writing about?
| Everyone can access everything? This hasn't ever been the
| case. There have always been access controls.
| fn-mote wrote:
| > Just curious, why would you spend days resolving this? What
| was the amount of money here?
|
| Is the implication here that the should walk away from being
| robbed of 170 quid? They're fighting for dignified treatment.
|
| I know this is an example of another problem, but in the US
| it's easy to see someone actually being killed over
| attempting to rob someone of $200.
|
| People have strong reactions to unjust treatment, especially
| when they believe they are dealing with a fair system. (I
| feel it's different when you know you just have to pay the
| bribe.)
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| At some point, taking the company to small claims court is
| easier.
| kube-system wrote:
| > I've also been informed by at least one C-level exec that
| it was vitally important that we prohibit North Korean
| internet users from using our website.
|
| What's wrong with that?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The problem is, all you can virtually do is to block North
| Korean IP space [1], but you're _still_ legally liable if
| North Korean users, say, use a foreign VPN service to
| interact with you.
|
| International sanctions laws are pure and utter madness,
| with extremely high stakes if the government changes its
| course on selective enforcement, so everyone is "playing it
| safe" rather than "doing what makes _sense_ and question
| outright bullshit ".
|
| [1]
| https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/17/j/a-closer-
| look...
| kube-system wrote:
| The OFAC isn't going to expect you to bend space and
| time, but they do expect due diligence.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| My point is, what is the definition of "due diligence"?
| Who can say "yes, you're doing everything required"?
|
| Usually, that's court cases and resulting case law, as
| well as executive fines... which means there is an insane
| amount of risk attached to everything related to
| sanctions, and _additionally_ enforcement may vary
| between different governments.
| kube-system wrote:
| Interpreting and complying with laws is something all
| business have to deal with, and not just with sanctions.
| I am not a lawyer, but due diligence is usually "do the
| best you can with the data you can reasonably get". If
| you need to comply with sanctions law then you should ask
| your corporate lawyer.
|
| Either way, your company is required to follow the law
| regardless of your opinion on it.
| Nihilartikel wrote:
| I shadowban anyone with the surname 'Kim' on account
| creation just to be sure.
| [deleted]
| lazide wrote:
| How would you be able to tell? And what sensitive
| information could they access? It's defacto public.
| kube-system wrote:
| > How would you be able to tell?
|
| There are many ways. The most common are: If the users
| tell you they're from North Korea, you can tell that
| they're from North Korea. Also, if they connect from a
| North Korean IP, you can tell that they're from North
| Korea.
|
| > And what sensitive information could they access? It's
| defacto public.
|
| The request likely had nothing to do with "sensitive
| information", but instead, sanctions.
| agilob wrote:
| >Just curious, why would you spend days resolving this?
|
| Monzo couldn't reverse the transfer as the money wasn't in
| their hands. Wise Transfer customer support is just garbage.
| I spent 5 hours on a phone until > their side < ended my call
| during UK working hours. I called again and again, they never
| answered. I sent them emails, but each email I was getting
| was from another person who, like I said in another comment,
| didn't read previous email from Wise, so each time I had to
| explain the context and the whole situation. When I sent my
| response in a morning, they responded the next day afternoon.
|
| > What was the amount of money here?
|
| About PS170 for the conference ticket.
|
| >But yes anyone who has worked with the list of sanctioned
| persons circulated by the US government understands what a
| joke this is.
|
| I already paid for hotel and plane tickets without issues.
| Best to my knowledge I'm not involved in any terrorist
| organisation, unless you account working for EU banking
| infrastructure company as such.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| OK, so it was more than the price of a ticket involved. I
| was thinking you went through all this over 170 quid
| Teever wrote:
| You're telling me that if I wanted to make an easy 170
| quid all I need to do is scam you. You're not going to
| fight back.
|
| You don't stand up to a bully just for their initial
| transgression. You stand up to a bully because if you
| don't they'll come at you again, even harder, and the
| world will see that you're soft, that you're a mark.
|
| Gimme your lunch money, kid.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Having been scammed once out of a similar amount, yeah of
| course I'm not going bother. I've got better things to do
| with my life. Now there are many times when companies did
| try similar scams and it was resolved with a 15 minute
| phone call. But there is no way I'd spend days of my life
| over it. Almost all scams like this are resolved by
| opening a dispute with my credit card processor. That's
| it. I get the money back and never hear anything back.
| willcipriano wrote:
| > despite being dead for most of my life at this point
|
| Hey man there's no need to remind me that I'm old.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _they wanted to know what my surname means_
|
| In a case like that, threaten to contact a lawyer because they
| are engaging in discrimination against you on the basis of (I
| assume) national origin. Unless your name is something like
| 'John International-Jewel-Theft,' they have no case.
| pjc50 wrote:
| One for "falsehoods programmers believe about names".
| notyourwork wrote:
| s/programmers/product
|
| It is unlikely an engineer decided to introduce a block list
| of names and this likely came from a product manager driven
| by compliance and risk mitigation. Problems are rarely the
| cause of the implementer and usually that is the side effect
| of layers of poor decision making in corporations. Poor
| because of the aggregation, not poor because of any one
| specific decision maker in the chain.
| hgsgm wrote:
| And? Did you tell them? Your surname may be the same word as
| something else that gives cause for concern.
| ryandrake wrote:
| OP and the article OP's situations are relatively easy in
| that the company actually told them what triggered the ban,
| and that presumably an explanation is all that's needed. I
| don't understand making a big deal about it. Tell them you
| don't know what your surname means and that "ALEP" is just an
| acronym that means "A Less Evil Product" and be on your way.
| Why does everything have to be a fight?
|
| Sure, when the company says "We're banning you and not
| telling you why. Hahahaha!" it's infuriating, and probably
| worth even more than an angry Twitter rant. But "Can you
| explain what this specific thing means?" is not worth the
| rant IMO. Just explain and go on living your life.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| I think this is giving the companies involved a lot of
| credit. I'm assuming if it took multiple days to resolve it
| then they didn't find "it's a name, it has no meaning" as
| an acceptable answer. The companies have no real incentive
| to be reasonable.
| agilob wrote:
| My surname doesn't have any modern meaning, it's a middle age
| Slavic surname. It's pretty unique and only a few 100s people
| in the world have it. It's so wild to me that it got flagged
| by some kind of a list.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Surnames often don't mean anything. If mine means anything I
| don't know it. It's just a name.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Name dictionaries are common, I suggest you look into one
| and you'll be surprised.
| Karellen wrote:
| > Surnames often don't mean anything.
|
| That depends on where you're from. Often in the English-
| speaking world, they do.
|
| To take the another commenter's example, "Smith" comes from
| a word meaning, roughly, "craftsperson", as in
| "blacksmith". The ancestor that the surname comes from was
| likely either a blacksmith, or some other type of crafter
| whose profession can be described as "smithing".
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/smith
|
| Likewise, the surname "Wright" comes from a word with a
| similar meaning, as in "playwright", "wheelwright" or
| "cartwright".
| sva_ wrote:
| Where does the name Dickinson come from?
| jodrellblank wrote:
| "son of Richard"
|
| https://www.houseofnames.com/dickinson-family-crest
| lxgr wrote:
| Sure, but I hope an etymological dictionary would be
| within the budgetary means of a bank's compliance
| department so that they don't have to lean on their
| customers for it.
| frumper wrote:
| It's more fair to say those names meant something at some
| point. Now they just mean you are descended from someone
| with that surname.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > Now they just mean you are descended from someone with
| that surname.
|
| Adoption exists. I'm the first in my patriline to be born
| with my surname. So yes, technically I am descended from
| a person with that surname, but my father wasn't.
|
| Also, changing a name on marriage happens.
| frumper wrote:
| You're right. Those events just move you further away
| from any past meanings of the surname.
| JohnFen wrote:
| They haven't lost those meanings at all. They may not
| have any special significance _for you_ , but the
| meanings of the names remain nonetheless.
|
| When I meet a "Johnson", my mind immediately goes to
| "John's son" even though "John" is probably a distant
| ancestor of the person, not their father. The name's
| meaning has not changed.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| "Johnson", and similar names in other languages, can also
| indicate connection with the early Christian church, not
| a literal connection with a person named John. "Johnson"
| in this sense means someone who is a 'son' of John the
| Baptist (aka, a Christian). Or so I've read.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I wasn't aware of the John the Baptist connection. Very
| interesting! Thank you.
| JohnFen wrote:
| This is likely cultural, but for almost everyone I know,
| their surnames mean something. Usually, like mine, it's the
| name of an occupation. Often, it's another surname with
| "son" added onto the end, meaning "son of x".
|
| Most first names mean something as well.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I've got the full extended meanings of my first, middle,
| and last names memorized. I'd post them but I don't want
| to dox myself. You can call me "Glorificus" for short
| though :) .
| aidog wrote:
| Too bad if you don't know what your surname means.
| bombcar wrote:
| Or your surname is something like Al Qaeda (which is just
| "the base") or is "Ira" or any other combination of letters
| that could trigger very dumb 'watchlist' code.
| uncletaco wrote:
| I've lost jobs over getting flagged in automatic resume
| systems due to my last name seeming "fake".
| bombcar wrote:
| Reminds me of https://www.wired.com/2015/11/null/
| bentcorner wrote:
| Similarly, Fnu: https://uxdesign.cc/what-the-fnu-
| fa72cf4ad5bd
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Correct answer: "My surname, Smith, is a string of characters
| that identifies people in my family. It designates a person
| or set of people."
| HeavyFeather wrote:
| A set of people you say? Sorry, our policy does not allow
| x-smiths to use this service.
| tmtvl wrote:
| My surname designates a bag of people.
| [deleted]
| koolba wrote:
| When you replace "Smith" with "ISIS" or "Bin Laden" that's
| likely not enough of an explanation for them to lift the
| freeze.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| Why is this included in the logic in the first place? Are
| terrorists sending payments via PayPal and including
| "ISIS membership fee, annual renewal" in the comments? It
| would seem to me that a keyword search like this is not
| an effective way to stop the flow of funds to sanctioned
| organizations. It's like scanning cancelled checks for
| the word "bribe" on the memo line.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| "Yes, hello, I'd like to renew my subscription to
| _Terrorist Weekly_. Oh, you take Venmo? Great! "
| jimnotgym wrote:
| On the other hand, if they did it would be very
| embarrassing for PayPal.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| No it wouldn't. A cursory search indicates that about 80
| million people have the surname 'bin Laden.' Paypal is an
| international company. If a name gives you a 1 in 80
| million possibility of a connection to terrorism without
| any other details, it's not actionable. The end.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > I made an international transfer to pay for
|
| I've been using crypto and stablecoins for this for nearly 7
| years now. Basically it skips international transfer scrutiny
| and for both the sender and the recipient we are using local
| banking on each side.
|
| The exposure time is like 5 minutes, which mitigates every
| theoretical issue with the confidence of a stablecoin, or even
| the volatility of any particular crypto.
|
| So what would have been an international transfer is converted
| to a scrutiny-free domestic transfer, which goes way faster
| too.
| firstSpeaker wrote:
| And as usual a crypto plug into any thread.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| To be fair here, they are handy if the bank wakes up one
| day and decides you are a wrong 'un for no good reason.
|
| Or if you are transacting with someone with a funny
| sounding name, or who lives in a developing country
| (especially in MENA).
|
| You can conduct your business without worrying about
| intermediary risk.
|
| Hell, I've had bizarre issues in the past trying to make
| transfers between some large American banks and a number of
| European banks, the transactions just get "stuck" for a
| couple weeks, then get refunded, because somewhere in the
| middle something goes tits up.
| latchkey wrote:
| A comment I saw yesterday that seems oddly relevant....
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35320208
|
| "HN is weirdly inconsistent about digital currencies.
| Generally pro encryption, net neutrality, open-source
| software, VPNs, etc. But mention "Bitcoin," and suddenly
| half the commenters lose their shit about the Four Horsemen
| of the Infocalypse. Then they go back to commiserating with
| another Ask HN startup founder whose PayPal account was
| frozen."
| JohnFen wrote:
| It might have more to do with the cryptocurrency space
| appearing more than a little shady than any sort of
| inconsistency.
| latchkey wrote:
| All industries around finance attract shady actors. In
| Vietnam, you get the best exchange rate for VND, by going
| to the gold dealers. Paypal doing shady things is par for
| the course. Banks going under because 97% of their
| deposits are over the FDIC limits is normal behavior.
|
| Simultaneously ignoring the benefits of cryptocurrencies
| and the problems they are trying to solve, while only
| looking at the negative edges that are covered by
| mainstream media, seems short-sighted at best. That's the
| inconsistency.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yes, all industries attract bad actors. But the
| cryptocurrency space seems to be largely run by bad
| actors. Not everyone, of course, but a disturbingly large
| percentage.
|
| > Simultaneously ignoring the benefits of
| cryptocurrencies
|
| I don't actually see a lot of that happening here,
| though.
| latchkey wrote:
| > Yes, all industries attract bad actors. But the
| cryptocurrency space seems to be largely run by bad
| actors. Not everyone, of course, but a disturbingly large
| percentage.
|
| Source? Seriously. I mean, we have CEX going down with
| SBF and Molly White posting anti-web3 stuff. I'm sorry,
| but that isn't the core fundamental technology that we're
| talking about here.
|
| > I don't actually see a lot of that happening here,
| though.
|
| Again... media focuses on the failures and not on the
| successes.
|
| ETH moving to proof-of-stake was a massive technological
| advancement that only happened after many years of
| development, and has gone off without a hitch.
|
| While, at the same time literally decimating all of the
| GPU based proof-of-work mining in a single day. Not only
| that, but they were able to MVP release the code without
| even implementing withdraw! People have trusted the
| developers with 0.40T dollars worth of value [0]. It is
| not insignificant.
|
| Next up is some really interesting work being done with
| zero-knowledge proofs, which will enable the scaling
| phase of blockchain to happen.
|
| Please try to get past the HN trope of 'crypto has zero
| purpose other than number goes up or down and bitcoin
| mining is destroying the planet' and look at what is
| actually happening in the industry.
|
| [0] https://ultrasound.money/
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > People have trusted the developers with 0.40T dollars
| worth of value
|
| And that's the thing that causes the most cognitive
| dissonance. If you're going to trust someone, why not
| trust entities that have had hundreds of years to work
| out the kinks?
| latchkey wrote:
| > that's the thing that causes the most cognitive
| dissonance.
|
| The road is literally being paved and is being done so
| iteratively. I'm ok with that as that is a standard way
| to develop things over time.
|
| > why not trust entities that have had hundreds of years
| to work out the kinks?
|
| Simple. Because they are not acting in your best
| interest. We've been sold on the idea that money is scary
| and we shouldn't touch it ourselves. We should put it
| into 401k's and forget about it until we retire. We
| should 'trust' people who know these complicated finance
| things better than us. It is a self fulfilling prophecy.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > We've been sold on the idea that money is scary and we
| shouldn't touch it ourselves. We should put it into
| 401k's and forget about it until we retire. We should
| 'trust' people who know these complicated finance things
| better than us.
|
| For 95% of the population (including me) crypto is the
| same trust system. I can't audit a smart contract and the
| underlying virtual machine it runs on. I would have no
| clue whether my transactions can be front-ended by bots
| that take all of the gains I expected, and then some.
|
| I do have a general idea what happens when I use a credit
| card to make a purchase, and what to expect. I also have
| a general idea that if I put money into an investment
| account what fees will be deducted, and what stocks and
| bonds are being bought and sold.
|
| And if I make the horrible mistake of sending money or
| NFTs to the wrong account, I know it can at least
| theoretically be reversed in non-crypto systems (and that
| often the reversal costs will be eaten by the bank, not
| paid by me). Whereas with crypto I have no expectation
| that the validators care about me to do a MakerDAO
| reversal on my behalf.
| latchkey wrote:
| Your comment sounds like this:
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/people-had-to-
| be-c...
|
| You obviously have some understanding of the system if
| you can speak about bots and front running. Fact is that
| front running exists in all markets, not just crypto.
|
| As for reversible transactions, that's something done
| with smart contracts and escrow services. We are not
| there yet in terms of development, but it will happen
| eventually. Today, people actually appreciate the
| immutability of transactions. It enables the effective
| store of infinite wealth as a basis.
|
| Credit card companies are providing the reversal
| business, which is paid for by the people who are
| borrowing money at insane interest rates... no reason why
| it can't be replicated once there is enough demand for
| it, but honestly, I'd rather move to reverse the
| model.... over collateralized loans. This is what is done
| in countries without the whole bogus credit rating
| systems.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| We did not have an alternative to electricity for all of
| the things electricity could power. For some of the
| things alternatives to electricity continue to be used
| (e.g. oil, gas, or wood heated homes; windows for light;
| combustion engines and fuel cells for automotive power).
|
| > You obviously have some understanding of the system if
| you can speak about bots and front running.
