Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

seafile.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 348 posts

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

#171

Post by niij »

Morgawr wrote: post #149
heartsucker wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What about having a client-side only "corruption" function that is unique for each client? The file is visually the same, the md5 hash is different but when the torrent client is sending the data it just "uncorrupts" the file. When the file is received by another client, that one person's client will take care of uniquely corrupting their own version for storage.

This is not possible. The torrent protocol works by checking the hash of each file that it downloads so it can reseed the file. If these files were changed by even 1 bit then they couldn't be reseeded back into the torrent network.

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

#172

Post by mcherm »

cynicalkane wrote: post #85
ckastner wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Welcome to the world of financial regulations! > You may have not realised but banks and any financial institutions have been deputised by the regulators to be the financial police. They need to endure that none of their client use financial services to commit crimes or launder the proceeds of a crime, under the penalty of heavy (up to multi billions) fines. Particularly in the US. While I fully agree with this sta…

In the US, at least, AML regulations are whatever the regulators say they are.

I call BS on that.

It is true that banks will go a long way to try to satisfy banking regulators. But unless you have some evidence I am simply unwilling to believe that banking regulators can make up any restrictions they like without regard for the actual requirements of federal law.

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

#173

Post by kriro »

uncletammy wrote: post #23

I don't think they need regulation. I think they need to carry on like they are for a few more years so I can watch them be eaten alive by crypto currencies and other fintech innovations.

I think Paypal has very strong brand recognition with the average consumer for such an esoteric product (online payment processor as opposed to say candy bar). Anecdotally many people enjoy how easy it is to pay with Paypal and that they have a perceived extra layer of protection. This is doubly true for this case since credit cards are historically not as wide spread in Germany as elsewhere (and thus Paypal linked to your bank account becomes a pretty attractive option). Most "Paypal is bad" stories I'm reading are at the expense of merchants not buyers. As long as they control buyer mindshare it's hard for merchants to opt out imo.

I wonder if there's studies or analysis on this (expected revenue loss with no Paypal option). Were I to start an online shop I'd prefer something like Stripe but would be pretty worried about missing out on a lot of revenue.

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

#174

Post by matt_morgan »

SyneRyder wrote: post #27
pavanky wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That argument makes no sense.. Presumably Seafile has other payment options that are not asking for the same level of access. I can't remember the last time people mentioned terrorists (or other criminals') bank accounts in the news other than HSBC who intentionally laundered drug money.

> Presumably Seafile has other payment options that are not asking for the same level of access. They don't. If you look at the website now, they are offering their services for free temporarily, because they don't have any payment providers anymore. It seems Paypal was their only method of payment. https://shop.seafile.com/product/seafile-cloud-account-subsc... > I can't remember the last time people mentioned terro…

> They don't. If you look at the website now, they are offering their services for free temporarily, because they don't have any payment providers anymore. It seems Paypal was their only method of payment.

This surprised me. The only time I've set up transactions with Paypal as the only option was when I didn't expect any transactions (a nonprofit that needed to have a public donation function for legal reasons, but actually got all its money from foundation grants).

As a user, I don't mind Paypal as an option, but when it's the only option it doesn't give a good impression.

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

#175

Post by boldfield »

cm2187 wrote: post #56
josteink wrote: post #3

> PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as all our customers’ files for illegal content. They have also asked us to provide them with detailed statistics about the files types of our customers sync and share on https://app.seafile.de That's a pretty big WTF right there. I know PayPal has a on overall pretty scummy reputation, but I still I cannot imagine PayPal doing this because they themselves th…

Welcome to the world of financial regulations! You may have not realised but banks and any financial institutions have been deputised by the regulators to be the financial police. They need to ensure that none of their client use financial services to commit crimes or launder the proceeds of a crime, under the penalty of heavy (up to multi billions) fines. Particularly in the US. I am pretty sure this is what is forc…

I worked for a financial services related startup for a while and was involved in implementing KYC/AML protections and AFAIK there isn't any relation between this and those laws. KYC is simply identifying your customers (nothing related to what they are doing) e.g. drivers license info, home address, etc. AML has to do with financial instruments passing through a business' account from customer (a) to customer (b) (in some cases (a) and (b) being the same individual). Given they are processing subscriptions here it seems far more likely that this is somehow related to RIAA/MPAA, or at least a fear of said groups.

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

#176

Post by maccard »

alyandon wrote: post #158
WA wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they're still anecdotal and for most people, PayPal works just fine. I find the stories horrifying, but I ran about 40,000 transactions through PayPal in the last 5-6 years and never had any problems. I guess this is how it is for most people, at least, I can use PayPal as a buyer on most online businesses I deal with.

Sure, using PayPal as a buyer is great as long as you never get into a dispute with a seller. It took about 4 months for me to get PayPal to refund my money when a seller on eBay ripped me off. PayPal support was so inept they claimed that I had not returned the merchandise despite giving them the DHL tracking number and shipping receipt multiple times and eventually they closed my case in favor of the merchant. I ha…

As a seller I requested a refund on Ebay and received my refund before I even shipped the goods back!

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

#177

Post by zymhan »

cm2187 wrote: post #56
josteink wrote: post #3

> PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as all our customers’ files for illegal content. They have also asked us to provide them with detailed statistics about the files types of our customers sync and share on https://app.seafile.de That's a pretty big WTF right there. I know PayPal has a on overall pretty scummy reputation, but I still I cannot imagine PayPal doing this because they themselves th…

Welcome to the world of financial regulations! You may have not realised but banks and any financial institutions have been deputised by the regulators to be the financial police. They need to ensure that none of their client use financial services to commit crimes or launder the proceeds of a crime, under the penalty of heavy (up to multi billions) fines. Particularly in the US. I am pretty sure this is what is forc…

There are well founded reasons for financial regulation. Predatory lending, money laundering, scams, terrorism funding, etc.

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

#178

Post by stevetrewick »

therealmarv wrote: post #90
chopin wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately not. Are there any examples for this? I din't see any.

You can put every company which sends your personal data outside EU to court (Safe Harbour rules were kicked in the butt some time ago). Some people are even trying that with Facebook (and may be successful with that).

Extremely unlikely since a new framework was agreed by the Commission in February 2016

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-216_en.htm

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

#179

Post by girvo »

Hondor wrote: post #127
kennydude wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stripe seem pretty decent

This is one of the not-very-international startups. Only available for merchants in 2 or 3 countries last I checked. I don't think small companies can do true international payment processing because of the labor needed to handle all the red tape in every country they go into. Edit: I see they're already grown a lot and are even starting to try unlikely countries like Brazil and New Zealand.

New Zealand is actually kind of interesting, and not as crazy as you'd think. It's often used as a test bed for consumer tech

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

#180

Post by Arnt »

Canada wrote: post #164
Arnt wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Last year I saw a customer (not at Seafile) who accessed our (paid) service from 20 different countries on the same day. Do you think that customer travelled to all those countries on that day? Do you think we were wrong to look for such globetrotting customers? Do you think we were wrong, or Seafile would be wrong, to look for customers who share their account with their hundred best friends?
Post reply on HN