[HN Gopher] PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter
        
       Author : tirz
       Score  : 260 points
       Date   : 2021-06-02 17:51 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.eff.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.eff.org)
        
       | c01n wrote:
       | Paypal is a scam. Use crypto-coins!!!
        
         | lostgame wrote:
         | So I can pay with crypto on Amazon? Etsy? Discogs?
         | 
         | I don't understand why there are so many posts here saying
         | 'just use crypto', like - PayPal is a scam and needs a
         | replacement but the problem is until sites start _accepting_
         | crypto as simply as PayPal works then things will stay the
         | same.
         | 
         | What you're saying to do in your comment - on most major online
         | retailers - is not yet possible, and it will probably take a
         | long time even if it can find critical mass.
         | 
         | Crypto is another _currency_ - it's not another payment
         | processor and while those are starting to exist we are nowhere
         | close.
         | 
         | I believe the laments here are more so related to PayPal's
         | dominance - for most websites it's that or your credit card.
        
       | readflaggedcomm wrote:
       | >This is the first time we have heard about financial persecution
       | for defending internet freedom in the Tor community.
       | 
       | But they don't know that. Paypal refuses to give details. He
       | describes a second recipent, the hosting company, and there could
       | be more. Paypal's fraud and crime detection is pitiful*, and
       | their silence can cover both incompetence and malice.
       | 
       | [*] https://slate.com/technology/2020/02/paypal-venmo-iran-
       | syria...
        
         | lsaferite wrote:
         | > they don't know that
         | 
         | Isn't that already covered by
         | 
         | > first time we have heard about
        
           | tssva wrote:
           | Paypal has denied that funding of Tor nodes is the reason for
           | closing the account so the EFF is making claims without any
           | proof.
        
             | whizzwr wrote:
             | No. Paypal denied giving any details. It could be 100%
             | because of Tor, could be 100% unrelated to Tor. Who knows,
             | that's what EFF is disputing.
        
       | smoldesu wrote:
       | Whoever made this call must have been pretty inebriated. All of
       | the bad actors here are willing to pay for their Tor nodes with
       | crypto, which really only sabotages the legitimate users on the
       | platform.
        
       | tyingq wrote:
       | I don't understand how it's legal for PayPal to hold his money
       | for 180 days because they don't like the nature of his
       | transactions. Kick him off their platform, sure...that's their
       | prerogative. But why do they get to hold the money hostage?
        
         | lynndotpy wrote:
         | I believe that's in the ToS. At least in the US, they have a
         | quite restrictive binding arbitration agreement.
        
           | tyingq wrote:
           | Interesting. I wonder if a small claims court (assuming the
           | balance wasn't too large) would help.
           | 
           | Edit: found the text in the TOS:
           | 
           |  _" Holds based on PayPal's risk decisions
           | 
           | We may place a hold on payments sent to your PayPal account
           | if, in our sole discretion, we believe that there may be a
           | high level of risk associated with you, your PayPal account,
           | or your transactions or that placing such a hold is necessary
           | to comply with state or federal regulatory requirements...
           | 
           | Risk-based holds generally remain in place for up to 21 days
           | from the date the payment was received into your PayPal
           | account. We may release the hold earlier under certain
           | circumstances ..., but any earlier release is at our sole
           | discretion. The hold may last longer than 21 days if the
           | payment is challenged as a payment that should be invalidated
           | and reversed based on a disputed transaction as discussed in
           | the following paragraph below. In this case, we'll hold the
           | payment in your PayPal account until the matter is resolved
           | (but no longer than 180 days)."_
           | 
           | https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/useragreement-full
        
         | judge2020 wrote:
         | In general it might be there to ensure no fraud is happening -
         | when my account was flagged for being under 18 (at the time),
         | they held my money for the 180 days before letting me take it
         | out. I imagine they do (or used to) experience fraud from
         | people signing up for accounts using the identities of
         | children.
        