|
| What I've read on crypto skeptic blogs. So basically my
| understanding is equivalent to the understanding that
| anyone gets from reading news articles written by
| content-expert journalists. From what I understand the
| front-running in crypto can have pretty egregious
| effects, and can occur with simple monetary transactions,
| not just the crypto equivalent of stock market
| transactions. (Yeah, sure, front running can occur in
| currency exchanges in non-crypto, too, but as an
| individual, when you go to a currency exchange, or make a
| purchase overseas, you know the exchange rate before you
| trigger the exchange.)
|
| > Today, people actually appreciate the immutability of
| transactions.
|
| I don't. And I don't see how this follows: "It enables
| the effective store of infinite wealth as a basis."
| Infinite wealth cannot exist. And how does immutability
| facilitate this? And how is a blockchain that can
| technically be rewritten at non-infinite cost immutable
| (i.e. the MakerDAO rewrite, or any Sybil/51% attack)?
|
| > Credit card companies are providing the reversal
| business, which is paid for by the people who are
| borrowing money at insane interest rates... no reason why
| it can't be replicated once there is enough demand for
| it, but honestly, I'd rather move to reverse the
| model.... over collateralized loans.
|
| From what I understand, the interest rates go to the
| issuing banks, and the credit card companies take their
| profit from fees. Credit cards (and payday loans) exist
| for people who lack the collateral for a non-signature
| loan (without having to collateralize their freedom, aka
| debtor's prisons or endenturing). The only way to do this
| in crypto is to trust a third party lender such as
| Voyager or Celsius.
| latchkey wrote:
| Front running a transaction is essentially a sandwich
| attack. It primarily happens in illiquid markets where
| someone sees a transaction in the mempool, does a large
| flash loan borrow to affect prices, then your transaction
| executes at a poor price point, and the loan is paid off.
| All in a single block. 1) Typical transactions are not
| front run. 2) There are ways of preventing front-running.
| This is not really an issue for the majority of users or
| a design flaw.
|
| > you know the exchange rate before you trigger the
| exchange
|
| You know this in crypto too. The issue is that the market
| depth might not be large enough to support your
| transaction. That will change over time, or you just
| stick with the basics... BTC/ETH/Stables and ignore the
| rest of the stuff.
|
| > how does immutability facilitate this?
|
| If you know that it is impossible to double spend, you
| can trust the math.
|
| > And how is a blockchain that can technically be
| rewritten at non-infinite cost immutable
|
| This is well covered in Andreas Antonopoulos videos on
| YT.
|
| > Credit cards (and payday loans) exist for people who
| lack the collateral for a non-signature loan.
|
| In Vietnam, there is no credit reporting agency. You
| don't get a credit card from a bank, but you can get a
| MasterCard/Visa "credit card". The thing is, they are
| effectively debit cards because you have to time deposit
| collateral in order to use them. People still get to shop
| online, but they are limited. This is honestly a far
| better system because it encourages people to spend what
| they have, not what they don't have. I also prefer to cut
| out the middleman who's generating all those fees for
| both the merchants and the end users.
|
| > The only way to do this in crypto is to trust a third
| party lender such as Voyager or Celsius.
|
| Bad examples given that Celsius was a ponzi. There are
| decentralized lending protocols. AAVE is a good example.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > We've been sold on the idea that money is scary and we
| shouldn't touch it ourselves.
|
| We have? I guess I was passed over when that sales job
| happened.
|
| > > We should 'trust' people who know these complicated
| finance things better than us.
|
| That's not how I look at it. How I see it is that when
| I'm operating in the established monetary system, I have
| some amount of protection and recourse available to me
| if/when things go wrong. With cryptocurrency, I have
| none.
|
| To me, that's a really significant difference, and is in
| the top 3 reasons why I avoid cryptocurrency.
|
| It has nothing to do with "trusting" financial
| institutions, or feeling like money is too complicated to
| understand.
| latchkey wrote:
| > I have some amount of protection and recourse available
| to me if/when things go wrong.
|
| We just literally witnessed several banks fail in the
| last few weeks, along with a litany of startups freaking
| out about how they were going to pay their staff. The
| government had to step in to prevent things from going
| totally ape shit and we are still on the edge of things
| getting worse by the day. All because people had some
| sort of belief like you do.
|
| > With cryptocurrency, I have none.
|
| This is simply not true.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > We just literally witnessed several banks fail in the
| last few weeks, along with a litany of startups freaking
| out about how they were going to pay their staff
|
| We did, and those startups got into the state they were
| in because they chose to avoid getting insurance on their
| deposits that exceeded the FDIC limits. That's not the
| fault of of the financial system. And the financial
| system protected them well over and above what it had
| committed to do.
|
| > All because people had some sort of belief like you do.
|
| Not at all. If I had a large deposit like them, I would
| have actually used the services that would have protected
| my deposits.
|
| > This is simply not true.
|
| It isn't? What protection is there?
| latchkey wrote:
| > That's not the fault of of the financial system.
|
| Hilarious. On one hand, you're saying that cyrpto is this
| big mess full of bad actors and on the other hand,
| placing no blame on a financial system that can just blow
| up in a week because of poor design and oversight.
|
| Just like it isn't the fault of cryptocurrencies that
| there are bad actors. It is just intrinsic that there
| will be issues in any functioning system.
|
| > What protection is there?
|
| You said none, but I can provide you with at least 3
| different decentralized insurance protocols with proven
| track records. Here is one: https://nexusmutual.io/
|
| More will come over time and demand. DeFi is still quite
| new.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > On one hand, you're saying that cyrpto is this big mess
| full of bad actors and on the other hand, placing no
| blame on a financial system that can just blow up in a
| week because of poor design and oversight.
|
| You've taken my stance on both counts to an extreme that
| mischaracterizes them. I never said cryptocurrency was a
| "big mess", and I never said that the established
| financial system is some paragon of virtue and
| perfection.
|
| What I said is that the financial system did what it
| promised to do for those people who were affected by the
| bank failures.
|
| > You said none, but I can provide you with at least 3
| different decentralized insurance protocols with proven
| track records.
|
| And yet, until now, you didn't actually mention any of
| them. I can't read your mind.
|
| The one you link to doesn't seem to cover the most
| important protection (to me), though. I could be wrong --
| the website isn't exactly clear. Does it offer the same
| coverage as I can get through chargebacks on a credit
| card? Does it cover me if I accidentally send money to
| the wrong destination?
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Source?
|
| No specific source, just how it looks to me based on what
| I hear pro-cryptocurrency people say (mostly here).
|
| > media focuses on the failures and not on the successes.
|
| By "here", I meant HN, not the larger mediasphere.
|
| > Please try to get past the HN trope of 'crypto has zero
| purpose other than number goes up or down and bitcoin
| mining is destroying the planet' and look at what is
| actually happening in the industry.
|
| This comment is mis-aimed. I'm not on that trope (I see
| one legitimate use), and I do loosely follow the
| industry. I don't follow it deeply because it's not a
| field that is technically interesting to me, but I am
| interested in the ramifications to society at large.
|
| All I'm saying is that a rather large percentage of
| people I see advocating cryptocurrency are not making
| cryptocurrency look good.
| latchkey wrote:
| This is the second time you've stated 'a large
| percentage', with no data to back it up. It is hand
| waving.
| JohnFen wrote:
| It's anecdata, not hand-waving. I was pretty clear that
| I'm talking about what I personally see, not any sort of
| research results or news reporting.
| latchkey wrote:
| > It's anecdata, not hand-waving.
|
| It was anecdata the first time. The second time, it
| became hand-waving.
|
| > I do loosely follow the industry
|
| You follow it closely and care enough to comment here.
| 'disturbingly large percentages' and 'rather large
| percentages'... all say it is the big bad cookie
| monster... but it is just that... all anecdata.
|
| You're trying to spread a myth, without anything more
| than anecdata, which is the whole point of this thread.
| I'd love to see less myth and more research.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > You follow it closely and care enough to comment here
|
| Yes, because I'm concerned about the societal effects of
| it. What I don't follow closely are the implementation
| details.
|
| > You're trying to spread a myth
|
| No, I'm simply reporting what I personally observe. I
| even stated where I've observed it (mostly here on HN).
| My observations can, of course, be incorrect -- but
| describing it as "trying to spread a myth" is misleading.
| I'm not trying to spread a myth at all. I'm explaining
| why it is that I view the cryptocurrency space as having
| a lot of sketchy things in it.
| latchkey wrote:
| > I'm explaining why it is that I view the cryptocurrency
| space as having a lot of sketchy things in it.
|
| I asked you for a source of the 'why' and you couldn't
| give me anything concrete. Therefore, my only other
| recourse is to assume you're spreading a myth. Burden of
| proof.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I have been very clear that I'm expressing an opinion,
| not stating a researched fact. You are trying to treat my
| statements as assertions of fact and are holding me to a
| burden of proof? Is it no longer possible to express
| opinions in the absence of conducting a research project?
| You are also expressing your opinion, but have offered no
| evidence either.
|
| In any case, since you brought up burden of proof, it's
| the cryptocurrency world that is presenting the new
| thing, so it's on them to prove that what they're
| offering is an adequate substitution for what we
| currently have. I am the potential customer that has to
| be assured about it. So, in the larger sense the burden
| of proof is on the cryptocurrency people.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It's not because of aversion to cryptocurrency per se,
| it's because the crypto space is absolutely full of
| blatant shills and they are extremely annoying people. A
| comment like 'I think cryptocurrencies help to mitigate
| this, but the flip side is that it can lead to money
| laundering' is insightful. Personal testimonials are
| basically just ads.
| latchkey wrote:
| I agree. The industry needs to do a better job of weeding
| out the shills.
|
| That said, every advertisement I get for a bank or
| financial institution, doesn't seem much different.
| Instead of individuals, it is big organizations trying to
| shill us into letting them manage our money for us.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| True, but I would flag or dismiss Wells Fargo if they
| started shilling in the comments here too.
| latchkey wrote:
| I'm right there with you, even for crypto.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I forgot to mention that also of the above applies at
| unlimited amounts
|
| Instead of arbitrarily low amounts
|
| It solves the friction for the person I replied to, and
| anyone that wants to avoid that particular kind of friction
| flotzam wrote:
| mention a valid use case = "plugging crypto"
|
| never mention any = "there are no valid use cases for
| crypto"
|
| And this is a fairly common one. For example it's how
| GrapheneOS pays their developers, because TradFi
| (especially cross-border) is too capricious.
| JohnFen wrote:
| That's the one use case that I think almost everyone
| agrees is valid, so it may be that people react that way
| because it isn't really educating anyone. It just feels
| more like evangelism.
|
| Just speculating. I'll never downvote or argue against
| anyone pointing out that use case, personally.
| atum47 wrote:
| Just got an email from them saying that they will hold my money
| for 21 days unless I do some other stuff, like linking a credit
| card to my account or something like that. Thank God I don't need
| them anymore as my main source of international payment.
| rpaddock wrote:
| My late wife set up a PayPal account that we both used. When she
| died I wanted to change the name of the account from hers to
| mine.
|
| PP asked for a Death Certificate, which I provided.
|
| They then said that I needed to PROVE THAT SHE WAS DEAD.
|
| I even went an spoke with a lawyer about it. He too was pissed
| off. Alas there was no money in the account so he said there was
| no point in dealing with these morons, just open a new account.
|
| PayPal NEEDS TO DIE!
|
| What are the viable alternatives for international transactions?
| Ones that don't want my Social Security Number as part of the
| sign up process (I've had issues with identity theft and give my
| SS# to no one)?
| insomagent wrote:
| Crypto. Now you know why it's being so heavily regulated,
| demonized, and lampooned.
| prottog wrote:
| > PP asked for a Death Certificate, which I provided.
|
| > They then said that I needed to PROVE THAT SHE WAS DEAD.
|
| You'd think that a death certificate is literal proof that
| someone had, in fact, passed on from among the living. I'm
| sorry you had to deal with such algorithmic bullshit for such
| an emotional circumstance.
| LoganDark wrote:
| I once tried to make a Venmo account to donate $25 to a friend.
| PayPal immediately closed my account and demanded ID because they
| thought I was money laundering.
|
| I was never able to unlink my personal phone number from that
| account. Worst mistake was ever trusting PayPal with it.
| mkl95 wrote:
| PayPal sucks. I was scammed out of $130 because of their horrible
| UX. I can't believe no competitor has killed them yet.
| codetrotter wrote:
| If only there was some sort of global payment system where you
| could transact freely and no one could prevent you from sending
| or receiving money..
|
| A system where instead of trusting banks and governments and
| other entities, we could harness the decentralised nature of
| the internet.
|
| A system based not on trust at all.
|
| A system where the total number of units of currency was
| limited to a pre-determined amount.
| Idiot_in_Vain wrote:
| This is a good argument for BitCoin - no one can ban you from the
| blockchain.
|
| It's extra work and expences, but it's worth supporting at least
| two payment processors.
|
| Keep in mind that some people can't pay with PayPal - e.g.
| register a credit/debit card with PayPal, PayPal account gets
| locked - you can't pay with that card any more through PP.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > no one can ban you from the blockchain.
|
| Except, then you have even bigger problems than just PayPal.
| Sakos wrote:
| No, it's a good argument for better regulating organisations
| like PayPal that function as banks but pretend they're anything
| but.
| zajio1am wrote:
| These kind of issues are mostly because of regulation (KYC
| laws).
| jdietrich wrote:
| Paypal Europe have a banking license.
|
| The problem _is_ regulation, or at least the interaction
| between strict KYC /AML regulations and a business model that
| allows basically anyone to accept electronic payments. Banks
| and money transmitters are substantially deputised to enforce
| a raft of laws regarding the conduct of their customers.
| Either you're choosy in who you accept as a customer, or
| you're liberal in who you accept as a customer but have a
| hair-trigger response to any transaction that looks even
| vaguely suspect. Any alternative strategy will eventually
| lead to jail time.
| Idiot_in_Vain wrote:
| In this case they are acting as a payment processor. Payment
| processors are not banks usually.
|
| More regulation can only help in forcing PP to have a human
| that you can talk to after the algorithms have banned you.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Payment processors also don't usually hold funds on your
| behalf. Visa can refuse to process your transaction, but
| they can't hold your money hostage because they never have
| it the first place. IIRC, in order to avoid banking
| regulations, Paypal claims that legally the balance you
| hold with them is owned by them. So if they want to close
| your account and just keep your money then they can (and
| do). Which is bullshit and a state of affairs should
| absolutely be regulated out of existence.
| gobip wrote:
| Yes, those same banks, that are "regulated" yet they decide
| what they do with your money, just like PayPal. Bonus: they
| collapse.
| Eduard wrote:
| "No, " - "Also, "
| PeterisP wrote:
| For Bitcoin payments, the equivalent of Paypal or some other
| payment processor is not the blockchain but the entity where
| you convert Bitcoin to actual money, as on-chain BTC is not
| practically usable for your business expenses without that. And
| that entity can ban you and restrict your payments, so you have
| pretty much the same considerations.
| [deleted]
| epgui wrote:
| Or at least it would be, assuming you didn't care too much
| about its fluctuations and had the ability to use it directly
| to pay for most goods and services in your daily life.
| Ekaros wrote:
| But any big player can certainly just confiscate your coins
| once they hit their own address. Or any coins that seem tainted
| enough... And you do not really have much recourse...
