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“PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”

seafile.de

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Re: “PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”

#161

Post by VLM »

heartsucker wrote: post #143
RubyPinch wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as long as the torrent client knows how to reverse the changes it made to the file (why wouldn't it?) then there won't be any problem. Its just a really really simple form of "encryption", which most torrent clients do support

And then DropBox runs that on every file, so you you have the normal md5 and the torrent-obfuscation-reversed md5. They check both. We have now achieved nothing.

Hashes, even md5, are pretty good about going nuts when even one bit is changed in the input. And video codecs (speaking very broadly) are tolerant of a bit error rate like 1e-9 or they'd be useless over the air or on optical media. So simply have your torrent client randomly flip 1 in a billion bits as it downloads. The md5 will never match and the movie quality will be unimpaired.

Re: “PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”

#162

Post by sovande »

simonswords82 wrote: post #46
rio517 wrote: post #2

Given that we've all read similar situations happening all over the web, I'm surprised organizations aren't including "paypal drops us for arbitrary reasons" or "paypal freezes our funds with them for arbitrary reasons" in their risk assessments when choosing vendors. In almost every case, that risk should probably push decision makers away from Paypal. It is also a little entertaining that their "brand risk" departm…

The reason PayPal continues to be provided with the opportunity to fuck people over is primarily due to their low financial/technical barriers to entry. A website can be configured to accept PayPal payments in less than half a day, and setting up a new PayPal account is a very straightforward process. Compare this with setting up a merchant account to take payments (here in the UK), which takes weeks, involves findin…

> Fortunately companies like stripe.com

The sad truth is that Stripe is behaving exactly like PayPal. What's worse is that Stripe's fraud protection is non-existing. In other words, Stripe is actually worse than PayPal, as you risk the same account freeze, closing etc, but in addition, you will be swamped down with fraudulent purchases and chargebacks.

Re: “PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”

#163

Post by makomk »

nl wrote: post #83
MichaelBurge wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've run into this issue in the past, but I also can't blame them. Has everyone forgotten the early 2000s when porn sites would use 0-days to embed dialers in your computer to rack up huge dial-up charges? Or offer you 'trial' memberships and make it very very difficult to cancel? Visa and MasterCard eventually stepped in and made the banks do extra legwork for the porn sites. That had to leave a bad impression on th…

Oh, I agree entirely. I suspect the "File Sharing" sites may have the same issue. I wonder how many people charge-back the payment for "Download GoT S05E01.mp4 here"?

File sharing sites are definitely scam central. There are entire sites built around advertising pirate downloads of niche content via pay-only download sites which are actually just files filled with null bytes, then profiting from the referral fees.

Re: “PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”

#164

Post by Canada »

Arnt wrote: post #107
therealmarv wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah. USA. But this is Germany and EU and you violate either PayPal terms or the laws of the country.

That doesn't seem entirely clear. For example, Seafile could have said "Files are accessible only to one customer. It is of course possible to share passwords. However, we use geoip to monitor the number of locations used by each customer, and take appropriate action when a customer's set is oddly large. This should effectively block the use of Seafile for piracy." Perhaps Paypal would have said no, but perhaps yes.

I don't agree that Seafile should be under any obligation to do that. If customers want to share files, let them. Storage services shouldn't ever look at what the files contain or their metadata.

edit: looks like paypal openly states it won't process for file sharing services who don't monitor content. I guess most services that don't have a high dispute rate...

Re: “PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”

#165

Post by tobltobs »

eyko wrote: post #141
thirdsun wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a german that's not my experience at all. Credit cards aren't that common here and SEPA transfers are slow as hell and always a minor hassle, that I tend to avoid as long as I can. Without Paypal a lot of european customers wouldn't be able to buy from international vendors.

What about debit cards? I mean, you don't carry cash around all the time do you?

Most people still pay with cash. I would guess that per average people have about 50-100$ in their pockets.

Re: “PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”

#166

Post by tobltobs »

vidarh wrote: post #62
anc84 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As bank transfer takes a lot of time to "process", money exchanging in Europe is really annoying. Paypal made and makes it fast. I don't like them, but I don't know anything better sadly.

With the vast majority (99%+ of non-card Euro transactions, and a substantial majority of card Euro transactions too) going via SEPA in Europe these days, the benefit of Paypal is much reduced. It is competing much more with card payments these days than with direct transfers, given the combination of SEPA and even faster local schemes (e.g. in the UK, a huge proportion of smaller charges go via Faster Payments, whic…

If you would use SEPA for an SAAS registration, how would you handle the waiting time of multiple days? Accept the customer without prove of payment or ask him to come back in a few days?

Re: “PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”

#168

Post by mrweasel »

thirdsun wrote: post #157
mrweasel wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who sell stuff to Germans, could you please get a credit card? The only reason why we need to deal with PayPal is our German customer, 50% or more of our transactions in Germany is PayPal. It's a shitty company, with a shitty product.

Well, over here (in Germany) everyone gets a bank-issued debit card while a credit card usually comes with additional fees (I think it's 20-30€/year in my case, not sure right now). While it's not much, and I absolutely need a credit card for international purchases, a lot of fellow germans simply don't see the benefit when they could as well use the free debit card their bank gave them. And online their Paypal accou…

>Well, over here everyone I my case it would be down there... Took a second to figure out you're probably not in the US.

It's more or less the same here, almost no one has real credit card, they're mostly VISA (co-branded) or MasterCard branded debit cards, but everyone has a card that can be used online.

Re: “PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”

#169

Post by mk89 »

mk89 wrote: post #64

Another great example of the so called "democratization".

Whoever down-voted the comment above doesn't probably know that "democratization of management and movements of money" is really one goal of this company. ( http://fortune.com/2015/05/21/paypal-ceo-dan-schulman/ )

Now it's seafile.de, a couple of months ago they started to block accounts used to pay VPN services. What's next?

I am not judging the company, because I am sure that they would like to have users to pay everything possible via their services. That's fine. I just find it incoherent to claim that they are democratizing the way to manage/move money around.

Re: “PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”

#170

Post by kriro »

That's a pretty huge WTF request.

Can you sue Paypal for basically telling you "break the law or don't use us" (I think that's a pretty bad idea on ideological grounds but I wonder if it's technically possible)? Especially since Paypal has to be regulated within the EU in some way I'd say such a request should result in at least a cursory check if the EU license (iirc. they operate as a bank) of Paypal should be revoked/suspended/investigated.

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