         | slownews45 wrote:
         | Uh - because he may be ripping people off or people may file
         | claims for a refund, and if they give it to the scammer it's
         | hard to give get it back to make folks who got ripped off
         | whole?
         | 
         | This is 101 stuff. Credit card companies do this routinely as
         | well. I'm hearing fyre festivals will be harder to get
         | immediate payout on.
         | 
         | Travel does this when businesses are near bust - credit card
         | companies will hold funds.
        
           | dahart wrote:
           | > because he may be ripping people off or people may file
           | claims for a refund
           | 
           | This is a reasonable argument in general, but it falls apart
           | here because there was a human in the loop who knows why the
           | account was disabled, and knows that it wasn't for suspicion
           | of scammy behavior, nor for suspicion of insufficient funds.
        
           | tyingq wrote:
           | It's a 20 year old account, and this activity doesn't seem to
           | be new, or associated with fraud, etc. What aspect of what
           | he's doing seems similar to Fyre? I don't understand the
           | flippant tone.
        
             | slownews45 wrote:
             | The tech companies are not analyzing things at this level.
             | They close a number of accounts each month. A certain
             | number of those were engaged in fraud and will generate
             | chargeback activity. Others were legit but accepting
             | payments in advance. Once the business is out of business
             | those too will generate chargeback activity. Some are legit
             | but had bad service, lost key employees resulting in
             | complaints. Once the account is shut those also often
             | generate chargebacks.
             | 
             | So they sit on the money for 180 days, it doesn't cost them
             | anything and saves them a big pain in trying to claw money
             | back from any of these folks who may not look at them that
             | fondly after being cutoff for what may have a been a silly
             | reason.
        
               | syshum wrote:
               | The problem here is that is sounds like he was SENDING
               | money not RECIEVING money,
               | 
               | They can trace where the money came from, if I put money
               | into the account so I could pay someone they find
               | objectionable and then shut me down they should not be
               | able to hold that money because it is not a fraud issue,
               | i did not receive from a 3rd party, it is 100% my money
               | 
               | yet they also hold these funds for the 180 days
        
               | teclordphrack2 wrote:
               | Something tells me, "read the fine print"?
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | sofixa wrote:
             | And his account can be taken over by someone else, or his
             | behaviour could change. Account age shouldn't be a huge
             | determining factor.
        
       | xvector wrote:
       | News like this is proof that cryptocurrencies like Monero are
       | necessary.
       | 
       | It's proof (not that we needed any) that centralized finance does
       | not have your best interests at heart, and they can and will
       | abuse their power.
        
         | teclordphrack2 wrote:
         | Nothing keeps an exchange from taking your money and running or
         | not receiving the goods/service you pay for.
        
           | xvector wrote:
           | Businesses are legally obligated to deliver your goods, so
           | they will do that anyways, just like if you pay in cash today
           | and go back to the store asking for a refund.
        
             | richardwhiuk wrote:
             | Paypal are legally obligated to hand back the money after
             | 180 days.
             | 
             | Nothing stops an exchange refusing to do business with you.
        
         | swensel wrote:
         | Why Monero specifically though, with all the options in crypto
         | available?
         | 
         | If you want privacy there are also Zcash shielded transactions.
         | Or if all you want to do is eliminate central parties then why
         | not just Bitcoin?
         | 
         | My understanding with Monero is if you don't run your own node
         | there's not that much privacy guarantee anyway (otherwise you
         | have to trust the third party node you point to). Someone
         | please correct me if I'm mistaken about that.
        