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| If you have coins in your own wallet, no one can move them
| without the secret keys. US sanctions work by tainting and
| tracing wallets, they've been proven useless against monero.
| mattdesl wrote:
| If held non-custodially, "big players" cannot confiscate your
| coins.
| mdasen wrote:
| I think that Bitcoin has many similar issues in the real world,
| though you might argue that these are more under the user's
| control.
|
| For example, it seems like most people don't hold their own
| keys. I know, "not your keys, not your coins," but it does mean
| that Bitcoin doesn't provide that kind of safety for most of
| its users. Even if you do hold your own keys, there's a decent
| potential that you'll lose your keys. I've known people who
| have lost Bitcoin that way. If you're holding your keys
| yourself, how are you keeping them safe? You certainly need
| off-site backup and probably a weak enough password protecting
| them to be sure that you won't forget the password. People have
| those key safes that only allow a certain number of tries:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55645408. That guy has
| $240M locked away. Sure, PayPal feels unaccountable when you're
| a tiny player who uses PayPal for thousands of dollars, but a
| lawyer would be able to get that $240M.
|
| From that article, "Currently, about $140bn worth of Bitcoin is
| lost or left in wallets that cannot be accessed, according to
| cryptocurrency-data company Chainanalysis." Given that Bitcoin
| had around a $700B market cap back then, we're talking about
| 20% of the total Bitcoin out there simply being lost.
|
| Yes, in theory, these are things that you as a user have
| control over. But human life is tough. If you get in an
| accident that impacts your memory, do you lose access? If
| there's a fire, do you lose access? If you die, have you
| prepared a way of transmitting those Bitcoin to your heirs -
| and a way that doesn't give them access currently? How would
| you do that? "Here's how you access the private keys, but pinky
| swear that you won't until I'm gone."
|
| > no one can ban you from the blockchain
|
| I'm not so sure about that. Bitcoin are traceable. The
| government could blacklist certain coins they determine are the
| proceeds of criminal activity. Sure, the person holding those
| coins could still transmit them to others and then those people
| could transmit them to more people, but if the US/EU
| blacklisted certain coins, people would refuse to take them as
| payment. For example, Mt. Gox froze accounts that deposited
| Bitcoins that were known to have been stolen.
|
| Let's say that the US says, "no business under our jurisdiction
| can do business with any wallet that has held Coin-X after
| today." The value of that coin becomes much lower than any
| other coin. You can't accept that coin as payment if you're
| looking to change it (or any other Bitcoin you own) into
| dollars in the future. Coinbase and other companies couldn't do
| business with you. Let's say the US takes it one step farther
| and says "any coin held by Wallet-X today is tainted and any
| wallet that accepts any of the coins held by Wallet-X (no
| matter how many transactions removed from Wallet-X) is also
| tainted along with all their coins." That means that everyone
| in the Bitcoin network needs to treat the coins in Wallet-X as
| radioactive. If you accept payment from Wallet-X, you now can't
| convert your money to dollars at Coinbase or similar companies.
| Even if you accept payment from Wallet-Z who got the coin from
| Wallet-Y who got it from Wallet-X, you're still compromised.
| There'd need to be an updating blacklist of coins that couldn't
| be used by US companies - a list that would expand over time.
| If Wallet-X had Coin-X and sent it to Wallet-Y, it would taint
| Coin-A and Coin-B in Wallet-Y which means even more Bitcoin are
| now blacklisted by the US.
|
| Even if you never want an off-ramp from Bitcoin, others do.
| Maybe you dream of making every transaction with Bitcoin for
| the rest of your life. Still, the value drops hard if others
| don't share that dream. Even if you never want US dollars,
| let's say you want to buy a house with Bitcoin. The US sees the
| purchase and seizes the home as the proceeds of illegal
| activity.
|
| The Bitcoin network generally treats all coins as the same
| kinda like how we treat all dollar bills the same, but our
| dollar bills all have unique serial numbers and similarly
| different Bitcoins can be differentiated from each other. If
| the US government starts blacklisting coins, they aren't
| technically banning you from the blockchain, but they kinda are
| for all practical purposes. Sure, there are ways to get US
| dollars that don't involve Know-Your-Customer US-jurisdiction
| rules. However, the value of Bitcoins that are blacklisted like
| that, especially if they taint your other Bitcoin, goes way
| down.
|
| Sure, you can't be banned from the blockchain. However, if the
| US government bans all coins in your wallet, you're going to
| effectively lose those coins since others aren't going to want
| to accept those coins.
| raincole wrote:
| A fun fact: Patreon had hold a survey for creators, asking
| which features they need.
|
| https://blog.patreon.com/the-first-ever-patreon-creator-cens...
|
| Crypto is the only one creators voted *against*.
|
| Yes, Patreon creators, where a lot NSFW content comes from,
| voted against cryptos.
|
| I wonder how they'll think when Visa/Mastercard threat Patreon
| to ban them (which is just sooner or later).
| rcxdude wrote:
| It's a good example of how cryptos have managed to get an
| absolutely terrible reputation amongst potential users, even
| the users worst served by the current financial system. It's
| not entirely undeserved: the sheer quantity of grift and
| hubris in the crypto ecosystem is absolutely harming it, and
| I don't blame someone for not wanting anything to do with it,
| even if it would solve problems for them. The same happened
| even more with NFTs: they were supposedly aimed directly at
| artists and yet because the first most artists heard of them
| was other people ripping off their art to sell at inflated
| prices because of the hype cycle (and the most valuable NFTs
| being shitty paper doll generic art) it 100% backfired and
| now most of the artist community absolutely _hates_ NFTs and
| anything to do with them (this poll happened at the peak of
| that, as well). If you manage to make most of your potential
| users _despise you and your product_ then something is
| seriously wrong.
| illiarian wrote:
| > even if it would solve problems for them.
|
| It wouldn't. At the end of the day you need to pay for
| stuff in your life: food, rent, clothes. None of those
| things are paid in crypto. All of them are paid in actual
| real money.
|
| When the price of crypto can go up and down hundreds of
| percents per day this makes it a very bad substitute for
| money.
| computerfriend wrote:
| Turns out you can easily convert many cryptocurrencies
| into "real money" to pay for things like food and rent.
| nulbyte wrote:
| Several countries classify cryptocurrency as property
| subject to capital gains tax, making it more complicated
| than cash for ordinary uses like buying goods and
| services.
| computerfriend wrote:
| Sounds like a problem with the tax regime rather than
| with cryptocurrency.
| illiarian wrote:
| If you wave away any reality then no problem is with
| cryptocurrency.
|
| And yet, for some reason reality exists and intervenes
| every single time.
| Idiot_in_Vain wrote:
| The price of BitCoin doesn't "go up and down hundreds of
| percents per day".
| illiarian wrote:
| Even a 20% fluctuation would make it unviable for a
| person who needs to make long-term planning like, you
| know, paying rent and buying food.
|
| Last week alone bitcoin price fluctuation was ~8%. Last
| month? 146%
| Idiot_in_Vain wrote:
| 146%?
|
| Any source on that? It would need to go from 20K to 50K.
| illiarian wrote:
| My bad. It looks like I misclicked on some graph here:
| https://www.coindesk.com/price/bitcoin/
|
| But we could take past year as a whole. Fluctuations from
| 47k to 16.4k (3 times drop) then 27k (1.6 rise, still 1.7
| below the high). There are drops that go to a price 1.5
| lower in just a week. Imagine you need to pay rent on
| that week.
| TimJRobinson wrote:
| You can use USDC or any number of other stablecoins. You
| don't ever have to touch a volatile asset if you don't
| want to.
| koonsolo wrote:
| Food, clothes and all the other stuff can be paid with
| crypto. Rent is probably harder, but I guess when you
| live in a place like Dubai that also won't be a problem
| (houses are sold/bought with crypto there).
|
| If you want you can also get paid in crypto, so it's not
| as hard as you might think.
| illiarian wrote:
| > Food, clothes and all the other stuff can be paid with
| crypto.
|
| Of course they can't
|
| > Rent is probably harder, but I guess when you live in a
| place like Dubai that also won't be a problem
|
| Ah yes. The solution to everyone's rent problems with
| crypto: just move to Dubai.
|
| > If you want you can also get paid in crypto, so it's
| not as hard as you might think.
|
| There are over 200 000 creators on Patreon. I'll let you
| guess how many of those live in Dubai
| trollied wrote:
| Why would Visa/Mastercard ban Patreon?
| toxicFork wrote:
| Nsfw
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Same reason they banned pornhub, I assume.
| masklinn wrote:
| Fair amount of NSFW creators?
| toyg wrote:
| That's because they don't need an unregulated security; they
| need a neutral and reliable payment processor.
|
| The world doesn't need crypto, it needs to turn
| Visa/MasterCard/Amex into utilities.
| dns_snek wrote:
| > Crypto is the only one creators voted _against_.
|
| > Yes, Patreon creators, where a lot NSFW content comes from,
| voted against cryptos.
|
| This is a _gross_ misrepresentation.
|
| Quoted from your link:
|
| > In the Census, 68% of visual artists and 50% of writers
| were opposed to creators having the ability to accept
| payments in cryptocurrency on Patreon, _while 39% of image,
| 34% of audio /music, and 31% of video creators indicated it
| would be a "crucial" or "nice to have" capability_. Across
| creator types, about a third say they "don't care."
| raincole wrote:
| ...how?
|
| If you're opposing the "where a lot of NSFW content comes
| from" part, I apologize for the wording, but it's true. I
| just said a lot of NSFW content comes from Patreon. I
| didn't say they're the majority.
|
| If you're opposing the "voted against cryptos" part, then:
|
| https://live-patreon-blog.pantheonsite.io/wp-
| content/uploads...
| dns_snek wrote:
| I'm opposing the "voted against crypto" part.
|
| I would assume that NSFW creators largely fall under the
| "Images" category where only 26% voted against the idea.
| themitigating wrote:
| Why would they vote against a feature? Why not just say it's
| not a priority or "would be nice"
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| This particular one: because it would 100% get used for
| money laundering, which would get the platform cut off from
| traditional banking and could make it extremely difficult
| to get a paycheck.
| brabel wrote:
| Many reasons, but no one mentioned one that I think is
| probably the case for many of them: many cryptos, including
| the most popular, Bitcoin, are a complete disaster for the
| environment. At a time when everyone wants to do their part
| in combating climate change, I would oppose the use crypto
| for this reason alone, even to my own detriment.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| It wouldn't be nice though. It would bring grifters and
| scammers to the platform.
| birracerveza wrote:
| Because crypto is scary.
| dspillett wrote:
| Perhaps the concern that they'll be compelled (by user
| demand) to use the facility if present whether they want to
| or not? Not that the question is "creators having the
| ability to accept payments in cryptocurrency on Patreon"
| and not "Patreon accepting payments in cryptocurrency" - it
| would be something the creators would need to implement and
| manage. They might not want to be exposed to the volatility
| of cryptocurrency values.
| raincole wrote:
| Crypto fearmongering is as true as crypto frenzy.
| hnbad wrote:
| It's not fearmongering to point out that association with
| crypto can be detrimental in itself, especially back then
| when every brand was trying to get onto the crypto and
| NFT hype train.
|
| Features are never purely additive, they can also be
| transformative or even detrimental. Adding crypto support
| to Patreon would have changed what Patreon is by
| attracting different people. Regardless of whether any of
| the people already using Patreon might have benefited
| from crypto, it would also have attracted people who
| would specifically be interested in Patreon because of
| the crypto support.
|
| Like it or not "people whose adoption of Patreon hinges
| on it adding support for crypto" is a very specific
| demographic and mostly people they probably didn't want
| to be associated with. You can call it guilt by
| assocation or digital NIMBYism but it would have changed
| a lot more than just having another option for payouts
| and donations.
| grumple wrote:
| Name a cryptocurrency that provides fraud protection,
| recovery of stolen funds/accounts, and whose value is
| close to the dollar in stability.
| illiarian wrote:
| Let's say I'm a creator.
|
| I pay for my food in dollars. For my rent in dollars. For
| my clothes in dollars. For my equipment and supplies in
| dollars.
|
| What would I do with crypto?
|
| Okay, let's say I get paid in crypto. I still need to
| convert that to dollars. Price fluctuation of bitcoin is
| such that if I was paid 1 dollar worth of bitcoin last
| year, it would be less than 50 cents by the end of the
| year.
| doodlesdev wrote:
| If you need stability in your FIAT of choice just
| liquidate it as soon as you receive it. It won't lose or
| gain 50% of its value in a matter of minutes. In the case
| of Patreon they could even do that for you since they are
| the middle man.
|
| Also, note that you'd probably receive more donations if
| accepting crypto currencies, so even if the values of
| these were to fluctuate (which they won't, cause you can
| sell) you'd still be making more money overall.
| illiarian wrote:
| > just liquidate it as soon as you receive it.
|
| "just"
|
| > It won't lose or gain 50% of its value in a matter of
| minutes.
|
| If someone sets up a recurring payment of X bitcoin it
| means that on any given pay day your actual money is
| X*(absolutely random number). Minus the fees for
| converting to fiat.
|
| > Also, note that you'd probably receive more donations
| if accepting crypto currencies
|
| "Probably"
| doodlesdev wrote:
| The fees for converting to fiat are generally _smaller_
| than the fees MasterCard or Visa for instance will grab
| from credit card transactions [0][1]. If you are refering
| to the fees from the blockchain, note that L2 options
| exist, and not all cryptocurrencies have the absurd fees
| L1 ETHR would have, for instance Litecoin fees can be as
| small as 1 cent.
|
| Relating to the varying amount monthly:
|
| 1 - It's a donation, not your source of income. If you
| really on that money that's your issue not of anyone
| else's.
|
| 2 - The platform such as Patreon could simply quote the
| value in dollars instead of BTC or whatever
| cryptocurrency. Recurring payments with crypto will have
| to be done manually anyways so this is a non-issue.
|
| [0]: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/credit-card-
| processi...
|
| [1]: https://help.coinbase.com/en/commerce/getting-
| started/fees
| illiarian wrote:
| > It's a donation, not your source of income. If you
| really on that money that's your issue not of anyone
| else's.
|
| We're literally in a topic about creators and Patreon
| where Patreon is a substantial source of income to quite
| a few creators.
|
| And the dismissive tone about donations in general...
| well, I won't comment on _that_
|
| > The platform such as Patreon could simply quote the
| value in dollars instead of BTC or whatever
| cryptocurrency.
|
| Or they could just not bother.
|
| > Recurring payments with crypto will have to be done
| manually anyways
|
| Ah yes. The great digital system of the future where even
| such a simple thing as recurring payments must be done
| manually
| doodlesdev wrote:
| > And the dismissive tone about donations in general...
| well, I won't comment on that
|
| Why not? > Or they could just not
| bother.
|
| That's true. The creators have the option of creating
| their own cryptocurrency wallets and accepting the
| donations without any middleman. They could also choose a
| more libre alternative to Patreon such as OpenCollective
| [0][1] or Liberapay [2]. > Ah yes. The
| great digital system of the future where even such a
| simple thing as recurring payments must be done manually
|
| I see that as a plus personally. Recurring payments are
| so hard to cancel at times with credit cards I'm at the
| point I create a new virtual credit card for every
| subscription I create. Theoretically you could also setup
| your wallet to automatically transact, it's just that's
| not a functionality of your cryptocurrency, just as
| recurring payments aren't a functionality of the dollar
| but rather of your bank/credit card provider.
|
| [0]: https://opencollective.com/
|
| [1]: https://docs.opencollective.foundation/how-it-
| works/financia...
|
| [2]: https://en.liberapay.com/
| illiarian wrote:
| > Why not?
|
| Because a lot of people live or earn a lot of their
| living through donations, and quite a lot of opensource
| you're using would actually be helped with more
| donations.
|
| > The creators have the option of creating their own
| cryptocurrency wallets and accepting the donations
| without any middleman
|
| Except, you know, all the actual things that those
| "middlemen" do like provide verification that it is the
| actual artist and not a rip-off, provide hosting for
| their content etc.
|
| > Recurring payments are so hard to cancel at times with
| credit cards I'm at the point I create a new virtual
| credit card for every subscription I create.
|
| Yes, dark patterns around subscriptions are a problem.
| However, subscriptions and notifications about whether a
| person has canceled their subscirption or became a
| subscriber is valuable information to, you know, actually
| be able to _plan_ ahead, and not wonder whether that
| person who did something manually yesterday will be there
| tomorrow.
|
| _Edit_
|
| > They could also choose a more libre alternative to
| Patreon such as OpenCollective [0][1] or Liberapay [2].
|
| The could skip all the middlemen, or could chose these
| middlemen that I personally like and call them "libre"
| just because they accept cryptocurrency. And LiberaPay is
| literally a middleman with exactly zero additional value
| TimJRobinson wrote:
| You can get paid in USDC and can transfer that to and
| from your bank account as quick as banks will allow, or
| pay people directly with it.
| illiarian wrote:
| > You can get paid in USDC and
|
| So, as always every discussion about "but crypto" almost
| immediately devolves to "not crypto, but a very specific
| coin that seems to be more-or-less okay at this
| particular point in time"
|
| > or pay people directly with it
|
| Which people? The dozen or so places in the entire world
| that accept crypto?
| TimJRobinson wrote:
| Its US dollars and you can transfer it to anyone that is
| capable of downloading a wallet app. If you want to spend
| at stores you can use any number of debit cards or just
| wait till visa integrates it which is coming soon [1]
|
| I don't understand why you want to be so hostile towards
| it, it's literally the solution to this problem.
|
| 1: https://usa.visa.com/solutions/crypto/auto-payments-
| for-self...
| illiarian wrote:
| So let's just skip all the unnecessary useless steps and
| intermediaries in between, and let those cryptoi holders
| that are so willing to pay those artist just use those
| debit cards and visa integrations to pay the creators in
| actual dollars.
| roenxi wrote:
| That is both funny and interesting. But I suspect it also
| says more about starving artists' political
| opinions/financial savvy than what the future looks like.
| Making it easy for people to send you money seems like it'll
| be the winning equilibrium long term.
|
| If Patreon doesn't do it, someone will. Probably a porn site
| somewhere underdeveloped accepting Monero or something.
| Cutting power away from financial intermediaries just has to
| be better for other market participants long term and that
| makes the shape of the future easier to guess at.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| That's the theory. In practice, if your wallet address gets
| marked, nobody will want to deal with it anymore; exchanges
| won't accept transfers, and any other address you transfer to
| will get marked as well. See e.g.
