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PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

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Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#81

Post by wyattpeak »

adrr wrote: post #59
pieno wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well completing Know Your Customer checks and audits is sort of their job, isn’t it? They provide a service, saying that they will process payments unless the payment is prohibited by government sanctions. But instead of carrying out actual due diligence, they just block anything remotely related and put the onus and cost of doing their own job on their customers. At least they should have a better process to start p…

Yes they would, the fines are up to 250,000 per incident. If you share a name with someone on the AML list, good luck opening up a financial account anywhere and if you do manage to get an account, being able to fund the account from another source.

You're not comparing like with like there. If you share a name with a suspicious group, yes, that's a hard problem to solve. That's not this. This is a _product_ with the same name as a suspicious group. It's categorically irrelevant.

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#82

Post by _heimdall »

I had a horrible experience with PayPal earlier this year. I needed to send $500 to an individual buying our house, they were paying cash and on such a tight timeline for closing that the closing docs were written up before they got back their inspection report and asked for an allowance.

Paypal kept blocking the transaction even though it was just a simple person to person transfer. I was on chat with their support for nearly an hour. The person kept describing some black box of a security system that, for security purposes, no one manages or can see why transactions get flagged. I asked multiple times to speak to a manager or someone on the security team and was told consistently that managers won't have more info and there literally isn't a security team...

Needless to say I haven't used them since and will do everything I can to avoid it. I have no problem if a flag is errantly raised on a normal transaction, but to say they literally don't have a security team is mind boggling.

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#83

Post by throw0101a »

bleepblorp wrote: post #43
saddlerustle wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PayPal compliance is a very different problem to social media moderation. Financial regulations require any transaction that is "suspicious" in any way of having links to terrorism financing or money laundering be reviewed, and there are large and personal penalties for not doing so. And a review is expected to be more like auditing your customers entire financial history than just asking what they meant by a word, s…

This is the kind of thinking that lead to the TSA putting infants, and even a US Senator, on the US no-fly list because their names matched those of "known terrorists." The Washington concept of NATIONAL SECURITY is a brain-eating parasite that seemingly renders compliance managers unable to tell the difference between categorically different things, such as US Senators and IRA terrorists, or Serbian companies named…

> […] because their names matched those of "known terrorists."

As Bruce Schneier (IIRC) observed: these people are 'too dangerous' to let fly, but not dangerous enough to arrest.

Safe enough for firearms as well:

> In a 2010 report, the Government Accountability Office noted that "Membership in a terrorist organization does not prohibit a person from possessing firearms or explosives under current federal law," and individuals on the No Fly List are not barred from purchasing guns.[25] According to GAO data, between 2004 and 2010, people on terrorism watch lists—including the No Fly List as well as other separate lists—attempted to buy guns and explosives more than 1,400 times, and succeeded 1,321 times (more than 90% of cases).[26]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#84

Post by wbl »

duskwuff wrote: post #20
tzfld wrote: post #12

So this "internal security system" takes over the company even if they don't want this. This is so wrong I don't even know where to start.

It's a trade sanctions issue. PayPal could end up in deep shit with the Treasury Department if they let their front-line support techs override an OFAC match. There is almost certainly a way to handle this, but it involves talking to PayPal's legal department, and it will take time.

OFAC match? The entities aren't matching just the product. It's like blocking someone from buying food at Joe's Cuban Resturaunt in Miami. Not what OFAC actually requires.

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#85

Post by DarthGhandi »

eru wrote: post #76
DarthGhandi wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion but I think we have a civic responsibility to put them on probes and crash them into every planet in the solar system. Those cute little water bears are nature's survivors.

Why specifically a civic responsibility?

There's probably a better word but it resonates with some people.

The desire to preserve other planets for the remote chance that there's life there and we can study it before turning up anyway and ruining things is misguided. We are the only known life in the universe, it's incredibly irresponsible to not propagate such things (just in case)

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#87

Post by maxerickson »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #57
bleepblorp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the kind of thinking that lead to the TSA putting infants, and even a US Senator, on the US no-fly list because their names matched those of "known terrorists." The Washington concept of NATIONAL SECURITY is a brain-eating parasite that seemingly renders compliance managers unable to tell the difference between categorically different things, such as US Senators and IRA terrorists, or Serbian companies named…

> seemingly renders compliance managers unable to tell the difference between categorically different things Because it renders them liable. The whole system will turn against you if you give it an opportunity to nail you for using discretion. And this happens everywhere in society after a certain size is reached due to the need to hold people accountable without actually being able to fully evaluate who or what is t…

This would be a more compelling explanation if there seemed to be particularly high levels of holding people accountable.

It seems to me we build big opaque structures that prevent accountability. Your national internet provider rips you off? You'll probably be able to reverse the transaction, but good luck getting any information at all about what happened.

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#88

Post by adrr »

wyattpeak wrote: post #81
adrr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they would, the fines are up to 250,000 per incident. If you share a name with someone on the AML list, good luck opening up a financial account anywhere and if you do manage to get an account, being able to fund the account from another source.

You're not comparing like with like there. If you share a name with a suspicious group, yes, that's a hard problem to solve. That's not this. This is a _product_ with the same name as a suspicious group. It's categorically irrelevant.

It doesn't matter. The searches are based on the same methodology. Scanning fields for the banned entity or individual. Also if you spell it phonetically, it should get blocked as well. Even if you can raise to the compliance officer, they aren't going to change it. There's are also criminal penalties that enforce AML.

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#89

Post by BlueTemplar »

EE84M3i wrote: post #78
hrafn wrote: post #8

Here's some context: https://www.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/n7wg3w/paypal-tardigr... Likely not due to the Scunthorpe problem like one might expect, but due to an arms dealer having sold weapons through a shell company named Tardigrade.

what's the problematic substring of "Tardigrade"?

Probably not "grad", maybe "tard" ? ;p

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#90

Post by Kliment »

xrisk wrote: post #17
gwd wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-Vice: https://www.geekwire.com/2020/weird-seattle-retailer-archie-...

What’s wrong with Vice?

There's many things wrong with Vice. In addition to the story in the sibling comment, they have a consistent track record of misrepresenting their reporting to sources, heavily editing interview responses to change the meaning of what the interviewee said, and in at least one case I directly witnessed inventing the entire content of an interview that never happened and publishing it. I would simply consider anything they write at least misrepresented and possibly entirely fictional.
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