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We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

blog.niteo.co

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Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#461

Post by downandout »

dwaltrip wrote: post #456
downandout wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am truly disgusted by this comment and those with a similar sentiment below. Selling PBNs is not against Paypal’s TOS, regardless of whether or not you happen to dislike them. The point is that PayPal falsely asserted that a business violated its TOS, and that means that it could happen to anyone else - instantly and without explanation. That is the problem here.

I just googled PBN. It looks like it is a black-hat, completely inauthentic SEO tactic that has no legitimate value. Why on Earth or you defending them? Am I missing something?

You are indeed missing something. I am not defending them. But if they are doing something that PayPal hasn’t banned and obviously found acceptable for 12 previous years, it means that all businesses are in immediate danger of being instantly banned without explanation on the whim of any of thousands of PayPal employees. That is a huge problem, and should concern everyone that depends on them for payment processing.

If you are subject to the whims and value judgments of individual PayPal employees, rather than policy documents, that is truly scary. Sell something that happens to offend a random employee's moral, political, or religious sensibilities? You might lose your account. What happens if a relative of a PayPal employee decides that you weren't fast enough with customer service, and tells them about it? Can that employee go searching for your account and kill it simply because they have a relative that wasn't impressed with the speed of your customer service?

The point is that these companies establish written policies for a reason. If those policies are not being followed, then businesses shouldn't use PayPal - not because they want to defend PBN sellers, but because their own business may be at risk even when they do nothing wrong.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#462

Post by lawn »

Fnoord wrote: post #424
lawn wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that they it shouldn't be used if it's possible to mix them up (crypto shouldn't be used to mean cryptography either if it's possible to mix it up with cryptocurrencies). This was not such an instance. The English language is ever changing, we re-purpose and come up with new words all the time. In daily use "cryptocurrencies" is long to type and say, so when the context is clear it's easier to just use "crypt…

> (crypto shouldn't be used to mean cryptography either if it's possible to mix it up with cryptocurrencies) > The English language is ever changing, we re-purpose and come up with new words all the time. Except that my argument isn't that the old meaning is older (ie. no appeal to tradition, nor is appeal to novelty valid); it is that the older meaning is: 1) Far more important than the new one, and 2) Far broader,…

Well yes, it makes more sense to use it for cryptography. I'm not arguing otherwise.

I just don't see the harm in this context when it's obvious what he's referring to.

> Use an autocomplete to make 'crypto' change to 'cryptocurrency'.

Yes, we should all install autocomplete in our browsers so we can avoid stepping on the toes of an opinionated commenter.

This issue is so overblown.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#463

Post by colpabar »

mprev wrote: post #431
sbov wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Organized crime is illegal and content farms are not, so this is a terrible example. A better example might be highly religious community not wanting their bank to do business with companies focused on the gay and lesbian community. This is a good example because: it is not illegal for a company to cater to the gay and lesbian community, it is not illegal to discriminate against gay and lesbian people in many states,…

Your example is irrelevant as that’s a civil rights issue. Either way, I gave the example of organised crime not in an attempt for people to take it as a literal suggestion of equivalence but to argue against the idea that a financial institution has no place being choosey about its customers.

It's not being choosey to not support organized crime, because it's illegal; the choice has been made through the law. It IS choosey to chose not to support an organization that's doing something legal that you don't like.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#464

Post by Pyxl101 »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #449
AstralStorm wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why bank preventing unauthorized withdrawals is so useful. And credit card processor disputes too.

Please elaborate on the means to prevent unauthorized withdrawals.

If you have someone's bank account number, you can pretty much take money out of it. By default there is no real authorization process by which the account holder is asked to allow the withdrawal. There is just the assumption that people aren't going to commit fraud, or people who commit fraud will be caught.

I'm not an expert on this, but I believe there are ways to set up business accounts where money can't be taken out in that way, at least not by the standard electronic means. You can also manage accounts in such a way as that there's no money to take out, although that does not necessarily prevent the account from going into the negative. Checking accounts can go into significant negative balances if the bank chooses to allow it.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#465

Post by gdy »

alasdair_ wrote: post #366
jake_morrison wrote: post #73

PayPal blocked us after 10 years due to a a Kafkaesque problem, where they decided that our Hong Kong company was both a Chinese company and not a Chinese company: https://www.cogini.com/blog/paypal-know-your-customer-failur...

I ad a similar issue when parts of Ukraine were invaded by Russia and my Ukranian developers were suddenly "Russian" developers.

Could you possibly elaborate on this? What kind of problem have you had?

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#466

Post by cvuls »

mattigames wrote: post #434
Lowkeyloki wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but as long as there are rules, somebody is going to find a loophole or a way to game the system. I'd personally be more concerned with Google improving their product or with society's increasing reliance on a single company's service and our unwillingness to consume information critically. PBNs are garbagey, but trying to put them all down is unrealistic. And even if they could be stopped, it would only be a b…

Hundreds of sites have been brought down for hosting pirated movies thanks to laws against that, don't know why putting down PBns would be unrealistic.

ah yes, and the wide-reaching effects on piracy those have caused.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#467

Post by SilasX »

dmurko wrote: post #91
gotland_ wrote: post #71

Don't know if it is the reason for the ban, but Niteos main product seems to be a service for creating spam networks. https://www.easyblognetworks.com , https://niteo.co/projects

As I mentioned in the previous comments - we're not using PayPal to process our SaaS products.

Weird. Last comments from this account before today were in 2010.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#468

Post by orthecreedence »

downandout wrote: post #461
dwaltrip wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just googled PBN. It looks like it is a black-hat, completely inauthentic SEO tactic that has no legitimate value. Why on Earth or you defending them? Am I missing something?

You are indeed missing something. I am not defending them. But if they are doing something that PayPal hasn’t banned and obviously found acceptable for 12 previous years, it means that all businesses are in immediate danger of being instantly banned without explanation on the whim of any of thousands of PayPal employees. That is a huge problem, and should concern everyone that depends on them for payment processing.…

> it means that all businesses are in immediate danger of being instantly banned without explanation on the whim of any of thousands of PayPal employees

This has always been the case. Paypal is extremely liberal with funds they seize or what accounts they shut down. At least, that's the image of them I've had for over a decade. Maybe they've since changed...but I wouldn't store any real amount of money in Paypal for any amount of time.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#469

Post by Hasz »

danShumway wrote: post #316
testvox wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://privacy.com/

Still has an arbitration agreement, unfortunately. For something small or temporary, I might overlook it. For something that has direct access to my bank account, no go. They need to accept some liability if they want that level of access to my financial life. To be fair, Paypal has an arbitration agreement too. But, if you're using Paypal as justification for your own policies, that's not exactly a strong starting p…

Two banks accounts deep. Let Paypal, Privacy see a dummy account, and use that account to transfer money into a main account. Keep layering for more protection, questions from your bank.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#470

Post by SilasX »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #46

As ar as I know PayPal in Europe is a bank with a Luxembourg banking license. I'm wondering if they could pull the same shitty here. Considering that any bank, which freezes your account, doesn't provide you with any reason and actually refuses to talk to you may draw quite some ire from their respecive regulator.

In sharp contrast with spammers, which are given such free reign under GDPR? (In the comments it turns out it's a spam service.)
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