           | xvector wrote:
           | Monero is much more private than Zcash.
           | 
           | The issue with Zcash shielded transactions is that something
           | like 14% of transactions are shielded, but only 1% are truly
           | private. Optionally shielded transactions make chain analysis
           | much easier and immediately make said transaction suspect. So
           | you cannot comfortably use Zcash for private transactions.
           | See the report by Chainalysis [1]:
           | 
           | > 14% of the ZCash transactions use a so-called "shielded
           | pool", but in only 6% of all cases both the sender, recipient
           | and the number of transactions are fully encrypted. The
           | report states: "So even if the concealment on Zcash is
           | stronger due to the zk-SNARK encryption, Chainalysis can
           | still provide the transaction value and at least one address
           | for over 99% of the ZEC activities."
           | 
           | Clearly, optional privacy is not privacy at all. It needs to
           | be on by default, which is the philosophy behind Monero.
           | 
           | Re. Monero nodes - if you're using a remote node you can just
           | use Tor, which I believe is soon to be baked in by default.
           | Otherwise, Monero is still quite private. Your transaction
           | history, transaction amounts etc are not revealed to nodes.
           | Some metadata like restore height is, but that's not a big
           | deal.
           | 
           | [1]: https://www.kryptokumpel.de/en/kryptowaehrungen/chainaly
           | sis-...
        
             | reedjosh wrote:
             | Arrr or Pirate is Zcash, but with always on privacy BTW. I
             | like it a lot, but it's relatively new.
             | 
             | Also, the ZKSnark method that provides the privacy requires
             | that the devs threw away their initial PKs. If you trust
             | they did, then it's a great option.
        
               | Wistar wrote:
               | I _think_ VRSC is similar to ARRR and Pirate.
        
             | Wistar wrote:
             | "IRS offered $625,000 bounty to anyone who could 'crack'
             | Monero; no one succeeded"
             | 
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25752042
        
               | R0b0t1 wrote:
               | You can analyze the dust spend in transactions to
               | deanonymize Monero users. You need to be processing a lot
               | of transactions to do this, or have the ability to spy on
               | the processing of a lot of transactions.
        
               | reedjosh wrote:
               | Even if someone could _see_ the transaction and identify
               | the user behind the wallets, at least a crypto still
               | prevents fund holding and transaction blocking.
        
         | pessimizer wrote:
         | If it were government crypto (or centralized government money
         | transfer), you'd have recourse in the courts.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | reedjosh wrote:
           | But if it were just crypto, nobody would be able to hold your
           | funds. I don't think transferring the power to an even more
           | inscrutable bureaucracy makes this problem any better.
           | 
           | Most people already acknowledge that the little guy doesn't
           | have the funds to hire the lawyers for a protracted court
           | case.
        
         | skrowl wrote:
         | Monero + Distributed Exchanges will go a long way to fix these
         | kinds of online payment problems.
         | 
         | Unfortunately, at least near term you'll still need fiat-tether
         | "on ramps" to convert your local currency back and forth to
         | tether before you move them to a distributed (or at least a
         | non-KYC) exchange to Monero, then sending to your local wallet,
         | then use online.
        
           | xvector wrote:
           | Yup. It's worth checking out LocalMonero [1] and the Haveno
           | DEX [2]. The former already works and lets you buy Monero
           | without relying on a KYC exchange.
           | 
           | [1] https://localmonero.co/
           | 
           | [2] https://github.com/haveno-dex/haveno
        
       | Ekaros wrote:
       | Paypal being Paypal? Nothing new on Internet. And this sort of
       | action is exactly why I will never accept money via Paypal.
        
       | unethical_ban wrote:
       | "We don't like what you are doing, and are going to hold your
       | money for six months. I hope you don't subsist on it, or have any
       | business obligations to attend to. We'll call you."
       | 
       | This should be illegal for Paypal to do, period. Absolutely
       | illegal.
       | 
       | And if it is on behalf of a government or banking/fraud
       | regulations, then the person should be referred to relevant
       | agencies.
       | 
       | Let's be clear and drop the pretense: They are confiscating his
       | property.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | slownews45 wrote:
         | Are you sure it is being confiscated? He will have a claim
         | then.
         | 
         | What can happen is when your credit card / other payment
         | providers cuts you off is that you go out of business. You
         | might fail to provide services to users - so they do a
         | chargeback / ask for a refund from payment provider.
         | 
         | So when a payment provider is shutting you down, they usually
         | want to hold onto some money to be able to handle those refund
         | requests. Very common in travel situations as well.
        
