Live data from Hacker News

PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

eff.org

51–60 of 196 posts

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#51
post #47

News like this is proof that cryptocurrencies like Monero are necessary. It’s proof (not that we needed any) that centralized finance does not have your best interests at heart, and they can and will abuse their power.

Monero + Distributed Exchanges will go a long way to fix these kinds of online payment problems.

Unfortunately, at least near term you'll still need fiat-tether "on ramps" to convert your local currency back and forth to tether before you move them to a distributed (or at least a non-KYC) exchange to Monero, then sending to your local wallet, then use online.

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#52
post #51
post #47

News like this is proof that cryptocurrencies like Monero are necessary. It’s proof (not that we needed any) that centralized finance does not have your best interests at heart, and they can and will abuse their power.

Monero + Distributed Exchanges will go a long way to fix these kinds of online payment problems. Unfortunately, at least near term you'll still need fiat-tether "on ramps" to convert your local currency back and forth to tether before you move them to a distributed (or at least a non-KYC) exchange to Monero, then sending to your local wallet, then use online.

Yup. It’s worth checking out LocalMonero [1] and the Haveno DEX [2]. The former already works and lets you buy Monero without relying on a KYC exchange.

[1] https://localmonero.co/

[2] https://github.com/haveno-dex/haveno

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#54

"We don't like what you are doing, and are going to hold your money for six months. I hope you don't subsist on it, or have any business obligations to attend to. We'll call you." This should be illegal for Paypal to do, period. Absolutely illegal. And if it is on behalf of a government or banking/fraud regulations, then the person should be referred to relevant agencies. Let's be clear and drop the pretense: They ar…

Way back in 2011 they did this to me. My marketing agency had been running most of our customer payments through PayPal for several months, and we were growing fast. At some point they took the $50K we had in the account and froze it for 180 days with no recourse, claiming it was to protect against charge backs (despite us never having a single chargeback).

I explained to them that if they didn't release the funds they would most certainly have charge backs because we'd be out of business and thus unable to deliver on the work promised for the money.

Nothing we said did any good. That is until I looked up the laws in Washington State about money transmitters. Turns out based on the specific license they had in Washington State at the time, it was illegal for them to hold funds for longer than 7 days.

Me telling them this did nothing at all, but when I sent a letter to my state governor explaining my predicament and someone from that office sent a letter to the folks at PayPal, suddenly my funds were released and a note was placed on my account to never withhold funds on that account ever again. Been smooth sailing ever since :-D

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#56
post #37

PayPal doesn't care about Tor. An intelligence service probably wanted to force this shutting down of Tor enter/exit nodes, so the percent of Tor enter/exit nodes were mostly the intelligence service. (For the best Doxing)

>An intelligence service probably wanted to force this shutting down of Tor enter/exit nodes, so the percent of Tor enter/exit nodes were mostly the intelligence service. (For the best Doxing) It's a nice conspiracy, although I'm not going to believe it unless there's more evidence corroborating it (ie. mass reports of people getting their paypal banned or increased churn in tor relay nodes).

> increased churn in tor relay nodes

There actually was something kinda close to that recently: https://nusenu.medium.com/tracking-one-year-of-malicious-tor...

But that's an increase in known-malicious relays and exits and doesn't speak to churn in existing, non-malicious nodes. The attribution efforts made in that article also suggest a different motive, though if I was a three-letterer attacking Tor I'd probably also try to look as if I was a Russian criminal bad at hiding my tracks.

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#57
post #27

If you don't like cryptocurrency stop making it necessary.

At this point I believe crypto whales will intentionally ruin conventional financial institutes and systems.

The systems are ruining themselves. Time and time again, “conventional financial institutes” have abused their positions of power wherever possible.

It’s no surprise that people are looking towards crypto, which was created explicitly for the purpose of taking power back from these institutes. People finally have another option.

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#58
post #20

Holding the money hostage for half a year on a 20 year old account? Not surprising. Paypal and their other entities like Ebay are pretty shit when it comes to nuance and their impact on others. Had a 15 year old Paypal business account (parent started it and I took it over ~7 years ago) and last year they shut it down because I, as the new owner, was not 18 when the account was created. Nothing from the support but "…

Personal experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23506276

https://fairshake.com/paypal/how-to-sue/

http://www.screw-paypal.com/resources/small_claims_court.htm...

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#59

We turned off PayPal for certain countries, because the "buyer protection" found too often in an obviously fraudster favour. (reinjection of label into UPS network, forged label for return address etc. PayPal doesn't care as long as there is a tracking number... who cares where it goes to right?). Anyone who has ever had anything to do with PayPal as a Seller will tell you the same thing, as a buyer, always order wit…

Everyone is locked-in to PayPal at this point. Buyers have their credit cards on it and get buyer protection. Sellers have to support it since buyer's use PayPal as the default and don't trust companies with their credit card info.

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#60
post #58
post #20

Holding the money hostage for half a year on a 20 year old account? Not surprising. Paypal and their other entities like Ebay are pretty shit when it comes to nuance and their impact on others. Had a 15 year old Paypal business account (parent started it and I took it over ~7 years ago) and last year they shut it down because I, as the new owner, was not 18 when the account was created. Nothing from the support but "…

Personal experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23506276 https://fairshake.com/paypal/how-to-sue/ http://www.screw-paypal.com/resources/small_claims_court.htm...

It's easier to file a report with the CFPB: https://www.consumerfinance.gov

I did get my PayPal account back by doing this, after I sent out an eBay order so fast they decided I was a scammer because the tracking info already said it arrived when I added it to the invoice.

Post reply on HN