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60661763
| malka wrote:
| Soooo, let's say you find the address of the cold wallet of a
| big exchange, you could destroy it by sending them coin from
| a marked address ?
|
| Good to know :)
| hot_gril wrote:
| The way Bitcoin works at least, you don't just have one
| wallet address. You can generate new ones whenever you want,
| and nobody else can predict what they'll be. But yes it's
| generally more traceable than something like Monero.
| janandonly wrote:
| Interesting fact is that a wallet like https://www.bbw.sv/
| allows you to sent payment requests in US$ denominated amounts,
| not even in bitcoin amounts.
|
| In the background, the payment rails are bitcoin and lightning,
| but all the user needs to see is US$.
| croes wrote:
| In Germany exists ALEP e.V.
|
| https://alep-ev.de/
|
| A registered association:
|
| " ALEP e. V. works in the field of youth welfare, especially with
| disadvantaged, at-risk children, young people and their
| families."
|
| So maybe PayPal should adjust their block lists.
|
| Do it for the children.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Given how many acronyms (IRA, ETA) are associated with
| terrorism it's amazing this doesn't generate more false
| positives.
|
| Can an accidental space get you banned for "pago por anal
| isis"?
| jjgreen wrote:
| ... or some student magazines https://isismagazine.org.uk/
| croes wrote:
| My favorite is RAF
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Air_Force
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction
| [deleted]
| tlogan wrote:
| Another issue is text messages and T-Mobile.
|
| When my wife sent me a message saying, "pick up some sea weed,"
| T-Mobile was blocking it. Fortunately, we transitioned to using
| iMessages, which resolved that problem.
|
| However, I continue to receive various spam and scam messages -
| but T-Mobile is not blocking them.
| firstSpeaker wrote:
| One is probably has legal repercussion and the other has none
| but profit!
| phpisthebest wrote:
| There is no legal repercussion in the US for the T-Mobile to
| allow that text, or even a text with implicit references to
| illegal activity.
| tlogan wrote:
| Regarding T-mobile, they claim that content of the text msg
| must be legal across all 50 states. Not 100% sure which
| state and with law causes this but that is the reason they
| gave me.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| If that was legally required of T-Mobile, don't you think
| it would be likely be legally required of all carriers?
| If that was true, don't you think there'd be a lot of
| people here confirming that Verizon and AT&T do the same
| thing? I am incredibly suspicious of the idea that this
| is a legal requirement, not a choice.
| LawTalkingGuy wrote:
| Sue them for aiding and abetting any crime that happens
| where one of the perpetrators carried a cellphone with
| their service.
|
| "No, they clearly acknowledge their service is used for
| crime - they block these other messages."
|
| For bonus points, find a case where blocking the 'weed'
| message got someone killed. (You order drugs, the guy
| says 'weed on the way' but you don't get the message so
| you don't meet him, he thinks it's a setup and gets mad
| ...)
| akira2501 wrote:
| Then how are they considering themselves a "common
| carrier?" Isn't this precisely against that definition?
| gruez wrote:
| Complying with laws violates being a "common carrier"?
| dboreham wrote:
| What law are they complying with here?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| There is no law criminalizing the utterance of certain
| words, that's absurd. By your logic saying 'I'm going out
| doors to weed the lawn' or 'Our neighbor was arrested for
| illegally selling weed' are somehow evidence of crime.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Well the content of that message as stated by the OP is
| 100% legal across all 50 stays, even direct references to
| illegal drugs in messages is legal across all 50 states.
|
| the drugs are what is illegal, not the messages.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| But that's clearly ludicrous. Individual _words_ can 't
| be illegal. Why would you not immediately dismiss this as
| the BS it is?
| mmh0000 wrote:
| Well, thank you for sending me down a rabbit-hole. To save
| other people the effort, yep, t-mobile does block SMS messages
| based on keywords[0][1].
|
| [0]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/h8cotr/tmobile_sil...
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/i1fk1z/tmobile_are...
| rodgerd wrote:
| I was surprised the first time that I visited the States as
| an adult - I picked up a SIM for the week I was there, and
| discovered that I couldn't visit Oglaf on mobile data.
|
| It's quite fascinating, because I come from a country with an
| actual official government censor's office. But I've never
| been blocked from accessing a smutty joke comic here. Yet in
| the US a major mobile provider takes it upon themselves to do
| so!
| wankle wrote:
| My wife likes seaweed. I texted her the same text you used. She
| got the message no issues on her phone. SMS is not a guaranteed
| delivery service. Perhaps the message simply didn't go through?
| I see later in the comments you paraphrase something you said
| you were told by a T-Mobile representative. Perhaps the
| representative didn't even know if something was blocked but
| felt they were on the defensive?
| Koshkin wrote:
| I guess, "seaweed" is not the same as "sea weed" to them
| can16358p wrote:
| So if I send a message like "did you finish the essay about
| weed use?" or "what about going to Amsterdam next month so we
| can smoke weed" (which are perfectly legal) they will block it?
|
| Good that no one uses those crappy SMS services and feed those
| crap carriers more data.
| elliottcarlson wrote:
| SMS is federally regulated, so while it might be legal where
| you live, there are a ton of roadblocks on the SMS side. Had
| to deal with this via Twilio in the past - and you can't get
| a list of the banned terms, just notices that messages were
| sent using them (including CBD which happens to also stand
| for Central Business District for some people). But yeah, you
| can have this issue on any SMS message sent in the US.
|
| More info from Twilio: https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/360045004974-Fo...
| anigbrowl wrote:
| That's asinine though. It means you're preemptively
| blocking messages about anything from gardening to local
| news stories. Blanket keyword keyword filtering is an
| admission of having no clue, I can't understand why you
| would defend it. It can't be 'because it's federally
| regulated' because that would literally make it a 1st
| amendment issue.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > It can't be 'because it's federally regulated' because
| that would literally make it a 1st amendment issue.
|
| thats what i was thinking as well... it seems for the us,
| its mostly about spam prevention and marketing messages
| (referred to as SHAFT in the link below)...
|
| seems not intended for individuals but those messages
| intended for commerce?
|
| https://www.omnisend.com/blog/sms-regulations/
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Those guidelines make sense, but they're not just blanket
| keyword bans.
|
| For example, it would violate their industry standards to
| send messages like 'Cool your thirst! No-ID beer sales in
| your area, reply now for $5 off your first 12-pack', sent
| out as a bulk message. But if I just message you saying
| 'wanna go for a beer later', it's not a commercial
| message. These guidelines are to prevent spam that might
| fall in one of the SHAFT categories, not to police
| communications between private individuals.
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| I was "banned for life" about 4-6 weeks ago. No explanation
| given. No sketchy transactions on my record, just sending money
| back and forth between friends who (AFAIK) aren't up to anything
| suspicious. It was embarrassing having to explain to people that
| we'd have to figure out another way to transact going forward
| because I was no longer welcome with Paypal.
|
| A week later I tried logging in again just to see what would
| happen, and everything was back to normal. I could once again
| send and receive money as if nothing had ever happened. Needless
| to say, I took the opportunity to transfer every last dime out of
| the account.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Same except I wasn't even sending money. Made an account years
| ago, never used it, got banned for life when I logged back in.
| Tried making a new account, but obviously they're able to
| detect that, so it wouldn't take any of my credit cards.
|
| I don't get how people use this thing.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| It works well until it doesn't, I guess.
| gerogerke wrote:
| I opened a business PayPal account, and it was closed within
| the first 2 minutes of opening. There was no reason given, and
| I had provided all details necessary during sign-up. I still
| get promotional mails until now.
| rendaw wrote:
| Same, I got the ban email before I was even done setting up
| the account:
|
| > After a review, we decided to permanently limit your
| account as we found potential risk associated with it.
|
| > You'll not be able to conduct any further business using
| PayPal.
|
| > Based on this decision, if applicable, you are no longer
| eligible for PayPal Seller Protection as per our User
| Agreement. You'll also be charged a High Volume Dispute fee
| based on your activity for all existing and future cases you
| receive.
|
| > Any bank or credit card information that's linked to your
| PayPal account cannot be removed nor can it be added to
| another account. You can still log in and see your account
| information but you can't send or receive money.
|
| > If you have funds in your PayPal balance, we'll hold it for
| up to 180 days. After that period, we'll email you with
| information on how to access your funds.
|
| > We regret any inconvenience this may cause.
|
| No contact address, no escalation path, only vague rumors on
| internet forums of voodoo to get the ban lifted by the Paypal
| gods.
|
| They continue to send me daily emails telling me to link my
| bank account. Okay!
|
| And then a day or two later I get another email
|
| > My name is YYYY and I work on the PayPal Business team. I
| am more than happy to assist you with your PayPal onboarding
| journey.
|
| > So I understand the nature of your request. Could you
| please provide me with some additional insight to your
| business by answering the below questions.
|
| And a bunch of generic business area questions (what do you
| sell, what's your volume, etc). Are you kidding? You open by
| telling a fellow to get stuffed, then talk about journeys and
| assisting them?
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > I still get promotional mails until now
|
| Just forward them to phishing@paypal.com
| jacquesm wrote:
| Make sure to uncouple your bank account and phone from your
| Paypal account if you're really done with them.
| thallium205 wrote:
| Not good enough. You have to also put a stop payment at your
| bank against all PayPal transactions.
| burnte wrote:
| I changed banks back in 07 over this.
| miroljub wrote:
| Is thin an American thing? Can they just pool money at
| will?
|
| In the EU, if you revoke their SEPA direct debit
| permission, they are committing a fraud if they try to pull
| money, and 99.9999% of companies will not even try. If
| someone still does it, you can revoke the transaction in
| your online banking interface, and the company will then
| have to pay an additional fee to the bank.
| neltnerb wrote:
| I've had to call my bank and they had a very hard time
| unapproving someone after I'd given them deposit
| permissions but ended the business relationship.
|
| It was weird. They seemed very confused by the request.
| jacquesm wrote:
| If you spot it in time. Plenty of people don't actually
| monitor their bank account all that closely. This is how
| lots of money gets stolen.
| tomxor wrote:
| Supposedly there is no time limit on direct debit claims:
| https://www.directdebit.co.uk/direct-debit-
| explained/direct-...
| memsom wrote:
| Having had to deal with this is a previous job, from what
| I remember the rules DD are pretty strict and if you mess
| up as the collection agency, you have to put it right.
| You also don't get to just recollect - the few times we
| had software issues, we needed to write to all the people
| you are going to recollect from and inform them it will
| happen.
| luckylion wrote:
| You have _a lot_ of time though, it 's just that it gets
| harder to reverse.
|
| Netflix' fraud detection is garbage and someone created
| an account with random letters, some throwaway email and
| my bank account. I didn't notice until it was like three
| months in. For the two later transactions, I could
| reverse them immediately and the money was back in my
| account on the next business day.
|
| The other one was outside of that window, but my bank
| filed a request with their bank and it took forever, but
| eventually they paid it back. I believe this works for
| something like 13 months. Beyond that, you could still
| sue the person (and their bank) who fraudulently debited
| money out of your account, but you don't get a default
| win.
|
| So at least in Germany you have about a year to notice.
| hedora wrote:
| If they're large enough, they can get away with it, and
| the bank's insurance just eats the cost.
|
| Experian routinely generates unauthorized credit card
| charges. The banks know, but they rely too heavily on the
| credit rating industry to stand up to them.
| throwaway742 wrote:
| Yeah all that is needed to do an ACH pull is a name,
| account number, and routing number. There is no real
| security.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I think a "stop payment" is the US name for revoking
| direct debit permissions.
| throwaway742 wrote:
| There is no initial permission. Anyone with your info can
| pull money out of your account. A stop payment just
| blocks a specific person from doing it again.
| burnte wrote:
| I was banned half a dozen times. :D
| t344344 wrote:
| I have opposite problem. I am trying to deactivate paypal account
| or get banned. They keep sending me spam.
|
| I stopped using paypal long time ago. Phone number I used expired
| when I moved countries. Paypal somehow activated 2FA
| authentication and I can not login.
|
| Perhaps I will try this
| no_time wrote:
| Just send $1 to anyone with the message "bomb terror weed crack
| isis"
| capitol_ wrote:
| GDPR to the rescue, send a delete request.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Don't worry, as someone pointed out in another thread they're
| not going to stop sending you spam just because they've banned
| you.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Set up an email rule to redirect the spam to their legal
| department or some other inbox monitored by highly-paid people.
| fn-mote wrote:
| I'm confused why I don't see any calls here for regulation. It
| seems like an obvious area to turn to when established companies
| are either (1) stealing your money or (2) banning you for no
| reason.
|
| It seems like there should already be regulations in this area
| and (in the US) prosecutors willing to pursue companies for the
| fame or a portion of the payout.
|
| Is this area of finance really totally unregulated?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I've recently had friends over for a weekend, the most convenient
| way they could send me money was through Paypal. I've made sure
| to transfer the money to my bank account as fast as possible,
| because I don't trust them anymore. I got a notification as well
| that they needed additional verification (it was a big group and
| we shared the cost of accommodation that I paid), that one
| already gave me The Fear. Although the verification went pretty
| smoothly, it used a system from my bank to verify identity.
| jeron wrote:
| I remember a friend venmo-ing money with the description "Pizza
| for ISIS" as a joke. The money got held indefinitely
| montenegrohugo wrote:
| And people ask why we need decentralized payments.
|
| We're building Tools to get rid of paypal/visa/mastercard and
| other rent seekers.
|
| Here's mine: https://peanut.to
|
| There's lots of other people building useful stuff in the space.
|
| My dms are open if anyone wants to chat
| warent wrote:
| Not to be rude but your website looks like it's run by stoner
| bros who would treat my money as a joke. It doesn't really
| instill confidence
| [deleted]
| devrand wrote:
| Actually paying for goods and services with crypto is garbage
| though. I can barely stand the 3 seconds it takes for my credit
| card chip to process, meanwhile crypto is somewhere in the
| range of a couple of minutes to a couple of hours to confirm.
| Random chance how long it'll actually be. And if it goes too
| long then likely the payment has timed out and now you're in
| the hellscape that is trying to resolve that.
| redox99 wrote:
| > crypto is somewhere in the range of a couple of minutes to
| a couple of hours to confirm
|
| That's absolutely untrue unless you think "crypto" is only
| bitcoin. Ethereum block time is 12 seconds, polygon is 2
| seconds. And not random in both cases (because no mining).
| devrand wrote:
| And yet that's basically the only thing people accept.
| pizzalife wrote:
| Having no KYC process is "building useful stuff"?
| __alexs wrote:
| It is the payments are in XMR.
| KronisLV wrote:
| >> Having no KYC process is "building useful stuff"?
|
| > It is the payments are in XMR.
|
| If you mean Monero, isn't that just asking for trouble? As
| in, you'd be supporting a cryptocurrency that has a history
| of often being used for illicit purposes (as many
| unfortunately are), with no KYC processes in place, non-
| compliance for which has historically resulted in some
| pretty hefty fines by the powers that be as well:
| https://shuftipro.com/blog/record-breaking-fines-on-banks-
| fo...
|
| Assuming that the protocol/platform works out and assuming
| that you don't attract the attention of neither nefarious
| individuals, nor regulatory bodies, nor media that would
| lead to one or both of the former, it would _probably_ be
| fine, but that 's a lot of "if"s.
|
| It makes me feel dirty that nowadays the choice is between
| large orgs that can ban you and kill your business with a
| (possibly automated) wave of their finger, and between
| oftentimes shady platforms, using which is just asking for
| trouble.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Snitches get... their accounts restricted by PayPal?
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| I wonder if this could be weaponized: Get the PayPal accounts of
| enemies, competition or those you want to bully banned by somehow
| "injecting" forbidden words like "ALEP" or "NS" in the
| transaction.
| hbbio wrote:
| All this is a screaming ad for blockchain payments. Really
| decentralized.
| autophagian wrote:
| I'm really struggling to think of what "Alep" even refers to that
| would trigger this. Surely not Aleppo, right?
| leokennis wrote:
| Surely Aleppo. Financial institutions are responsible for
| making sure their customers don't circumvent sanctions, don't
| launder money etc. If PayPal would not stopped this
| transaction, it could be a huge liability for them in regards
| to financial regulators.
|
| Unfortunately, I do not know of a better solution than "match
| transaction data on this list of regexes" that would scale for
| the millions of daily payments that banks are processing.
| miracle2k wrote:
| > Unfortunately, I do not know of a better solution than
| "match transaction data on this list of regexes" that would
| scale for the millions of daily payments that banks are
| processing.
|
| I think it would be reasonable to ask you, and other
| supporters of this, to provide emperical data of the positive
| law-enforcement impact that grepping transactions for "ALEP"
| has had, so we can weight it against the human cost (capital
| and time spent across all sides, including legal departments
| in financial institutions, Google Docs written, impact on
| affected customers).
|
| Because the default assumption of a normal person is, of
| course, that this is ridiculous.
| leokennis wrote:
| One data point I can provide is: $900,000,000.00 -- which
| is the cost for a bank for NOT doing this.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ing-groep-settlement-
| mone...
| miracle2k wrote:
| > One data point I can provide is: $900,000,000.00 --
| which is the cost for a bank for NOT doing this.
|
| (It's not at all clear that this fine is due to a lack of
| regexes.)
|
| If the argument is "banks have to do this because of non-
| sensical and unjust regulations" - fine, that's one for
| the lawyers and maybe risk managers.
|
| I understood your position as defending the regulations
| itself.
| from wrote:
| In the case of BNP Paribas, 10 times that.
| croes wrote:
| Yeah because terrorist put the real subject in their
| transactions.
| leokennis wrote:
| So your solution is?
