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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”

#261

Post by rmc »

ams6110 wrote: post #208
rmc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox is a US based company, is not bound by EU data protection law, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU (basically the EU's Bill of Rights), and additionally the US Constitutional ban on warrentless searches does not apply to EU citizens in EU.

Constitutional rights don't apply to Dropbox at all. They are a private entity. If they want to inspect your data, they can, especially if they have disclosed this in their terms of service. That's why I would never put anything sensitive (tax returns, etc.) on dropbox without encrypting in locally first.

Constitutional rights don't apply to Dropbox at all. They are a private entity. If they want to inspect your data, they can

This is one of the reasons the EU courts have found that US law is not at all adequate for storing EU citizens data. In the EU, the Charter of Fundamental Rights ("Constitual rights") do very much apply to your dealings with a private company.

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

#262

Post by Draiken »

ig1 wrote: post #245
Draiken wrote: post #118

I'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) .

Honestly... I don't know.

Nothing about the process is transparent AFAIK.

If I'm a bank with billions of dollars worth of money from third parties, can't I use a big portion of that money to profit? Moving money around, gaming the currencies, stocks, etc.

Maybe I'm too naive at this, but in my mind, they have to keep some money ready for people to pick up, but the rest of it, they use it for whatever they want. If I go to my bank and ask to take a large sum of cash, they won't give it to me right away.

They profit when money is not at your hands, therefore even if people do get their money back some day, they would have already profited from it.

I'm quite intrigued by this topic, but never got around to really dive into it, so please... if you can educate me on how this is not profitable for financial institutions, I'd be glad to read it!

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

#263

Post by mzd348 »

I was under the impression that European wire transfers were cheap (free), fast, and reliable. If that's true, why is something like PayPal even needed? Can't Seafile just have their clients transfer money to Seafile's account? Or are wire transfers not free for "retail" use like this?

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

#264

Post by jdc0589 »

ffwd wrote: post #238
Draiken wrote: post #118

I'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…

OK but for the most part when Paypal or others close down your account and/or freeze funds, you /have/ done something illegal. You may not care about billions of dollars of movies, games and tv shows being pirated, but the people who pay for them to be produced do, so the banks and others protect their rights. As far as kickstarter and so on, this is to prevent your customers from being ripped off, which has happened…

not so. PayPal freezing funds and closing accounts in certain circumstances is well documented at this point.

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

#265

Post by JumpCrisscross »

speeder wrote: post #146
chinathrow wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially, it goes way further than what these financial institutions can do. It goes directly to what the U.S. fed can do - the clearing house for the USD. It can cut off any bank for misconduct/doing business with e.g. Cuba etc.

Also, the UN bank can threaten to kick out your central/federal bank too. Also an interesting example of bank politics is that Khadaffi made several laws in Libya against UN bank rules, for example providing loans with infinite term and zero interest for newlyweds. During the civil war, one of the first things the rebels did was create a central bank in Misrata, pledge loyalty to UN and then redquest to be recognized…

> the UN bank can threaten to kick out your central/federal bank too

This does not exist. Central banks interface with each other. The closest thing to what you're describing is the European Central Bank.

> pledge loyalty to UN

This is gibberish. One can be recognised by the United Nations (UN). One can also, by accepting its Charter and paying one's fees, become a UN Member. But there is no pledging of fielty involved.

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

#266

Post by ben_jones »

benevol wrote: post #117
nakodari wrote: post #101

Another victim of Paypal here. I run Jumpshare, a file sharing and collaboration service for creative professionals. This is what Paypal sent us: "May 8, 2016: When you signed up for your PayPal account, you agreed to our User Agreement and Acceptable Use Policy. Because some of your recent transactions violated this policy, we've had to permanently limit your account. Please remove any references to PayPal from your…

Having read during the last few years about the endless horror stories businesses have endured with PayPal, I honestly don't understand why anyone would still use PayPal when there clearly are alternatives (be that US companies like Stripe or EU companies like Paymill).

Let's not forget the real reason Paypal is popular. It has nothing to do with the international presence, or any other crap like that. It's because someone with ONE WEEK experience as a webdeveloper can implement a paypal button on their site and it'll just work. Stripe may seem like the same level of ease to a lot of developers, but things like JSON APIs, etc, are confusing to the kinds of developers Paypal appeals to and thus Paypal will remain the incumbent.

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

#267

Post by dogma1138 »

Bartweiss wrote: post #223
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…

Paypal seems to have a long and ugly history of aggressive-yet-incoherent legal interpretations. They lock down donations to any unpopular group, and refuse to release already-held funds. They freeze Kickstarter campaigns as soon as someone says the word "fraud", and cause the exact damage they're trying to prevent by tying up all the funds so neither backers nor creators can get the money. They're incredibly caprici…

Because PayPal doesn't want to lose money from customers that use their complaint system or worse through chargeback from the credit card companies.

As far as donations for dubious causes goes well if they think that it will either lose them business due to reputation, or worse lose them money if a government decides to freeze those funds they will cut it off.

PayPal for the most part is not a fractional lender when you have a 1000$ in a PayPal account PayPal has to reserve the full amount, PayPal isn't protected from a run over by central banks and what limited protection it has is probably performed by underwriters at not the most beneficial of terms.

If some one is opening a donation account for ISIS, anti LGBT or w/e you might call an "unpopular cause" and that either causes them a huge PR headache or worse a government decides to freeze those funds they lose a lot of money. This can be complicated even further since while the funds are frozens the users who transferred these funds might be eligible for protection under PayPal's own policies and if not then they can always initiate a chargeback from their own credit card company.

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

#268

Post by Draiken »

794CD01 wrote: post #211
Draiken wrote: post #118

I'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…

Accept payment in cash only. Oh, now you want to say that these vendors were providing you an important service after all? Hmm, how interesting.

Yes, they do provide a good service. But they're still a "duopoly" (is that a thing?) as far as I know.

Can't even think on who's the third most used credit card provider.

As always with lack of competition all of these institutions are free to do as they wish. Specially since they deal with money, that can be (and often is) used for lobbying.

But I'm a pessimist, and these are just my 2 cents

Maybe it's all in my head and people are not influenced by money, democracy is a real thing and big companies obey all laws.

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

#269

Post by niij »

reitanqild wrote: post #230
corobo wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the corruption is reversible then the people doing the checking can also reverse it. They'll have both the corrupt version and the reverse-fixed version and just have to check an extra hash per thing they're scanning for

I guess as long as Public Key Encryption works, something like this should be theoretically possible?

Can you explain how Public Key Encryption would be related? I was thinking more in terms of a torrent client corrupting a predictable last bit of each saved file (which could cause tons serious corruption issues in itself for non-media files). This appears to only be feasible if each user had their own private key that could be used to compute where the corrupted bit is added to media files.

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

#270

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

Arnt wrote: post #180
Canada wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, you were, of course, it's none of your damn business what your customers use your product for as long as they pay for it and it's not obviously illegal. If you are concerned about resource usage, limit the resources that you sell per account, and then enforce that limit if you like, but don't stick your nose into other people's lives.

And I must say I find it particularly strange that you seem to find it somehow impossible how someone could use an internet service from 20 countries in one day. I mean, it's the internet, right? A computer on every continent is only a few mouse clicks away. And international teams, either of freelancers, or of employees of a company, working together on projects, isn't exactly unusual either.

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