           | mdoms wrote:
           | So PayPal is holding onto his money in case he incurs
           | expenses as a result of going out of business due to PayPal
           | cutting him off? And this seems normal and good to you?
        
             | wearywanderer wrote:
             | The beatings will continue until morale improves.
        
             | slownews45 wrote:
             | This is the way many providers that offer recourse
             | settlements handle things.
             | 
             | They have data showing when they cut off a business from
             | processing credit cards etc they may receive claims from
             | customers who have already paid whose money they are either
             | holding or have forwarded.
             | 
             | If they are holding it they refund that customer, and
             | business can ask for payment using another method.
             | 
             | If they are not holding funds, they run into an issue of
             | asking merchant for money (which is difficult to collect).
             | 
             | So most providers of this type when making a decision to
             | end a business relationship hold onto the funds for a while
             | to let everything settle. This is not unique to paypal.
             | 
             | Some providers don't hold funds if payor has no recourse.
             | You usually need to be settling with what are called "good
             | funds" for that to be the case, then merchant is paid out
             | usually within 1 day under all circumstances. A fair number
             | of B2B wire type clearing operations work like this.
             | 
             | I'm just explaining what happens. They don't generally
             | closely evaluate the reasons or likely outcomes of account
             | closures, and there is enough fraud and profit motive /
             | cost cutting in system that the rules tilt pretty heavily
             | against merchant.
             | 
             | That said, if OP is not lying and they really do confiscate
             | the funds there will be an issue for them. Especially
             | individuals, they'll send the unclaimed funds to the state
             | generally even if not claimed by the person.
        
         | heavyset_go wrote:
         | PayPal has been doing this for more than a decade now. I
         | wouldn't be surprised if its part of their business model to
         | hold funds indefinitely and to collect interest on them.
        
           | astrange wrote:
           | There's hardly any such thing as interest in the US and there
           | hasn't been for at least a decade.
           | 
           | Besides, if that was their business it'd be in their S-1 and
           | it isn't. (IIRC it says they keep customer funds in interest
           | free accounts)
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | krisroadruck wrote:
         | Way back in 2011 they did this to me. My marketing agency had
         | been running most of our customer payments through PayPal for
         | several months, and we were growing fast. At some point they
         | took the $50K we had in the account and froze it for 180 days
         | with no recourse, claiming it was to protect against charge
         | backs (despite us never having a single chargeback).
         | 
         | I explained to them that if they didn't release the funds they
         | would most certainly have charge backs because we'd be out of
         | business and thus unable to deliver on the work promised for
         | the money.
         | 
         | Nothing we said did any good. That is until I looked up the
         | laws in Washington State about money transmitters. Turns out
         | based on the specific license they had in Washington State at
         | the time, it was illegal for them to hold funds for longer than
         | 7 days.
         | 
         | Me telling them this did nothing at all, but when I sent a
         | letter to my state governor explaining my predicament and
         | someone from that office sent a letter to the folks at PayPal,
         | suddenly my funds were released and a note was placed on my
         | account to never withhold funds on that account ever again.
         | Been smooth sailing ever since :-D
        
           | tomjakubowski wrote:
           | > a note was placed on my account to never withhold funds on
           | that account ever again
           | 
           | Did PayPal just tell you this or did you find out another
           | way?
        
       | helios_invictus wrote:
       | Stop using paypal. They neither pay or are your pal.
        
         | Jiocus wrote:
         | Pals don't let pals pay with _Paypal_.
        
           | johndevor wrote:
           | Who pays for pals anyway.
        
             | Jiocus wrote:
             | You'd be surprised.
             | 
             | My thinking was, if a friend confide in me about their use
             | of PayPal for online payments, then it's a moral obligation
             | to inform them of the risks their taking and treatments
             | available such as alternative providers.
        