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Have a system in place to resolve these false positives
| quickly and painlessly?
|
| Of course all positives are going to be false positives,
| but what did you expect? Fighting international terrorism
| one regex at a time?
| leokennis wrote:
| A system. You mean like sending the owner of the flagged
| transaction an e-mail? Like what happened exactly in this
| case?
|
| Also, curious about your source that all screening
| positives are false positives. Can you link to that?
| mcv wrote:
| Actually know your customers. Like real banks do. Relying
| on a free text description on the payment is completely
| useless.
| leokennis wrote:
| Yeah because terrorists will definitely not lie when they
| open a bank account!
|
| Also...how would KYC stop a terrorist from abusing your
| mothers bank account to transfer money?
|
| This is why you need KYC and also transaction screening
| (and also X, Y and Z).
| mcv wrote:
| Yes, but transaction screening should rely on information
| about the accounts involved, and not the descriptions on
| the payments. Because those mean nothing.
| matthews2 wrote:
| The real bank that I use in the UK cares about what you
| put in the reference field. Putting something like "AK47"
| as the reference quickly results in a phone call from
| them telling you to not do that.
| croes wrote:
| Would it be a problem for a US bank?
| astura wrote:
| "Real banks" also will block transactions with the
| "wrong" keywords in them. They are literally required to
| do this.
|
| For example:
|
| Chase Bank blocks California man's online payment over
| service dog's 'terrorist' name
|
| https://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/chase-bank-blocks-
| onl...
|
| These stories are really common. Usually a phone call
| fixes it.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| Not wage financial war?
| leokennis wrote:
| Come again? Just to make sure we're on the same page,
| your opinion is that terrorists should be free to use
| existing financial instruments (bank accounts, PayPal
| etc.) to transfer funds for their terrorist needs? Or am
| I misunderstanding?
| claytongulick wrote:
| Hmm. Maybe?
|
| Wouldn't it make more sense to allow these transactions
| to proceed but report them for investigation?
|
| Aiding terrorist organizations is a crime. Wouldn't it be
| better to know who's doing it?
|
| It feels like it would make more sense than automated
| block lists and account closures.
|
| It's sort of similar to how bone-headed the shutdown of
| Backpage was. Backpage actively and willingly worked with
| the police to investigate human trafficking etc... It was
| basically a giant honeypot. From what I've read, when
| they were shut down the government lost a valuable tool
| and ally in the fight against sex slavery.
| vinyl7 wrote:
| That might be less harmful than being overzealous and
| banning every innocent person.
| nnx wrote:
| Yes, because the cost of pretending to "do something" is
| far too high (unbanking unprivileged people and a huge %
| of the world just because they aren't born in the 'right'
| country or with the right name) for absolutely no result!
|
| By analogy, would members of the KYC/AML cult have the
| opinion that terrorists should be free to use roads for
| their terrorists needs? The solution is police roadblocks
| and checks every kilometer or so?
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| What's wrong with going through the courts?
| kube-system wrote:
| The entire country of Syria is under sanction.
| thriftwy wrote:
| I remember PayPal restricting some users back in 2014, whose
| billing address was Simferopol blvd., Moscow, Russia.
|
| People of Isis st., somewhere across UK, were also out of luck.
| zabzonk wrote:
| isis is commonly used to refer to the stretch of the river
| thames running through oxford, uk, and to several oxford
| institutions
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Isis
| Fnoord wrote:
| Its also a name of a Egyptian goddess, a moon, a Dutch DJ
| (Dj Isis formerly known as 100% Isis) and a whole lot more
| [1].
|
| At least the word 'is' did not get corrupted.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(disambiguation)
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Also a spy agency from Archer (a cartoon series)
|
| Oh, and let's not forget the routing protocol -
| https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/ios-
| xml/ios/iproute_is...
| ChoGGi wrote:
| Someone wanting to cause world wide disruption should
| start an organization called a
| memsom wrote:
| And this British actress is actually called Isis :
| https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8365231/
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Oh look. Another incident of the Scunthorpe problem:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
| gadders wrote:
| https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/...
|
| Probably a sanction scanning program.
| slenk wrote:
| I think it's a city? That's the best I can find. Don't know why
| saying a city name is bannable
| jollyllama wrote:
| "What is Aleppo?"
| adamors wrote:
| Underrated comment
| float4 wrote:
| Alep is French for Aleppo.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Same in slovene
|
| https://sl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alep
| oh_sigh wrote:
| What's a leppo?
| davidwritesbugs wrote:
| Yup Alepo & thus ISIS. What a world: where a regex match can
| kill your business.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| More accurately, I suspect it's Aleppo and thus Syria, which
| is under sanctions by the US and European countries.
| [deleted]
| fundad wrote:
| Aren't there towns in the US and elsewhere named for towns
| in other countries? This xenophobia is an albatross.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The people of Aleppo, Pennsylvania must have a lot of
| fun.
| Natsu wrote:
| Yeah, this is almost certainly some AML provision that has
| gone amuck, but they'd rather inconvenience you in a silly
| way to prove that they were "doing their job" than to get
| themselves shut down due to sanctions.
| raverbashing wrote:
| It's the dream of box ticking auditors everywhere
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| My friend had an account with Isis in the username because
| she learnt about the Egyptian god in video games. She was
| panic about that a few years later
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| That was the original name for what eventually became
| Google Wallet. It was launched as Isis, then promptly
| rebranded to Softcard before eventually being bought by
| Google.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| It seems to be a "popular baby name" of Egyptian origin,
| according to this: https://adoption.com/baby-
| names/origin/egyptian (second page).
| flangola7 wrote:
| Also an elite spy agency
| sltkr wrote:
| I wouldn't say "elite".
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| There was a hookah bar named ISIS in Astoria, Queens. It
| was named after the owners first love - sweet story:
| https://qns.com/2016/08/isis-hookah-lounge-in-astoria-
| change...
| moremetadata wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| nnx wrote:
| All this AML/CTF nonsense for a 39EUR transaction...
|
| There should be laws and penalties for triggering any of those
| nonsense checks for such insignificant amounts.
| Puts wrote:
| It's interesting how these money laundering checks works
| flawlessly for regular people and businesses but always seem to
| fail when there are hundreds of millions of dollars involved.
| msm_ wrote:
| Optimistic explanation: businesses that handle millions of
| dollars probably have way more transactions than regular
| people, and thus have a higher chance of triggering a false-
| positive on some random blacklist.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Your solution is to make obeying the law illegal?
|
| Do you think Paypal enjoys spending effort to prevent itself
| from collecting fees?
| tdrgabi wrote:
| It's probably trying to avoid the opening of many accounts, all
| under 25$, as an attempt to transfer a lot of money but still
| fly under the AML radar
| kinggencha wrote:
| So what's the problem? Handling any kind of payment dispute
| should be part of regular operations. So, when your payment
| provider has a complaint, handle it, instead of running to
| Twitter/HN for validation.
| aikinai wrote:
| At least they were given the reason and a chance to respond. I'm
| just an infrequent, individual user and one day I got an email
| from Paypal that I was banned for life with my account closed and
| the same would happen if I tried opening any new accounts. It
| also banned my Zelle account for life.
|
| Thank god I never left any money in there or it would have been
| stolen. And to this day I still get emails from them as if my
| account isn't banned, but logging in just takes me straight to
| the ban notice and I can't actually close it or opt-out of
| emails.
| pcl wrote:
| What's the link between PayPal and Zelle? And what does it mean
| for a Zelle account to be banned for life?
| op00to wrote:
| None. There is no link between Paypal and Zelle.
| Our_Benefactors wrote:
| > And what does it mean for a Zelle account to be banned for
| life?
|
| Considering that Zelle is focused on traditional bank-to-bank
| transfers, probably something pretty sketchy to be banned.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| They link is the person, and as Cthuhlu_ points out, maybe
| something like a common password?
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| I think he means Venmo, which is a PayPal product. Zelle is a
| consortium of banks.
| chakintosh wrote:
| Report those emails as malicious.
| [deleted]
| Aachen wrote:
| Yeah mess with your email provider by sending false reports,
| I'm sure they'll appreciate that (sometimes I wonder if spam
| is such a big issue in part because users report anything
| they don't want in their inbox, like a newsletter they
| previously signed up for, as spam or similar)
|
| Either you're at a small ISP and paypal doesn't care about a
| handful of customers that need to dig an email out of the
| spam folder, or you're at a large one and it won't have an
| effect because nobody else is reporting it
|
| This doesn't hurt paypal but might annoy a small email hoster
| that might have to clean up your mess.
|
| People use Paypal because they can't get around it. If you
| want to hurt them, help reduce their market share. Complain
| to the support of the service where you needed paypal, asking
| for better payment options (cite articles like this or
| whatever). That's what I do anyway, and doubly so when I know
| the owner. That they need to _also_ offer paypal to get more
| customers, sure that 's their risk (I make sure they're aware
| of it), but at least offer legit payment options as well
| Natsu wrote:
| I mean, I'd report it as spam rather than as 'malicious' so
| I disagree with the GP on that part, but...
|
| > sometimes I wonder if spam is such a big issue in part
| because users report anything they don't want in their
| inbox, like a newsletter they previously signed up for, as
| spam or similar
|
| It's been a problem ever since some green card lottery
| lawyers decided to spam Usenet and then moved on to using
| botnets and whatnot while people fought back with DKIM and
| SPF and such, so I doubt it.
|
| > This doesn't hurt paypal but might annoy a small email
| hoster that might have to clean up your mess.
|
| It's not clear to me why Paypal would be routing emails
| through a small email host and most people are using the
| few big webmail providers at this point.
|
| > If you want to hurt them
|
| I don't think people want to hurt Paypal, they just want to
| turn off the damn marketing campaign when they're literally
| banned from the service. Personally, I just set up filters
| to dump all the junk like the constant emails from Amazon
| so that I don't have to deal with it.
| ddevault wrote:
| They aren't false.
| dspillett wrote:
| Regardless, the main point (that it'll not affect paypal
| a jot while inconveniencing someone else) is still valid.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >sometimes I wonder if spam is such a big issue in part
| because users report anything they don't want in their
| inbox
|
| Spam is by definition email users don't want in their
| inbox.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| "spam (n): irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on
| the internet to a large number of recipients."
| ansible wrote:
| No. Spam is by definition unsolicited email (often
| commercial in nature) from someone you never have had any
| sort of (business) relationship with.
|
| If you've used a service, even briefly, and willingly
| given them your email address, and then later get emails
| from them, that's not spam. Yes, it is super annoying
| that they automatically sign up your address for
| marketing, but there is a way to unsubscribe.
| Natsu wrote:
| > No. Spam is by definition unsolicited email (often
| commercial in nature) from someone you never have had any
| sort of (business) relationship with.
|
| The name "spam" comes from an old Monty Python skit about
| hearing the same thing over and over and getting sick of
| it, so this definition doesn't really respect the history
| of the term. The name spam started as a Usenet moniker
| some time after some lawyers started trying to get people
| to pay to enter the free green card lottery run by the US
| government.
|
| This definition almost sounds like you're gesturing at
| "UCE" (unsolicited commercial email) which some people
| started trying to push as a definition for spam back in
| the day.
|
| > Yes, it is super annoying that they automatically sign
| up your address for marketing, but there is a way to
| unsubscribe.
|
| I mean, you're responding in a thread where they
| mentioned that's impossible to reach that page because
| they're banned and ignoring that people long ago found
| that unsubscribe was being abused to confirm (and then
| sell) verified emails to other spammers.
|
| Some of us do crazy things to let us use unique emails
| per service, so we can find out who is selling our info.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Spam is by definition unsolicited email (often
| commercial in nature) from someone you never have had any
| sort of (business) relationship with.
|
| Can you provide a reference to that definition?
|
| I have checked on merriam-webster, oxfordreference.com,
| oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com, and wikipedia. None of
| them include the "from someone you never have had any
| sort of (business) relationship with" clause. Or even
| anything which could be read that way.
|
| > Yes, it is super annoying that they automatically sign
| up your address for marketing
|
| Yes, super annoying. And also spam. If I didn't ask for
| it it is spam. If they trick you to "agree" to it (for
| example by having a checkbox where checking the box means
| you don't want to receive emails) without you realising,
| that is still spam.
|
| > there is a way to unsubscribe
|
| Sometimes. Doesn't make it any less spammy.
| Aachen wrote:
| > None of them include the "from someone you never have
| had any sort of (business) relationship with" clause.
|
| Spam is illegal, but I'm pretty sure none of the
| mentioned sources make the law about what is and isn't
| allowed to be sent. Maybe you can find the actual
| definition in the laws that apply in your jurisdiction.
| MereInterest wrote:
| The laws regarding spam are not the definition of "spam".
| Rather, the laws describe a subset of spam that can be
| clearly and definitively identified as "spam". It does
| not include cases that are just barely within a grey
| area, but which any reasonable person would label as
| "spam".
|
| The law follows the existing understanding of what
| constitutes spam, just as it does for "murder", "theft",
| and a myriad of other cases. The law does not define
| these terms, only how they will be applied within the
| context of the legal system.
| LocalH wrote:
| Did you miss where the original person is unable to
| unsubscribe because they were banned? In this specific
| scenario, it is absolutely spam, otherwise known as
| Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (and by virtue of them
| being banned, these specific mails are by definition
| unsolicited).
| Karellen wrote:
| Whether I have a relationship with a business or not, if
| they send me emails that I didn't ask for and don't want,
| they're unsolicited.
|
| That's, like, the definition of "unsolicited". In the
| dictionary and everything.
|
| Doesn't matter if there's an unsubscribe link either.
| It's still fucking spam.
| Aachen wrote:
| When you unsubscribe, what happens?
|
| Do they now mark your address as "still active and being
| read" and send it more messages because it's now more
| valuable?
|
| Or will you stop getting email from them?
|
| That's the difference between things you should be
| marking as spam and things that annoy you but are legal
| and you'll just need to press unsubscribe on (and be
| careful with whom you give your data to). Write to your
| representative if you want the law changed on what's
| legal.
|
| You can also complain to the market authority if an
| identifiable party sends you unsolicited commercial email
| outside of the law. If they're not identifiable then it's
| never legal, and that's what you should classify as spam
| because spam filters are meant to catch this. A legit
| business can be held accountable and has an interest in
| remaining in business, but real spammers aren't so simple
| to trace down and stop so that's what these filters are
| meant to do.
| Karellen wrote:
| I get plenty of junk mail in the post. The fact that it's
| legal doesn't stop it being junk mail. Yes, I could take
| the time to write to a politician to complain about junk
| mail, or I could just chuck it in the trash and get on
| with my day.
|
| Ditto spam. Yes, some of the spam I receive might be
| within the law. That doesn't stop it being spam though. I
| could also take the time to write to a politician to try
| and change the law on what spam is legal and what
| isn't... or I could just mark it as the spam it is and
| get on with my day.
| Aachen wrote:
| What kind of junk mail? Where you gave your physical
| address to a third party and now they're sending you
| crap, but they're a legit business that you can tell to
| stop doing that and then you stop receiving junk mail, or
| do you mean they got your physical address from data
| leaks and the sender tries to scam you into resetting
| your password, sell you illegitimate drugs, etc.? You're
| talking as though both kinds, legal and illegal spam, are
| the same thing.
|
| > Yes, I could take the time to write to a politician to
| complain about junk mail, or I could just chuck it in the
| trash and get on with my day.
|
| What you're suggesting is messing with a spam filter
| designed to handle illegitimate email to get confused
| enough to also filter out legitimate emails based on a
| guess as to whether or not you might want it. You're not
| "just chunking it in the trash and getting on with your
| day" but actively harming the system instead.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| I'd say the vast number of irrelevant commercial bullshit
| people get in their email harms the system more. It is
| spam. If I order a pair of pants from the Gap and they
| start sending me two or three emails a day, that is spam.
| If those marketing emails got marked as spam by all
| providers by default, the world would be better off.
|
| Same with physical mail, which also explicitly just has
| an option for "bulk mail", which is even worse. If I
| could opt out of receiving mail from the USPS entirely, I
| would. (Although I consider them to be the most reliable
| service for sending and receiving packages.)
