Last year I worked for a Dropbox-like service, and PayPal was continually giving us grief over using them as a payment service as well. I don't recall them asking us to monitor every user's traffic, though.
“PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”
241–250 of 348 posts
Re: “PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just normal bank transfer. As long as you have the target bank account number, which is standardized across Europe now, you can pay anyone. Takes a few days though. There is a European rule that a cross-border transfer may not cost more than a national one, which means that in most countries, only business accounts pay (low) fees.
> Takes a few days though Typically 24h in the SEPA.
That's a bit optimistic. I've encountered 48hrs between my own accounts within Germany. I wish I still had the luxury of almost instant UK transfers.
Re: “PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the problem is that PayPal almost have a monopoly on e-commercial market, and because of the stickiness of users, it's hard to break the monopoly.
I do not believe they have a monoply any more. a few years ago they where much more prolifict, I paid for ALOT of things via paypal. in the last 5 years I have made 0 transactions on paypal. With Amazon, Stripe, and others merchant solutions, as well as Apple and Google geting into the game soon for webpayments in addition to app paymets I do not believe the reliance on paypal as a quick way to process credit cards f…
> With Amazon, Stripe, and others merchant solutions, as well as Apple and Google geting into the game soon for webpayments
Most merchant solutions you mention are only available in a handful of countries. Paypal way more widespread.
Re: “PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”
#244Shenanigans like this will only hasten the onset of a bitcoin economy.
Yes, because the bitcoin economy is totally free of shenanigans.. ;-)
"But our shenanigans are cheeky and fun!"
"Yeah, and his shenanigans are cruel and tragic."
"Which... makes them not really shenanigans at all."
Re: “PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”
#245I'm once again astonished with how much control of our businesses is simply out of our hands. When looking at practices these financial institutions use it makes me wonder what can't they do? Everyone cites "regulations", but as far as I understand, they make the regulations. Directly or indirectly. Take for example the known cases where PayPal freezes accounts holding people's money. If I take someone else's money a…
I don't know what you think happens when paypal/bank/etc freezes an accounts but they don't get to keep the money, normally it gets refunded to the source of income (i.e customer refund), transferred to the government (i.e. income from criminal proceedings) or returned to account holder after a period of time (ensuring there's no clawbacks) .
Re: “PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah the incorrect assumption is that what the filesystem and dropbox scanners see must equal what the torrent client talks about, which isn't actually true. A preselected and stored in a dotfile or windows equivalent 9 digit number, or the bottom nine decimal digits of a MAC address, or some chunk of a UUID, or whatever. You could salt which bit is gonna get flipped by adding in the filename, or the partial timestamp…
All that sounds a lot of effort when the reality would be they'd just check the file in a different way than full-file md5 hashes as soon as this appeared.
Seriously, the easier way to do this is just make a password protected zip file. Boom. Done. No extra mucking around with random bytes and whatnot. You want to share? Give the password to your friends.
Re: “PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Don't respond to hyperbole to hyperbole.
GP was making a vague reference to Rulemaking.
You should be willing to educate yourself, not be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rulemaking
Re: “PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They're well within their rights to decline your business. They are. Should we condone it? > "Maybe they're sending it to terrorists or drug lords, maybe they're not; it's none of our business and we respect their privacy" Isn't this similar to the idea of banning web browsers, as they render HTML which, as we all know, can be used to write text ( plaintext! ) inciting terrorism? And it sometimes is. Are you using…
> Isn't this similar to the idea of banning web browsers, as they render HTML which, as we all know, can be used to write text ( plaintext! ) inciting terrorism? And it sometimes is. Are you using a browser right now? Search engines and hosting services already monitor for illegal content. Reasonable people can disagree over whether requiring a filesharing service to monitor for illegal content is excessively onerous…
> slippery-slope fallacy ... sound absurd by taking it to a far enough extreme.
Assuming that you actually value logic, given your choice of words, how do you not see that the magnitude of the absurdity is directly related a faulty premise - a fallacy?
Live and let live * [1..1000] = nice .. nice
Kill at random * [1..1000] = bad .. horrific
Re: “PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed; with both of you. Maybe it won't be crypto-currencies, but Paypal Has To Go®. Let them screw up two or three more times. They're antiquated and operate like a typical barely-legal, gray-area, fee-riddled credit institution. I wonder why Douglas Crockford, a brilliant man, still works there (other than obviously well compensated time).
Am I just naively pessimistic by thinking they will never go away? They're equivalent to big banks, and big banks never die. Even governments bail them out when they screw up. Bottom line, the bankers always wins. That's how the world is setup today. I'm not a financial expert so this is just my naive view of all the crap that goes on in the financial world. Hope I'm wrong...
In my opinion, you are probably right, to a big extent at least. I could well picture PayPal becoming the "Microsoft" of payment services: big and loaded but slow and basically living off past glories. People are already moving away to better alternatives and PayPal is too heavy, corporative and managerial to react in time.
Re: “PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”
#250Paypal apparently has plans of coming up with a sequel to "The Lives of Others" [1]