       | nonbirithm wrote:
       | I remember having my PayPal account locked for no specified
       | reason, and they said because too much time had passed since it
       | had been locked they would only reopen it if I physically mailed
       | them a check with my bank information. Of course I refused such a
       | ridiculous request and vowed never to use PayPal again.
       | 
       | Yet I was still forced to use PayPal for another retailer because
       | the retailer's credit card processing was broken, so I had to
       | create a new account. It's frustrating when you have to go
       | through a middleman or external company that treats you like
       | garbage instead of being able to use an established payment
       | system that works.
        
       | fsflover wrote:
       | Many stories how PayPal kills FLOSS projects:
       | https://web.archive.org/web/20191011190010/https://minifree....
        
       | danlugo92 wrote:
       | #BitcoinFixesThis
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | xvector wrote:
         | I wonder where all the people that complain about
         | cryptocurrency's energy consumption went.
         | 
         | It may be a problem, but it's a hell of a lot better than
         | situations like this. Cryptocurrency was created precisely for
         | this reason - giving financial freedom back to the individual
         | in a censorship-resistant manner, because it was obvious as day
         | to the cypherpunks that created it, that governments and
         | corporations would abuse our financial freedom where possible.
        
           | richardwhiuk wrote:
           | This problem is utterly immaterial to crypto.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | toss1 wrote:
       | At least I'm not being held hostage, but PayPal has just had
       | their last interaction with me.
       | 
       | After few sales of an un-marketed old product for most of the
       | pandemic, someone tracked me down and wanted to purchase. Agreed
       | on options and I said I'd have an invoice out in minutes.
       | 
       | Should be easy, right? Login to PayPal, fill out invoice info,
       | hit [Send] . . . . Nope, something wrong, contact support. Phone
       | w/half-hour+ wait times, support ppl 'cant hear' and line drops,
       | repeat, send email, both put me off, took a bit of info and said
       | a specialist would get back to me quickly. Yeah, right.
       | 
       | While I was waiting, I apologized to my customer and checked out
       | alternatives. I'd worked with Stripe on a previous project, and
       | they now have manual invoices (i.e., not only code-generated from
       | website=>API).
       | 
       | Signed up, got authenticated, setup invoicing, sent invoice, got
       | paid, and the money is in my account, and the product packaged
       | and on the loading dock -- all within an hour or so.
       | 
       | More importantly, Stripe did a setup and execution from scratch
       | in less time than I squandered even getting to initial PayPal
       | help, and more than an order of magnitude faster than PayPal even
       | began to send a useful answer my issue.
       | 
       | Done with PayPal - strongly recommend not using them -- and never
       | store money there.
        
       | bobthechef wrote:
       | You know this sort of thing is going to become more common,
       | right? I guess we just have to accept it and obey. Anything else
       | might make life less comfortable.
        
       | tr3ntg wrote:
       | I know I'm preaching to the choir as everyone here is aware of
       | how terrible PayPal is, but I too have been burned by them. They
       | shut down access to my personal account with no warning and no
       | option for recourse.
       | 
       | Thankfully I didn't have any funds stored there, but it was
       | inconvenient and ruined any trust I previously had in them.
       | 
       | Overall a terrible experience.
        
       | the_optimist wrote:
       | Far from being illegal, this type of engagement has been
       | historically preferred by US regulators.
       | 
       | Perhaps someone can kindly check if this is a quiet reincarnation
       | of Operation Choke Point?
       | 
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
        
       | freedomben wrote:
       | I've been burned by Paypal a number of times. But until recently
       | I hadn't yet been held hostage. Now I have. I wish I'd listened
       | to people on the internet. DO NOT USE PAYPAL.
        
       | swiley wrote:
       | If you don't like cryptocurrency stop making it necessary.
        
         | dandanua wrote:
         | At this point I believe crypto whales will intentionally ruin
         | conventional financial institutes and systems.
        
           | xvector wrote:
           | The systems are ruining themselves. Time and time again,
           | "conventional financial institutes" have abused their
           | positions of power wherever possible.
           | 
           | It's no surprise that people are looking towards crypto,
           | which was created explicitly for the purpose of taking power
           | back from these institutes. People finally have another
           | option.
        