| Karellen wrote:
| > What you're suggesting is messing with a spam filter
| designed to handle illegitimate email
|
| No, I'm teaching my spam filter about which emails I
| consider spam, so it knows to automatically filter them
| out in future. Which is exactly what I want my spam
| filter to do. That's its job. That's why I installed it.
|
| > You're [...] actively harming the system instead.
|
| Lol.
| eitland wrote:
| I'm fairly sure that according to even the old (by
| internet standards) American CAN-SPAM act, if you cannot
| easily unsubscribe then it is illegal.
|
| I might however have misremembered something so please if
| someone knows, feel free to fill in.
| Aachen wrote:
| You're quite right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-
| SPAM_Act_of_2003#Unsubscri...
|
| I think in the Netherlands (or EU?) it has to also be
| one-click. It can't first give you a survey or ask you to
| enter your data again or other hurdles. It's quite strict
| in that way, but then quite loose in the way that
| businesses are allowed to send you unsolicited commercial
| (e)mail if you previously purchased something and they
| want to market a related product to you. Win some, lose
| some. I can see the point, though, that you might be
| genuinely interested in their new fancy better improved
| heat camera if you previously bought a heat camera of
| theirs, and the message still has to have that one-click
| unsubscribe link. I'm willing to accept this compromise
| even if I am usually not interested in those offers.
|
| What has to die is the type of spam where you have no
| idea who the sender is or how they got your data. That's
| what spam filters are designed to filter out, since you
| cannot filter that by normal/legal means. It's much
| harder to try and make a spam filter read your mind on
| whether email from a legitimate business is something
| you're interested in reading (you may or may not care for
| that order confirmation, newsletter that you may or may
| not have signed up for, etc.).
|
| But I've learned today (from the subthread above) that
| having the general public make this distinction and
| correctly train spam filters (such as email, but
| presumably also on reddit and such) together is a lost
| cause. We'll have spam forever, yay.
| cuu508 wrote:
| > It's much harder to try and make a spam filter read
| your mind on whether email from a legitimate business is
| something you're interested in reading (you may or may
| not care for that order confirmation, newsletter that you
| may or may not have signed up for, etc.).
|
| Hence, the "Report Spam" button.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| No don't be silly, if you use that button you're actually
| breaking the whole system.
|
| You're just supposed to sit there and take the
| unsolicited non-spam from everyone around you and never
| touch that button ever, or dare call something that
| doesn't fit one person's ridiculously narrow definition
| of "spam" that.
|
| And if you don't like it, your inly course of action is
| obviously talking to your representatives to change the
| legal definition of spam. Anything else is breaking the
| system.
|
| /s, for those wondering.
| MereInterest wrote:
| If an email address is provided for not-marketing
| purposes, and is used for sending marketing emails,
| that's spam.
|
| For example, I went to a mechanic, and provided my email
| address as a way to contact me. I started getting
| marketing emails from Sirius XM, despite never having
| interacted with them. Therefore, marked as spam. If
| Sirius doesn't want their emails to be marked as spam,
| they shouldn't be sending out spam.
|
| Edit: Or, in the case of Walgreens, their "Unsubscribe"
| link reported that there was no subscription at the email
| address to which they had just sent an email. For that
| one, I did give a reply to let them know of the issue,
| and got no response. When the next one arrived from
| Walgreens a week later, that was reported as spam.
| Haegin wrote:
| If I sign up for a service but don't explicitly opt in to
| getting their newsletter, any marketing emails I get are
| spam, and flagged accordingly. The whole idea that I've
| implicitly opted in without being asked is nonsense.
| Aachen wrote:
| That's something to take up with your representative,
| because that's legal unfortunately (specifically:
| marketing similar products based on past purchases, and
| in my experience, the consumer market authority takes
| that definition rather broadly).
|
| There's a second category of unwanted email where
| unsubscribing has as only effect that you'll get more
| spam because now they know that your email address is
| actively being read. The sender is a hacked server or a
| botnet, and no business is identifiable as sender. This
| type of illegal activity is what spam filters are
| designed to combat. You're not helping the designers by
| marking other email as spam: it muddles the data, causes
| legit senders trouble (like me, I don't have a newsletter
| but spam filters are so aggressive that personal messages
| sent from my server still regularly ends up in spam), and
| makes everyone's life harder.
| account42 wrote:
| > That's something to take up with your representative,
| because that's legal unfortunately
|
| Or you culd report it as spam in your email client.
| Because legal or not, it's still spam.
| Aachen wrote:
| There's a difference between messages nobody wants and
| messages that you don't want.
|
| We've got problems with messages sent to literally
| millions of people: viagra spam, phishing scams, banking
| malware, you name it.
|
| There isn't a problem with messages that you don't want
| to see in your inbox anymore but that are from a legit
| business where you can unsubscribe. Trying to unsubscribe
| from real spam just confirms that the email address is
| active and the message has been read, and now you'll just
| get more spam and your email address is more valuable.
| That's very distinct from a legitimate sender.
|
| There's a clear distinction and I'm wondering if we'd
| have an easier time filtering out the actually bad stuff
| if people that think like you didn't muddle the data by
| marking normal email traffic as spam
| marktani wrote:
| As they describe, they literally cannot unsubscribe
| though, so from that perspective marking it as spam is
| totally legit
|
| I see your overall argument, however this dilemma is
| ultimately caused by PayPal's ruthless/unpredictable ban
| policy
| Aachen wrote:
| Yes, this is a special situation with no real good
| options because paypal is behaving like its usual dickish
| self. I still don't think that it harms paypal or helps
| anyone to mark their email as spam. Best would be to
| create a rule to drop their incoming messages.
|
| Or use GDPR or some other legal option if you have time
| to spare and want to cost them some time=money in dealing
| with your request.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > or helps anyone to mark their email as spam.
|
| If it keeps the undesired email from landing in this
| person's inbox, it certainly sounds like it's helping to
| me.
| Aachen wrote:
| Training a spam filter is not the same as creating a do-
| not-deliver rule for a given sender. Unless you manage to
| convince the filter that paypal is the same as a viagra
| scammer (good luck with that), you'd still get those
| messages from paypal.
|
| Maybe some providers also denylist the sender-receiver
| pair when you click spam to combat this problem nowadays;
| back when I used public email services this was rarely
| the case. Nowadays I use a different system altogether so
| I don't know if this might now be common.
|
| Either way, this is not what the spam button is for, but
| from this subthread I see that enough people on HN
| already don't understand how these systems work (and
| education is hard: people don't even read relevant
| oneliners pushed in their face at a relevant time, such
| as error messages), so I guess there's no hope for the
| general public altogether. I didn't know this is an
| entirely lost cause and is making me rethink about
| reporting spam on platforms like reddit. I guess they get
| so many false positives that I'm wasting my time
| reporting anything as spam ever.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| Most of my email is on my own server, but in my
| experience (with gmail, etc.) marking a sender as spam
| will keep them out of my inbox going forward. I would
| personally filter the email, but for those who don't
| understand that process, marking as spam can be effective
| as well.
| Natsu wrote:
| I mean, I agree that there are varying levels of
| legitimacy, but that's kind of baked into the system at
| this point and it doesn't help that plenty of spammers
| don't have legitimate unsubscribe buttons and sell your
| email to a chain of ever less legitimate players.
|
| > There's a clear distinction and I'm wondering if we'd
| have an easier time filtering out the actually bad stuff
| if people that think like you didn't muddle the data by
| marking normal email traffic as spam
|
| Something tells me that you missed most of the history of
| dealing with spam, because people used to be naive about
| this back in the day and spammers exploited the hell out
| of them by using unsubscribe to confirm that the email
| was live and similar tricks.
|
| Unwanted is unwanted. It really does vary by person, that
| much is true, but even your viagra spam is wanted by some
| people. But the people sending it are very often also
| doing a lot of shady stuff like running botnets, so the
| technical measures to stop that look very different from,
| say, looking up the SPF record for Paypal:
|
| https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=spf%3apaypal.
| com...
|
| So the short answer is no, people not wanting to get
| spammed by Paypal isn't likely to get you more viagra ads
| from botnets. Maybe, just maybe, it could create some
| small headache for Sendgrid (who is in Paypal's SPF, but
| is no small player), but I doubt it.
|
| That aside, I think a few of them frequent HN and they
| can answer that one for themselves if they want to.
| freetanga wrote:
| If you are in Europe file a GDPR complaint with your right to
| have your data deleted.
|
| If they fail, you get paid the fine (not the state)
| lynx23 wrote:
| Do you have any evidence that this process actually works, or
| are you just parotting what we have been told over the last 5
| years?
|
| In my experience, there is actually quite a barrier to this,
| meaning most situations where you see a GDPR violation are
| not easy to escalate.
| Rygian wrote:
| > If they fail, you get paid the fine (not the state)
|
| Source for this?
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| It's a lie, there is no provision whatsoever for people
| getting paid in GDPR.
| dgroshev wrote:
| Companies are allowed to keep data necessary for their other
| statutory obligations, like taxes or KYC. Otherwise it'd be a
| get out of jail free card for fraudsters and sanction
| evaders.
| yardstick wrote:
| Sure, but the op suggestion to delete the account should
| mean deleting any email marketing permissions, which are
| not necessary for KYC or taxes.
| RobAley wrote:
| Yes, but they're only allowed to use the data for the
| (legitimate) purpose it was retained. If you ask them not
| to retain/use it for marketing purposes, they can still
| retain it for statutory purposes but they can then only use
| it for that (not for sending you advertising emails etc.)
| dgroshev wrote:
| You are right, I misread the gp, my bad.
| awill88 wrote:
| Horribly applied logic. While mistakes will happen, PayPal for
| individuals and businesses are apples and oranges because
| that's how the banks work. This is a business account. This
| comment adds nothing to the convo. Little Snitch is amazing btw
| gumby wrote:
| I don't think PayPal has any influence over Zelle which is run
| by a consortium of US banks and competes with PayPal.
| [deleted]
| mcv wrote:
| If you can't opt out of their emails, report them as spam.
| Because that's what it is.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| I presume PayPal has enough pull to be manually whitelisted
| by gmail.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| I reported all my Paypal emails as spam the day I created an
| account to get something on eBay. Tragically, GMail didn't
| listen.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| All? Like, you reported the account confirmation as spam?
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| They started sending me advertising shit the same day, so
| I reported them all because I considered them to be
| spammers at that point.
| windexh8er wrote:
| If you can't unsubscribe and they're marketing emails take them
| to small claims in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act [0] if you're
| in the US. Liabilities are over $50k so you can easily max out
| the $10k limit in court with no representation. In this way it
| forces them to come to you and they will almost surely lose or
| settle before the court date.
|
| [0] https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-
| act...
| nimos wrote:
| Unless something changed recently CAN-SPAM has no private
| right of action for individuals.
| jrmg wrote:
| You're right - individuals can't do anything themselves:
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/inbox/can-
| spam_and_consumer_...
| windexh8er wrote:
| Interesting. I don't remember the verbiage around the
| private right to action. It seems as though it would
| still be trivial to classify yourself as an ISP with
| respect to email. If you're running your own
| infrastructure for mail sending and receipt and that
| infrastructure is in receipt of the violating emails why
| wouldn't an individual be allowed to sue?
|
| Seems as though CAN-SPAM has lost its teeth to protect
| the consumer through precedent if that's not a viable
| path.
| [deleted]
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Is it possible your account was compromised and they closed it
| after someone abused it? I mean I don't know about you, but my
| password security wasn't exactly up to standards when I opened
| up my paypal account...
| hirundo wrote:
| > And to this day I still get emails from them as if my account
| isn't banned
|
| Marketing people please take note of this. It is particularly
| galling to be continually pestered to buy things from a company
| that has refused to do business with you. An Intuit company
| tried to sell me a home mortgage, and I applied, only to be
| refused because my home was manufactured off-site. OK, I moved
| on. But they continued to plaster me with offers for that same
| product almost daily for years, and now my relationship with
| all Intuit products is as distant as I can manage.
| aendruk wrote:
| Ten years ago: Amazon: Sell your textbooks!
| Me: Ok
|
| Now: Amazon: Sell your stuff! Amazon:
| You are banned from selling due to inactivity. Amazon:
| Sell your stuff!
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > Thank god I never left any money in there or it would have
| been stolen.
|
| That's not true. They banned my account when I was below 18
| because it's forbidden to have an account for minors, but there
| was absolutely no problem retrieving the $1000+ that I had.
|
| Even if the account is banned they let you link a bank account
| and withdraw.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| I know several people who got stuck in an endless loop of
| Paypal processes and couldn't withdraw their money. It is a
| terrible service.
| egorfine wrote:
| It took years of litigations for my coworked to fetch his
| $30k from PayPal. The reason they banned was irrelevant.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| [flagged]
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Can you name the legal firm he used?
| egorfine wrote:
| Our own legal dept took care of it.
| brainzap wrote:
| had same experience
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| Wait, if they ban you and you have a balance at the time, they
| just keep your money? That can't possibly be legal.
| gambiting wrote:
| It is because it's in their T&C's. And they fought tooth and
| nail for years to avoid being classified as a bank so the
| normal bank regulations and customer protections don't apply
| to them.
| rchaud wrote:
| Watch them magically reverse these policies once FedNow
| arrives and they actually have some competition.
| lazide wrote:
| Banks can do this too if you hit the right set of
| circumstances/red flags.
| robin_reala wrote:
| They _are_ a bank in the EU, couldn't get around that one.
| ansible wrote:
| It is typical for large corporations to have a bunch of legal
| fine print. This effectively allows them to do just about
| anything, as long as they have a "reason".
|
| They nominally don't do just anything (like take your money),
| because they want people to use their service, and if they
| cheated everyone all the time, you'd hope that people would
| catch on and stop using their service.
|
| Having said all that, dealing with illegal transactions,
| fraud and scammers is tough. The corporations will, honestly,
| make mistakes, and having enough customer service to deal
| with it all properly is expensive. Hence automated bans.
| Often there is no recourse except moving towards a lawsuit,
| which may be unreasonably expensive for most cases, as
| compared to the money that has been lost.
| praptak wrote:
| While I agree that dealing with fraud is tough, what they
| are doing is pushing this risk onto their customers.
| slenk wrote:
| Yup. They closed my account with money in it, with no
| explanation why my account has been closed and absolutely
| zero recourse.
| javajosh wrote:
| I'd be curious to know what happens if you sue them in
| small claims court. Jurisdiction may be an issue, but if
| they stole from you while you were home, then I'd argue
| your hometown is the proper jurisdiction. Note: IANAL.
|
| I'd guess that they'd just not show up, you'd get a
| judgement, and then just have to figure out how to get it
| paid. Or maybe they will show up, hire a local lawyer to
| represent them and point out the fine print in the ToS that
| forbids holding them accountable for any reason in any
| venue. And with any luck, the judge will laugh at them and
| give you treble damages.
| humanistbot wrote:
| The ToS has a forced arbitration clause, so a judge would
| never get to the merits of the case. Any disputes must be
| resolved through an arbitrator that Paypal gets to pick.
| Judges love cases with forced arbitration, because they
| can just issue a summary dismissal and go to lunch early.
| javajosh wrote:
| Forced arbitration clauses should be illegal just as
| indentured servitude should be illegal, and for similar
| reasons.
| slenk wrote:
| I saw a post on here recently talking about how they got
| Paypal into court. I'll have to try and find it again.
|
| Problem is, it's not worth whatever court costs I would
| probably incur. Granted, there isn't a lawyer involved in
| small claims, but could they judge order me pay their
| lawyer fees if I lose?
| panta wrote:
| Maybe we could create a sort of small mutual insurance
| fund to pay legal expenses in such cases.
| slenk wrote:
| I am not smart enough to know if that is already a thing
| or not...
| Eisenstein wrote:
| You might want to check if lawyers are even allowed in
| small claims. If they aren't they would have to sent a
| company representative, and there would be no 'lawyer
| fees'.
| slenk wrote:
| Well in Michigan (where I am located) they are not
| allowed. I am pretty pessimistic and just assume there
| are fees I don't know about
| chongli wrote:
| Depends on the laws in your jurisdiction. I think in a
| lot of cases, small claims courts put very low caps on
| legal fees that can be claimed. The defendant might only
| be able to claim a few hundred dollars at most.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| They may have an arbitration clause, but even then,you
| would have a good chance of getting your money back if
| you took them to arbitration.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yup, thx for the reminder. I had a small-ish balance
| sitting there and your reminder just provoked me to login,
| check it, and transfer it out. Can't wait for that new
| FedNow Service -- it should be coming soon! [0]
|
| [0] https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fednow_ab
| out.h...
| lisper wrote:
| Am I missing something? Does ALEP actually have some kind of
| meaning that would render it suspect? Or is this just completely
| random?
| csours wrote:
| Aleppo, Syria - Syria is on a lot of naughty lists right now.
| lisper wrote:
| It is? Why???
| astura wrote:
| Sanctions. PayPal, being a US company, is required to
| enforce them.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Syria
| lisper wrote:
| Ah.
|
| So because a random identifier contained a four-letter-
| long substring of the name of a city in a sanctioned
| country the whole thing was flagged. Makes perfect sense.
| csours wrote:
| As I said in another comment: You're being sprayed with
| weed killer. It doesn't matter to the farmer that a few
| flowers are killed, it just matters that the weeds are
| kept down.
| myself248 wrote:
| Wow, this could be problematic for Conitec, makers of the GALEP
| series of GAL/EPROM programmers...
| davidwritesbugs wrote:
| Yet another person finding out that Paypal is sh*t. What a world
| where you have to worry about four random letters in your
| messages that may just happen to coincidentally have terrorist
| connotations "Alep" ffs. When I ran a company >10 years ago we
| swept our Paypal account daily to mitigate this risk.
| maxgashkov wrote:
| This is not an option for the majority of businesses now as
| PayPal requires mandatory funds hold which may routinely be on
| the order of 90 days. So even if you sweep it daily, you still
| have 1-3 months of your MRR sitting in flight and at risk
| indefinitely.
| eric-hu wrote:
| This is such a terrible business risk, why are their
| customers not fleeing them like clients fled SVB?
