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

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 216 posts

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

#171

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

ghego1 wrote: post #49

Based on my experience as a developer and user I can't understand how PayPal got so big and ubiquitous. I had the worst experience ever in trying to set up our recurring billing system with them, wasting several days of work, to the point that I simply gave up, switched to Stripe, and got everything up and running, in production, in hours. Even as a consumer I had a terrible experience when trying to send money abroa…

Ebay pushed it aggressively; IIRC you effectively couldn't use ebay (or lost critical aspects like fraud protection) if you didn't use PayPal.

Outside of the US, credit cards were far from ubiquitous (and they still aren't). PayPal was the one system that could handle international transfers reasonably.

Edit: Also, speed and payments to individuals. Back when eBay was an auction house for used goods sold by individuals, not a marketplace for commercial sellers, it was the one way to get someone money that was instant. No idea how that worked in the US, but in Germany the alternative was bank transfers which took 2-3 days back then.

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

#172

Post by hakfoo »

_Microft wrote: post #7

Per [0], a possible answer to this seems to be that an arms dealer had connections to a company called Tardigrade Ltd. and all transactions with firms like these are prohibited which is why the word "Tardigrade" made it into PayPal's filter. As long as companies like PayPal have issues like that, or with moderation in case of Youtube, Twitter or Facebook, I'd claim neither of these companies have actually solved scal…

I feel like I'm missing some obvious link here. If changing the name on a legitimate transaction is enough to let it go through, what stops actual Evil Terrorists (tm) from just telling their financiers that their name has changed every three months to stay ahead of specific filters?

If I had infinite resources, IMO, the way to go with this sort of thing is to have no blocked transactions or obvious failures, and only relaying the suspicious transactions for law-enforcement to review. If there are crimes, actually get involved and prosecute them, don't just create weird financial black-holes for innocent people and behaviour. From the customer side, no more stupid disruptions. If there are actual bad actors at play, they don't get any immediate feedback they've been flagged and are less likely to change their strategies and cover their tracks.

If there are too many transactions getting flagged this way and law-enforcement ends up buried under dots to connect, then that's a signaling mechanism for them too-- they've obviously done a bad job of crafting their filters and need to adjust for signal/noise.

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

#173

Post by anigbrowl »

imnotjames wrote: post #123
_Microft wrote: post #7

Per [0], a possible answer to this seems to be that an arms dealer had connections to a company called Tardigrade Ltd. and all transactions with firms like these are prohibited which is why the word "Tardigrade" made it into PayPal's filter. As long as companies like PayPal have issues like that, or with moderation in case of Youtube, Twitter or Facebook, I'd claim neither of these companies have actually solved scal…

PayPal gets a list of banned strings from the Office of Foreign Asset controls. If any match those strings it's flagged for a review. This is more or less legally required for any company that moves money in the United States of America. You will probably find the same issues with the same terms on any other banking for financial body. Technically, these aren't being blocked. They're being audited. The payments will…

OK, but so what? 'Be on the lookout for XYZ' is an understandable request, but what prevents paypal rapidly distinguishing between credible and suspicious transactions - and more importantly, pre-emptively communicating with users about it, since they are going to find out the hard way?

Conversely, what stops bad actors just switching to doing transactions for t_rdigr_de, ta_dig_ade, or tar_igra_e and thumbing their nose at the filtering? (OK, realistically they would probably switch to some more obscure backup code but you get the idea.)

The basic problem here is that the burden of enforcement is being shifted by Paypal to innocent people with no warning, instead of being shouldered by the company, which is in a position to push back legally on unreasonable requests and plan ahead for reasonable ones.

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

#174

Post by anigbrowl »

ghego1 wrote: post #49

Based on my experience as a developer and user I can't understand how PayPal got so big and ubiquitous. I had the worst experience ever in trying to set up our recurring billing system with them, wasting several days of work, to the point that I simply gave up, switched to Stripe, and got everything up and running, in production, in hours. Even as a consumer I had a terrible experience when trying to send money abroa…

Very simple: they were the first to get there in the online payments space and delivered something that worked reliably without the time and $ cost of money orders or bank transfers.

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

#175

Post by justinzollars »

The financial reforms following 9-11, introduced reporting requirements. This could be under this umbrella? One example is suspicious deposits must be reported by those in the financial services industry to the federal government. Once reported your broker is prohibited by law from informing you of the report. We lost a lot of financial freedom following 911. Paypal is just following US law.

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

#176

Post by walshemj »

_JamesA_ wrote: post #152
myrandomcomment wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Castro took over the owners of the brands fled and took the rights to the brands with them. At the same time the Cuban government kept making the cigars under the same name. So for every major brand you will find 2 in the world, one Cuban, one not.

Bacardi (Puerto Rico) has started copying the Cuban Havana Club rum as well. [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/havana-club-v-havana...

Well there's legal arguments to be had here about ip.

One of the Bacardi family was locked up / exiled during the first Cuban revolution ironically.

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

#177

Post by scollet »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #121
DarthGhandi wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Unless we end up killing life that already exists there.

The aliens can make a movie about it.

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

#178

Post by MrQuincle »

floatingatoll wrote: post #157
imnotjames wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PayPal gets a list of banned strings from the Office of Foreign Asset controls. If any match those strings it's flagged for a review. This is more or less legally required for any company that moves money in the United States of America. You will probably find the same issues with the same terms on any other banking for financial body. Technically, these aren't being blocked. They're being audited. The payments will…

I hope an arms dealer names themself eBay Arms. I’m against arms dealers and PayPal and this would destroy PayPal.

Or PayPal Arms. Inception!

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

#179

Post by motohagiography »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #146
CydeWeys wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like poor branding on the part of the cigar brands (at least for online sales).

When Castro took over the owners of the brands fled and took the rights to the brands with them. At the same time the Cuban government kept making the cigars under the same name. So for every major brand you will find 2 in the world, one Cuban, one not.

And the non-Cuban ones are laughably awful. The unexpected benefit of the embargo is it forced them to maintain a super premium product. They've had some anecdotal quality issues since Castro died, but being shielded from US markets and globalization made for better products in that case.

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

#180

Post by maxbond »

anigbrowl wrote: post #173
imnotjames wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PayPal gets a list of banned strings from the Office of Foreign Asset controls. If any match those strings it's flagged for a review. This is more or less legally required for any company that moves money in the United States of America. You will probably find the same issues with the same terms on any other banking for financial body. Technically, these aren't being blocked. They're being audited. The payments will…

OK, but so what? 'Be on the lookout for XYZ' is an understandable request, but what prevents paypal rapidly distinguishing between credible and suspicious transactions - and more importantly, pre-emptively communicating with users about it, since they are going to find out the hard way? Conversely, what stops bad actors just switching to doing transactions for t_rdigr_de, ta_dig_ade, or tar_igra_e and thumbing their…

> Conversely, what stops bad actors just switching to doing transactions for t_rdigr_de, ta_dig_ade, or tar_igra_e and thumbing their nose at the filtering? (OK, realistically they would probably switch to some more obscure backup code but you get the idea.)

This literally happened at HSBC. Employees entered transactions in exactly the way you're imagining.

(I didn't find a written source, but this is covered in Netflix's "Dirty Money", episode "Cartel Bank")

Post reply on HN