             | dandanua wrote:
             | Aha, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI3MARgU0s8
        
       | shkkmo wrote:
       | It isn't really clear what happened here, and that is a
       | significant part of the problem. I think we are well past the
       | time that we pass a law mandating the companies that provide
       | public services do what the EFF has suggested:
       | 
       | > Provide meaningful notice to users. If PayPal is choosing to
       | shut down someone's account, they should provide detailed
       | guidance about what aspect of PayPal's terms were violated or why
       | the account was shut down, unless forbidden from doing so by a
       | legal prohibition or in cases of suspected account takeover. This
       | is a powerful mechanism for holding companies back from over-
       | reliance on automated account suspensions.
       | 
       | > Adopt a meaningful appeal process. If a user's PayPal account
       | is shut down, they should have an opportunity to appeal to a
       | person that was not involved in the initial decision to shut down
       | the account.
        
       | croes wrote:
       | This IT company bans are always like out of a Kafka novel. We ban
       | you for your wrongdoing, you can't do anything about it and we
       | won't tell you what you did wrong.
        
       | seaourfreed wrote:
       | PayPal doesn't care about Tor. An intelligence service probably
       | wanted to force this shutting down of Tor enter/exit nodes, so
       | the percent of Tor enter/exit nodes were mostly the intelligence
       | service. (For the best Doxing)
        
         | gruez wrote:
         | >An intelligence service probably wanted to force this shutting
         | down of Tor enter/exit nodes, so the percent of Tor enter/exit
         | nodes were mostly the intelligence service. (For the best
         | Doxing)
         | 
         | It's a nice conspiracy, although I'm not going to believe it
         | unless there's more evidence corroborating it (ie. mass reports
         | of people getting their paypal banned or increased churn in tor
         | relay nodes).
        
           | livueta wrote:
           | > increased churn in tor relay nodes
           | 
           | There actually was something kinda close to that recently:
           | https://nusenu.medium.com/tracking-one-year-of-malicious-
           | tor...
           | 
           | But that's an increase in known-malicious relays and exits
           | and doesn't speak to churn in existing, non-malicious nodes.
           | The attribution efforts made in that article also suggest a
           | different motive, though if I was a three-letterer attacking
           | Tor I'd probably also try to look as if I was a Russian
           | criminal bad at hiding my tracks.
        
       | timdaub wrote:
       | Biiiiitttccoooonnneeecccttttt
        
       | richardwhiuk wrote:
       | My bet would be that he's done non-Tor stuff with his account,
       | and that's why it's been shut.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | StanislavPetrov wrote:
         | Perhaps you should read the linked article which states that
         | the EFF examined his paypal history and found nothing remotely
         | suspicious.
        
           | richardwhiuk wrote:
           | From what he shared.
        
       | wydfre wrote:
       | Why would anyone support Tor? I mean, really, it allows for
       | absolute evil. I would rather read about terrorist attacks in
       | foreign countries because of discontent than read about a tor
       | site, okay?
        
       | convery wrote:
       | Holding the money hostage for half a year on a 20 year old
       | account? Not surprising. Paypal and their other entities like
       | Ebay are pretty shit when it comes to nuance and their impact on
       | others.
       | 
       | Had a 15 year old Paypal business account (parent started it and
       | I took it over ~7 years ago) and last year they shut it down
       | because I, as the new owner, was not 18 when the account was
       | created. Nothing from the support but "computer said you bad,
       | nothing we can do".
       | 
       | In Ebays case I sold an item, got the regular email from Ebay
       | (DMARK/SPF/IP verified) that they had received payment and was
       | holding it until the item had been delivered. Then a week later I
       | got another email from them saying they had blocked the buyer for
       | abuse (i.e. a fraudulent transaction to them) and that I
       | shouldn't ship the item they told me to ship a week ago. After 2
       | months of trying to get through to the support they just claimed
       | that someone spoofed their DMARK, SPF, and servers IP. After
       | explaining how impossible that would be their 'proof' that it was
       | 'spoofed' was that there should be a copy of the message in the
       | Ebay inbox where, after the reply, all messages about the auction
       | ever existing were suddenly gone.
        