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| PayPal is an enormous percent of total sales at my company.
| We accept all sorts of other payments types. So we drop
| PayPal and then what exactly? Suffer the loss of customers?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I pay a few companies by PayPal. I even switch to
| competitors if they are very similar (reputational-wise
| too) and one accepts PayPal while the other requires my
| credit card; but that doesn't happen very often.
|
| The issue is that the credit card system is broken.
| PayPal is a bit less broken from the customer POV. (At
| least in my country, where if they just removed money
| from my bank account, I'd go to the police and somebody
| would likely be arrested - or rather, I'd report to my
| bank, confident they would go to the police.)
|
| I have no good solution to this either. Fixing the credit
| card system requires replacing credit cards, and the US
| will be an enemy of anybody that tries that.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > The issue is that the credit card system is broken
|
| in what way, is it the fees?
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| For me, it's the extra security and convenience. If the
| website doesn't use Shopify/PayPal, I'm trusting them
| with my credit card information and who knows how good
| their database security is.
| kibwen wrote:
| If using Paypal imposes additional operational risk, it's
| entirely reasonable to charge users extra for using
| Paypal. Offer them lower prices for using a payment
| method that isn't 100% shite.
| themoonisachees wrote:
| As a seller, you are going against paypal TOS if you
| charge a fee to use it, the same way a credit card
| carries the risk of chargebacks but you aren't alowed to
| charge a credit card fee. I agree that this would be an
| effective risk-management tactic (less the fact that the
| fee you charge to mitigate the risk still gets processed
| by the risk factor) but it would also worsen your chances
| of getting banned.
| kibwen wrote:
| Gas stations get around this by advertising the credit
| card price as the full price, and then offering you a
| discounted price for paying with cash.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Right, iirc the newer agreement is that they can't tack
| on a fee greater than the credit card fee.
| mcv wrote:
| This is indeed what I would do if I'd absolutely have to
| use PayPal. Customers can use it if they really want to,
| but they're the ones paying for the risk.
| driverdan wrote:
| Have you tried promoting other methods such as standard
| credit card payments above PayPal? Have you AB tested
| removing PayPal? It could be a convenience but not a
| blocker.
| PeterisP wrote:
| This isn't a Paypal-specific practice, but rather a common
| practice for credit card acceptance for certain types of
| business; if these customers go to some other bank for card
| acceptance a merchant account, they'll get similar
| conditions.
| maxgashkov wrote:
| True to some extent -- usually banks are not as eager to
| ban you without any prior notice as PayPal nowadays.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| PayPal offers the only viable micropayments service on the
| planet. Ardour.org saves 23c on every US$1 transaction we
| make (and there are a lot of them). There are no
| alternatives to this at the present time (and if there are,
| tell me about them).
| maxgashkov wrote:
| For some markets/niches PayPal is a must due to customer
| trust, and they are not shy in exploiting their position to
| the fullest.
| themoonisachees wrote:
| Paypal also has massive costumer trust outside of HN.
| Many people would not dare enter their credit card info
| on a website but will happily click the buy with paypal
| button. It also has incredibly low friction, which makes
| you more money.
|
| In europe, the UX flow for someone ordering with a credit
| card goes: Enter cc info -> wait for 3d-secure
| notification -> click it -> enter passcode and possibly
| fingerprint as well -> click approve -> wait for the site
| to send you back from 3d-secure page -> order confirmed
|
| With paypal, this flow, that happens everytime someone
| buys from your site, even repeat costumers, is reduced
| to: Click buy with paypal -> possibly login to paypal
| again -> click "yes i want to pay this" -> order
| confirmed.
|
| Some sites even make use of paypal's delivery address API
| and don't even require you to enter it.
|
| It's really a no-contest that costumers using paypal will
| drop out of the flow at a significantly lower rate than
| costumers using a card. In some markets, your busines is
| dead in the water if you decide to not accept paypal.
| bentcorner wrote:
| As a user who uses paypal a lot, this is exactly why - I
| don't trust random websites with my credit card number,
| but I already have decided to trust paypal and given an
| option to use paypal vs a site's own CC processing, I'll
| use paypal.
|
| I'd love to be wrong though, since after reading all this
| I kind of feel bad for the merchants, but otherwise I'll
| continue to prefer using paypal.
| beermonster wrote:
| Lots of so called challenger banks offer virtual cards
| which can be used with merchants you do not trust, thus
| mitigating the risk of them having your ACTUAL card
| number which they can abuse/leak.
| imp0cat wrote:
| Yes, but if you already have PayPal, it's much easier to
| just use it as opposed to: 1. get an account with a new
| back 2. transfer funds 3. have new temporary card issued
| 4. use that card to pay
| JohnFen wrote:
| Me too. The issue is that while PayPal is pretty bad, I
| don't know of any other processors that are any better
| (from the customer perspective). And PayPal is universal,
| nobody else is. I don't want to have to manage multiple
| payment processors.
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| I think amazon payments is similar, from the customer
| perspective.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I do all my business via PayPal, and have done so for 20
| years. No mandatory funds hold. My account is cleared
| monthly, but I could have chosen daily (that screws with my
| own personally accounting). $200k/year transaction volume.
|
| Too many people generalize specific stories or their own PP
| experience to all of PP.
| rodgerd wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that seizing customer funds is part of their
| profit model. They've been doing it for a very long time, and
| well beyond anything that could reasonably be explained via
| regulatory or card scheme requirements.
| tsukikage wrote:
| > we swept our Paypal account daily to mitigate this risk
|
| ...so, is there a list of forbidden character combinations one
| should scan for somewhere? That sounds like a super useful
| thing to have.
| personjerry wrote:
| "Swept" in this case means withdrawing all the cash from the
| Paypal account
| reboot81 wrote:
| Answer Paypal with: Unlock our business account within 24h.
| Failure to comply will trigger Little Snitch firewall rule #X,
| completely blocking traffic to *.paypal.com on all X million
| devices.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Not a good idea to make andvance confession of intent to commit
| tortious interference against Paypal and anyone who didn't
| consent to Paypal being blocked.
| inetknght wrote:
| I honestly believe this is not only a valid response but should
| occur anyway.
|
| Paypal is a dumpster fire of scummy business tactics. Their
| emails don't even properly go through paypal.com and are filled
| with all kinds of phishy tactics.
| iso1631 wrote:
| ALEP would be
|
| * Association of Leasehold Enfranchisement Practitioners
|
| * association of employment and learning providers
|
| * Aboriginal Landcare Education Program
|
| * Acute localised exanthematous pustulosis
|
| Seems to be the Romanian name for Aleppo too.
|
| And of course it's 4 random letters, which if random in say 32
| character code would have 28 attempts to get. If those characters
| are letters without IOQZ it would show up once every 8000-9000
| codes generated, 12k for a 24 character code.
|
| Does anyone know what (presumably conspiracy theory) this refers
| to?
| masklinn wrote:
| > Seems to be the Romanian name for Aleppo too.
|
| Also Catalan, Croatian, french, ...
|
| > Does anyone know what (presumably conspiracy theory) this
| refers to?
|
| Like other commenters I'd assume it's related to the syrian
| sanctions.
| [deleted]
| mro_name wrote:
| the P must be for paypal, I am sure.
| eecc wrote:
| It's also a kind of artisanal soap, not surprisingly from
| Aleppo and therefore named after that. It's all over the
| internet, are they going to ban all those hipster, new-agey
| cottage industry websites? Stupid computer... stupid
| [deleted]
| franky47 wrote:
| Avoid listing every possible association, lest entity Paypal
| adapts logic evaluating perpetrators.
| meghan_rain wrote:
| Nice! GPT or selfmade? :-)
| franky47 wrote:
| Self made, but you can't be sure I'm not a large language
| model.
| ho_schi wrote:
| European here. Happily never been a customer of PayPal or used
| harmful stuff like Bitcoin (ponzi-system). "Here" was never a
| need for them.
|
| Why?
|
| The banking system in Europe relied for long time on federated
| and regulated wire-transfer/direct-debit. More than a decade ago
| SEPA made cross-country transfers easily. And the instant-
| transfers are great! Little to no fees for transfers itself.
| Downsides? Both should have been added much earlier! Especially
| instant-transfers. Most Europeans don't value that.
|
| I'm always baffled by differences, especially using checks. And
| yes, we rely on cash because...you've seen PayPal? And fragile
| infrastructure.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Even as a European, there are times when paypal is the only
| viable solution. Though, they have been become less and less
| over the years, but they still are there. For example, looking
| at Humble Bundle just now, there is no SEPA-Option. It's
| paypal, credit card, Klana or Alipay. And I trust Klana and
| Alipay even less than paypal.
| seydor wrote:
| Maybe i should ask my users to pay for the $2 in-game purchases
| with wire transfer
| altairprime wrote:
| The US direct transfer system is supposed to launch later this
| year. If it works out, it is going to absolutely crush PayPal,
| and Roundrect Cash or whatever they call themselves these days.
| I can't wait.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| FedNow is between banks, though, not an end-user service.
| Assuming it is as awesome as Zelle is, I don't think it'll
| crush my habit of using Venmo (which is a PayPal subsidiary).
| altairprime wrote:
| We'll see, certainly. I remain hopeful.
| sampa wrote:
| but remember kids, bitcoin is only for criminals
| fundad wrote:
| Is PayPal a bank or some kind of exchange? It's one or the other
| folx.
| [deleted]
| xnorswap wrote:
| So what's stopping them writing a letter explaining it was a
| randomly generated license key and getting unrestricted?
| dtgriscom wrote:
| Nothing, except the fact that nobody at PayPal would read the
| letter.
| Euphorbium wrote:
| Western union, the preffered payment method of scammers is less
| scammy than paypal.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| On one of the Reddit book subs with a lot of vendors, I made a
| nasty remark about PayPal and got downvoted and condemned for it.
| A lot of people still depend on it. I guess if you never get on
| PayPal's bad side, you're OK, but woe betide you if you do.
| [deleted]
| jononomo wrote:
| I don't understand what PayPal's justification here is.
| sneak wrote:
| Aleppo is in Syria.
| di456 wrote:
| With all of these horror stories could there be a class action
| suit? Why no regulatory enforcement, no recourse for the victims?
|
| Seems like a racketeering operation but ianal.
| [deleted]
| chang1 wrote:
| About a year ago, I bought clothes online using PayPal for my
| mother (and shipped to her address). PayPal blocked the
| transaction and temporarily suspended my account until I could
| verify a detail. When I logged in to verify, it was asking for
| the recipient's (my mother's) birth date. I thought it odd that
| they would ask, and also know, the birth date of someone PayPal
| has no association with.
|
| I called their support (finding a human to talk to was difficult)
| to ask for the reason why I would need to give out my mother's
| birth date. I was asking for other ways I could verify and that I
| shouldn't be asked to give out someone else's PII. The support
| person started to become defensive, sarcastically asking "you
| don't even know your mom's own birthday!?".
|
| I could tell this person saw nothing wrong with the ask and
| thought I was being intentionally combative. I ended up conceding
| and giving the information. Since then, I've stopped using PayPal
| as a payment method.
|
| I always thought this incident strange and have wondered about
| how their verification method works.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > give out someone else's PII
|
| They ask about information related to your identity.
|
| In this case "someone else's" PII is on your birth certificate.
| yayr wrote:
| One assumption could be that there are certain
| products/services that have age related regulations and Paypal
| needs to comply. Maybe, if your product or supplier wasn't on
| that list but you still got asked for a birthdate there was a
| misconfiguration in that regulation rule set...
| LawTalkingGuy wrote:
| One should assume that while they have your money they'll
| look for anything to use to keep it. Companies are literally
| legal devices for diffusing responsibility and hiding what
| the right hand knows from the left hand to remove the intent
| from what would be fraud.
|
| They play all the games people here report - support reps who
| are nearly unreachable and who all refuse to read previous
| communication so everything starts from scratch, randomly
| just closing the case, etc.
|
| It'd be hilarious if you could torture a paypal exec with
| their own company's treatment. Put a wheel lock on their car
| because you claim a similar looking car was stolen on the
| other side of the country. Refuse to take the lock off their
| car until they can explain the origin of the car's brandname.
| Relock the car immediately after unlocking it because they
| attempted to drive away too soon. Relock it the next time
| because they didn't drive away soon enough. Lock all of their
| cars because there's been "too much activity" on their
| vehicles.
| n_u_l_l wrote:
| > ## Confirm some info about yourself
|
| > You'll need to answer some questions to verify your identity.
| These questions come from a public database dating back as far
| as 20 years. They may be about property, places, or people you
| know. We don't save or store the questions or answers in our
| system.
|
| https://www.paypal.com/us/cshelp/article/why-do-i-have-to-co...
|
| Interesting. This would mean that they actually have the data
| to confirm whether it is correct.
| TOMDM wrote:
| I might be misunderstanding, but what's the value in asking
| someone to verify identity via info available in a public
| database?
| paddw wrote:
| Stops low-effort scams. Other than that, zero.
| TheNewsIsHere wrote:
| > Interesting. This would mean that they actually have the
| data to confirm whether it is correct.
|
| I don't find that surprising. I've hired a private
| investigator in the past. The amount of data US consumer
| reporting agencies have goes back decades. They will happily
| sell it to you as long as you agree not to use data older
| than regulatory thresholds. Credit reporting tends to have
| 5-7 year thresholds, so many people think that's all they
| have. They keep it for much longer, and just make you agree
| you won't use data older than the applicable threshold.
|
| The reports I gotten from my PI have had biographical data
| going back to the late eighties. They've even provided SSNs
| and DOBs with nothing more than a name and general address
| match.
| feoren wrote:
| > You'll need to answer some questions to verify your
| identity. These questions come from a public database dating
| back as far as 20 years.
|
| Wait, I need to verify my identity by regurgitating public
| information about me? However PayPal scraped up that
| information, an attacker could as well. This is absolutely
| security theater.
| neltnerb wrote:
| Not only are you correct, their database has wrong info
| about me that I've had to memorize the wrong answers to in
| order to prove who I am.
|
| It's not great.
| jibe wrote:
| I was the victim of identity theft in the 90s, and I
| often get questions based on the address, and fake credit
| accounts the thief opened. Super frustrating.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Similar scenario here. While my ex-wife and I were
| separated, pre-divorce, she thoughtfully applied for
| credit in my name and gave the address where she was
| living. Now I have to either choose to lie or fail this
| type of identity verification. I should really take the
| time to contact the credit bureaus and get it fixed.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| How did you learn the answers?
| neltnerb wrote:
| My last name is unusual enough that I recognized the
| street names that family had lived on from the set of
| options.
|
| So not my address, but real ones that extended family
| members lived at. Just not me.
| prottog wrote:
| Hilarious, in the sense that I have to laugh because
| otherwise I would cry.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Guess I am in trouble then if I ever get stuck into
| something like that. My 'public' information whenever I
| query it is a blend of at least 3 other people. Of which
| only one I know. One DB thinks I am married to my mother-
| in-law.
| lesquivemeau wrote:
| Is this database actually a thing ? A private company asking
| these questions is already worrying on its own but them
| already having the answer really feels like over-reaching.
| I'm pretty sure it's a US thing because there would be no way
| this would be legal in the EU but i'm tempted to do a GDPR
| request to PayPal
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I've interacted with multiple financial services that do the
| same thing. This is not unique to paypal.
| cge wrote:
| While I've seen these sorts of verification methods quite
| rarely, what's very frustrating about them is that in my
| experiences, the questions both make assumptions about what
| information is private for a person, and also come from
| rudimentary matching on public databases, which can easily
| result in questions you wouldn't be expected to the know the
| answer to.