         | syntheticnature wrote:
         | Not that it really matters to your points, but eBay and Paypal
         | split in 2015.
        
           | Qub3d wrote:
           | Not only did they split, they just forced all sellers to move
           | from PayPal to direct deposit: https://gizmodo.com/ebay-and-
           | paypal-finally-break-up-for-goo...
        
             | FridayoLeary wrote:
             | That sounds like good news. I don't see why i should have
             | to give PP a cut of everything i sell on Ebay.
        
               | Qub3d wrote:
               | I am ambivalent, but the reduced fees are nice.
        
               | gene91 wrote:
               | The cost to seller is mostly the same. eBay is now taking
               | the cuts (the cut they have always taken plus the cut
               | that used to be taken by PayPal) themselves instead.
        
               | FridayoLeary wrote:
               | Oh. That's nasty then.
        
         | exporectomy wrote:
         | I know that's mean of them but is it possible the account still
         | had your parent's identity attached to it? You certainly
         | shouldn't be access an account as if you're someone else. For
         | example, did you provided Paypal with all the identification
         | documentation to prove you're your real self and not still your
         | parent?
        
         | baybal2 wrote:
         | Personal experience:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23506276
         | 
         | https://fairshake.com/paypal/how-to-sue/
         | 
         | http://www.screw-paypal.com/resources/small_claims_court.htm...
        
           | astrange wrote:
           | It's easier to file a report with the CFPB:
           | https://www.consumerfinance.gov
           | 
           | I did get my PayPal account back by doing this, after I sent
           | out an eBay order so fast they decided I was a scammer
           | because the tracking info already said it arrived when I
           | added it to the invoice.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | joe_momma wrote:
       | Doge to a dollar, then crash, then reset
        
       | theknocker wrote:
       | I removed all of my payment information from paypal when I
       | noticed they would readily engage in what amount to political
       | sanctions.
        
       | arvindrajnaidu wrote:
       | Long-time Tor supporters are model citizens. How does PayPal not
       | get this?
        
         | Dah00n wrote:
         | Evil is always fighting against good.
        
       | swayvil wrote:
       | Sounds like Paypal got one of those secret government demands
       | that we aren't allowed to talk about on pain of imprisonment.
        
       | amaccuish wrote:
       | We turned off PayPal for certain countries, because the "buyer
       | protection" found too often in an obviously fraudster favour.
       | (reinjection of label into UPS network, forged label for return
       | address etc. PayPal doesn't care as long as there is a tracking
       | number... who cares where it goes to right?).
       | 
       | Anyone who has ever had anything to do with PayPal as a Seller
       | will tell you the same thing, as a buyer, always order with
       | PayPal, and you'll always win.
        
         | theturtletalks wrote:
         | Everyone is locked-in to PayPal at this point. Buyers have
         | their credit cards on it and get buyer protection. Sellers have
         | to support it since buyer's use PayPal as the default and don't
         | trust companies with their credit card info.
        
       | mpol wrote:
       | So, what is the alternative for PayPal?
       | 
       | I sell only small-time. I don't want to do Creditcard, no Stripe
       | either (I don't have a registered company) and iDEAL is only
       | working in the Netherlands. So what is the internet alternative
       | for international selling. And, please, no crypto-currencies :)
       | 
       | I am off to sleep, see you tomorrow.
        
         | kenniskrag wrote:
         | why not a traditional bank? You can open the account on your
         | name or the company (depends on the legal form). The advantage
         | is, that you can reach them by phone or in an office. Cross
         | country cash transfer are usually no problems and you can
         | manage your account on an e-banking website or sometimes on an
         | app.
        
           | adamcstephens wrote:
           | I'd even say go one step better and join a credit union. Less
           | to worry about when you're a member-owner of an organization
           | that is focused on its members and community over corporate
           | shareholders.
        
         | mattnewton wrote:
         | Sounds like you are aware of many alternatives to Paypal. Why
         | not register a company and use Stripe?
        
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