|
| In one case, while, I think, signing up for something that
| should not have required strong security, I think an online
| account for a shipper, I was asked for the birth date of a
| 'relative who lived with me'. Only, she didn't live with me:
| she was my ex-aunt, who had not spoken to any of us since her
| divorce when I was around 8, and who had moved out of the
| house, and out of the state, around two decades before we
| moved into it. The matching appears to have been entirely
| based on two people with the same last name having been
| recorded at the same address at some points over the course
| of 20 years, with no cross-referencing of other data or
| whether the dates were at all near each other. And given how
| common my last name is, it would not have been too surprising
| to have simply been asked the birth date of a complete
| stranger.
|
| I actually called the company to find out how to get an
| account without answering this rather infeasible question,
| and they pointed out that if I just tried creating an account
| again, it would ask me a different set of ridiculous
| questions. I did, and while I don't recall what the questions
| were, I do recall they were such that a basic search for my
| name online would have immediately answered them, providing
| no identity verification whatsoever.
| mcv wrote:
| Do they even know your mom's birthdate? Can't you just give
| them a random date?
|
| Also, if you bought something at a webshop, why does PayPal
| know who it's being sent to? They just need to know you and the
| webshop, don't they? Who the webshop sends it to is between you
| and the webshop.
| gpvos wrote:
| Sometimes when a credit card payment is handled by Paypal
| they ask for my first name. I enter my initials, since that's
| what actually on my credit card and is what I always use when
| making payments with it, but they don't accept it. Maybe
| somehow they know my actual first name, but I'm not going to
| give it to them so I then abort the payment.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > I enter my initials, since that's what actually on my
| credit card and is what I always use when making payments
| with it, but they don't accept it
|
| They (or probably just _the form_ ) don't like dots and/or
| too few characters in the field.
|
| As sibling says you can actually enter anything you want in
| the "CARDHOLDER NAME" field 99% of times. For years I type
| "$BANK NAME" or "$BANKNAME CARD" (note the space) there and
| I never been denied.
| blep_ wrote:
| In many cases, you can enter _any_ name. Have fun.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Indeed, if you use privacy.com to get a temporary credit
| card (this is for totally legit purposes, folks!), you can
| use _any_ name and address on the form you enter it in.
| Only the credit card #, expiration date, and security code
| are verified.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I've signed-up for dozens and dozens of things with January
| 1st 1900 as my birthday. They never check.
| wruza wrote:
| I'm using 1970-01-01, since it looks nice in their
| database. Could also switch to 1992-02-01 now.
| jackmoore wrote:
| > Could also switch to 1992-02-01 now
|
| Huh?
| superturkey650 wrote:
| 696902400
| wruza wrote:
| It looks twice as nice in unix time ;)
| orthecreedence wrote:
| 1992-02-01T18:41:36.969Z Seems nice too, if you want to
| get specific.
| Alupis wrote:
| > why does PayPal know who it's being sent to? They just need
| to know you and the webshop, don't they? Who the webshop
| sends it to is between you and the webshop.
|
| No, it's not, because the buyer has chosen to use PayPal's
| services for protection, and in order for the merchant to
| fulfill their end of the deal and also receive PayPal's
| protection (against chargebacks, disputes, etc) the merchant
| is required to ship to the address on the order (which PayPal
| has a record of for verification).
|
| If you offer PayPal as a checkout option, you are required to
| follow their rules for fulfillment, otherwise you risk losing
| a PayPal dispute if filed later on.
| chang1 wrote:
| That's a good point, I don't actually know. I just assumed
| yes because they would ask. I also didn't want to complicate
| the process of releasing the funds - perhaps that was naive.
|
| I believe in this checkout flow, it kicked me over to PayPal
| where I could specify the shipping address there. PayPal
| probably relays the address back to the merchant, akin to
| checking out with Apple Pay where you specify a shipping
| address via the Wallet app.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| If the merchant used PayPal checkout, then PayPal does all
| that processing then sends the information to the merchant.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Reminds me when I went to pick up my first UK passport when I
| gained citizenship. The passport office had no interest in
| looking at my foreign passport to verify my identity. Instead
| they asked me a series of question about my family, what
| profession they have, etc, that I know they couldn't have the
| answer to, unless they did some investigations that I think
| were highly unlikely given the volume of applications after
| the Brexit vote.
|
| I think instead they were just checking if I looked like I
| was answering the question confidently or if I looked like I
| was trying to make things up.
| dabinat wrote:
| Oh yeah, they do that all the time. I have dual citizenship
| and they've asked me a few times upon leaving the UK where
| I was staying, who I was with, what those people's
| professions were, etc. I think it's just random spot-checks
| to see if you look nervous. But if you get annoyed with
| them and tell them you're a citizen they stop.
| mike-cardwell wrote:
| I was flying from the UK to the USA once, on my own. They
| asked me what my hobbies are and what the most recent movie
| I saw was.
| vajrabum wrote:
| A lot of online credit fraud schemes involve sending things
| to an unwitting 3rd party.
| cglong wrote:
| Sorry, could you go into more detail here? This happened to
| my mom several years ago, and we always wondered why.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Steal CC info from person A.
|
| Buy item from using junk email address and shipping
| address of person B.
|
| On delivery day, wait near person B's home, and grab the
| package when UPS delivers it. If person B manages to get
| to the package first, scammer is only out some time.
|
| Junk email and 3rd party mailing address - harder to
| track scammer. Of course, this ignores IP address and
| similar - smart scammer would also use Tor and other
| tools to obfuscate the online transactions.
| mike wrote:
| One thing it could have been is the "brushing" scam
|
| Creating fake orders to enable fake reviews for a product
| to be posted, boosting the product listing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brushing_(e-commerce)
| buildbuildbuild wrote:
| Makes you wonder how much KYC data is being used for ad tech.
| There's a perverse incentive to do more KYC, for more than
| compliance reasons.
| lejohnq wrote:
| This sounds awful. I honestly don't know my mom's birthday and
| perhaps interestingly she doesn't technically know it either.
| Papers lost (and probably made up) multiple times when her
| family fled her home and then country before ending up here.
|
| And she definitely has a birthday on her driver's license now,
| but I think she might have to look at it to make sure she got
| it right.
| pengaru wrote:
| On a long enough time line, we probably all don't know our
| own birthday, if still alive....
| withinboredom wrote:
| I stopped keeping track after 21. I have no idea how old I
| am as I don't really celebrate my birthday. All I know for
| sure is that I turned 21 over ten years ago...
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| I'm sure there are plenty of people refugeed young that
| don't know.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Sounds pretty certain that you would never be asked this
| question, since it is not a matter of public record (or at
| least, not the public records these systems tend to use)
| savagedata wrote:
| Was PayPal trying to verify your identity or that you know your
| recipient's identity (who's coincidentally your mother)?
|
| I'm surprised if PayPal expected you to know your recipient's
| birthday, but "What's your mother's birthday?" would be a
| common question to verify _your_ identity. They should have
| moved on to another question if you had a moral objection.
|
| On the other hand, scammers will often ship goods to a nearby
| address and pick them up off the porch, so verifying that you
| know your recipient might actually be a fraud countermeasure.
| kernal wrote:
| >and shipped to her address
|
| This is what likely triggered it. People that steal PayPal
| credentials change the shipping address to something other than
| the address on the PayPal account.
| dharmab wrote:
| I also got yelled at when trying to get a quote on auto
| insurance over the phone because I didn't know my dad's
| birthday. (Identity verification?) The man ardently supports
| <anti LGBT political party> and me and half my friends are
| LGBT, you think I buy him gifts?
| float4 wrote:
| > PayPal has restricted our business account because we have
| invoiced a license key containing the random letter sequence
| "ALEP".
|
| This makes me wonder: what's the best way to generate "safe"
| license keys? Binary feels like an obvious solution (binary keys
| surely get through virtually all blacklists?) but at the same
| time: binary license keys would be very long _and_ very atypical,
| so maybe fraud detection systems mark them as suspicious anyway.
|
| Maybe just generate random alphanum license keys and run them
| through some open source blacklists yourself? I doubt "ALEP" is
| in those lists though.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Windows keys use digits, consonants and Y, but then they have
| sequences like BKDR, F7CK, GYMP and 666.
| fps_doug wrote:
| What a time to be alive where you have to worry about how you
| generate your license keys as to not be labeled a terrorist.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| It also begs the question: would actual terrorists put the
| name of their organisation in any of their financial
| transactions?
|
| I know you should never underestimate human stupidity but
| even taking that into account this still feels like security
| theatre on the part of PayPal.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=begs+the+question
| msm_ wrote:
| Not really responding to your question, but one of my
| friend jokingly returned money to another friend with a
| bank transfer titled "for jihad". Needless to say, both
| banks were not amused. They both were "verified" on the
| phone and confirmed they are not, in fact, actually
| terrorists. I wonder how many people-years banks waste on
| pranks like this.
| lazide wrote:
| How could you verify someone was not a terrorist on the
| phone?
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Well, he sounded kinda like a nice guy.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> I know you should never underestimate human stupidity_
|
| Those of us "of a certain age," will remember the old adage
| _"To err is human, but it takes a computer to really f***
| things up."_
| PeterisP wrote:
| Many such organizations are legitimate legal entities in
| some country and handle purchases; and of course there are
| sanctioned people as well, and a payment from or to them
| does include their name.
| TheNorthman wrote:
| That's hilarious. "Payment of vest and explosives for ISIS
| attack"
| epgui wrote:
| I think they might. Maybe not all and always, but a thing
| about terrorists which can be quite mind boggling at times
| is that not everyone seems to agree who they are. Just look
| at how many countries are still doing business with Russia
| and other countries with less-than-stellar reputations.
| There may be plenty of parties who would actually not mind
| doing business with disreputable entities, for various
| reasons. I would assume they'd try to be a bit clever, but
| I wouldn't be surprised to see lax controls.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It is highly unlikely, but not impossible. Anecdotally, I
| did see a case of a business that put a real location of
| the business they are working with, which happened to be
| in a sanctioned country. Needless to say, it generated
| all sorts of questions and eventual OFAC contact.
|
| Bottom line is: it happens, but I agree with you that
| people that know what they are doing are not putting "Pay
| for assasination by Osama Bin Laden on 03/28/23" in
| reference field.
| hgsgm wrote:
| "terrorist" is an opinion or a judgment, not an objective
| fact. A better term in a KYC context "sanctioned entity"
| or somesuch.
|
| If someone X is comfortable doing business with/as entity
| Y but a bank Z is not, it's totally sensible that X would
| say Y to the bank Z and bank Z would block them.
| Koshkin wrote:
| > _" terrorist" is an opinion or a judgment_
|
| More importantly, "terrorists" is often used by some
| governments in reference to protesters or any group that
| they see as unfriendly to them.
| mcv wrote:
| Why is the license key in the payment description? The
| description should just be "update license key", and not
| contain the actual key.
| [deleted]
| ht85 wrote:
| Alternating digits and letters seems easy and robust. That is
| until you get unlucky entropy and send some 1337ed out curse
| words :p
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| edit: Tbh. The more I think about it, maybe it is not such a
| far fetched idea after all with the assumption that they keys
| are temporary.
|
| **
|
| Eh. Coming from that environment, it would not be that easy for
| a reason that has nothing to do with technology. The lists that
| financial companies use are largely known ( some published by
| US Treasury for everyone to use ) and you can reasonably
| estimate a threshold most institutions will find acceptable.
|
| However, the issue is political and not technical. OFAC itself
| has grown its SDN list[1] to 6300 names and that is just one
| list and the tool has been already severely overutilized ( in
| my opinion anyway, so take that with a grain of salt ), but if
| the trend and current geopolitical situation is any guide, this
| number will only increase.
|
| What I am saying is that you have a big and very variable base
| to build a key from ( edit: come to think of it - not from:P )
| and there is no guarantee and old key won't suddenly become
| 'hot'.
|
| Here, the answer is to the problem is actually political.
| Affected businesses have to start really complaining, if they
| are affected by the requirements. I have no evidence suggesting
| that is the case ( based on what I saw maybe 20% of
| transactions face that kind of scrutiny and even smaller
| percentage is questioned the way the OP is ). Naturally, it
| does not help that this process is not standardized so every
| single financial institution does their own thing..
|
| [1]https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-
| sanctions/...
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > what's the best way to generate "safe" license keys?
|
| In the library (like the kind with books) field where I work,
| one identifier standard was devised that intentionally has
| alternating letters and digits, with never more than two
| letters in a row. Explicitly for the intention of avoiding the
| possibility of any meaningful words (that might end up being
| offensive or just off-putting in an undesirable way.)
|
| It does make the identifiers longer for the same entropy/byte
| width, compared to a more normal BASE-X with an alphabet. Which
| mattered to me when they were going to be used in a URL,
| although probably doesn't for a license key. I personally in my
| projects stopped using this system for a more straightforward
| "Ascii-85" like encoding (which can contain coincidental
| meaningful words), because it was more convenient.
|
| The particular system the library community was using
| [https://n2t.net/e/noid.html] was, I still think, over-
| complicated for at least my needs, but the alternating
| letter/number schema seems attractive to me now and perhaps
| worth slightly more characters in identifiers and slightly more
| complex algorithm for creation than a simple base-x encoding.
| cromulent wrote:
| It sounds good, but of course for "security" it might not be
| enough. 626f6d62 is alternating letters and digits, with
| never more than two letters in a row. And it spells "bomb"
| when converted from hex to ascii.
|
| Some security scanners do check for this kind of thing.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Why would you convert an identifier to ascii as if it were
| hex? And it seems unlikely that (eg) paypal would do so?
|
| But, sure, it's just one idea. You can add more layers to
| make it even less likely something will seem problematic to
| someone somewhere; a 100% guarantee seems impossible,
| especially if you are going to allow things like above
| "What if we brainstorm for a way this could be a puzzle
| where the answer is a problematic word to someone". No
| "scanner" will even possibly catch every possible thing in
| that domain, no matter how unlikely.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Store it as a brainfuck program that generates the required
| string.
| blueflow wrote:
| You cant. Insane people will always find hidden codes and dog-
| whistles in your messages.
| sekai wrote:
| Weekly reminder to not associate vital business / personal
| accounts with PayPal. They can't be trusted with your finances.
| hot_gril wrote:
| This seems like a common thing across all payment processors,
| though. People know the pain of dealing with Stripe too,
| especially for C2C. Pretty sure government pressure is behind
| it all, with KYC being the tip of the iceberg.
| mysterydip wrote:
| What are the good alternatives for vital business/personal
| accounts?
| mikrotikker wrote:
| In NZ we can transfer money willy nilly between different
| bank accounts. Hell even to aussie accoubts i dont think its
| too hard. Could start with getting that implemented.
| eythian wrote:
| This is normal in the SEPA zone too. Within some countries
| (at least the Netherlands) there are apps that make it
| easier, but all they're basically doing is putting the
| transfer behind a slightly more convenient link that
| doesn't require typing in an account number.
| greggsy wrote:
| I've never thought about it until SVB collapse, but I wonder
| how they address the risk of a liquidity crisis?
|
| Do they hold assets other than their customer's deposits? Are
| they even a bank?
| themoonisachees wrote:
| Paypal has fought very hard not to be classed as a bank
| (which comes with regulations and certifications).
|
| As far as I know, paypal doesn't do fractional reserve
| banking (because it's not a bank and that would be illegal),
| it just collects a fee on the seller's side for each
| transaction, so everyone pulling out all of their money at
| once would probably not be that disastrous, supposedly they
| do have that money just sitting in an account. It would be
| disastrous to paypal as a business, and they would probably
| use fine print to keep that money, but out of greed, not out
| of lack of liquidity.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Their European branch, PayPal Luxemburg, has a European
| banking license. The US company maintains that they are not a
| bank. So it kind of depends on where you are, or which arm of
| PayPal we are talking about.
|
| I don't think they do any fractional reserve banking though
| (at least they didn't two decades ago), so there shouldn't be
| any liquidity risk. All dollars in deposits should be backed
| by real dollars.
| cowl wrote:
| Why would they have liquidity Crisis? Are you picturing
| Paypal customers holding in Paypal considerable Balances? 99%
| of the customers use it only as an Intermediary. Money goes
| in : Money-Fee goes out. Unless they are doing scetchy things
| in the meantime there is no risk of liquidity here. Maybe I'm
| mistaken and nowdays People are keeping huge Balances in
| Paypal but that has not been the case in the past afaik.
| MrBurrito wrote:
| One point that makes this important for me: this is not a random
| guy with a questionable business trying to smear paypal, as far
| as I can tell, these are the real developers of LittleSnitch, a
| well known, established development team in the EU.
| nolok wrote:
| Paypal is also registered as a bank in the EU (in Luxembourg),
| and as such is liable as a bank for such things. I just don't
| think someone bothered to take them to court over it.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-03-28 23:01 UTC)