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PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

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101–110 of 196 posts

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#101
Why would anyone support Tor? I mean, really, it allows for absolute evil. I would rather read about terrorist attacks in countries because of discontent than read about a tor site, okay?

I used it once to try and find an anti-government website, something like the anarchy cookbook but practical and a forum, and I found a Tor site that looked normal but just scared the bejesus out of me. Never used Tor since. Well, I did get forgetful in college and tried to Torrent through Tor because I wanted to not get arrested for pirating or kicked off the uni network. Brain-damage and memory loss sometimes go hand in hand with schizophrenia.

I am a paranoid schizophrenic - who has been paranoid of the government for a very long time - I don't use Tor. I will NEVER use Tor. I would rather be arrested for anti-government writing or something than use Tor. I would rather be charged with promoting terrorism because of my own server on my AWS account than use that goddamn evil network. At least I would include instructions that indicate Tor exit nodes as viable terrorist strikes.

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#102
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Businesses are legally obligated to deliver your goods, so they will do that anyways, just like if you pay in cash today and go back to the store asking for a refund.

Paypal are legally obligated to hand back the money after 180 days. Nothing stops an exchange refusing to do business with you.

At least cryptocurrency prevents censorship when sending funds, unlike centralized solutions.

Ideally, in the long run, cryptocurrency takes on a value of its own, reducing the need to use exchanges.

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#104
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure it is being confiscated? He will have a claim then. What can happen is when your credit card / other payment providers cuts you off is that you go out of business. You might fail to provide services to users - so they do a chargeback / ask for a refund from payment provider. So when a payment provider is shutting you down, they usually want to hold onto some money to be able to handle those refund reques…

So PayPal is holding onto his money in case he incurs expenses as a result of going out of business due to PayPal cutting him off? And this seems normal and good to you?

Where did you think the money comes from when a consumer complains to their bank about a charge on their credit card and the bank credits the consumer?

It sure as heck ain't the consumer's bank that pays for that.

Nor is it Visa or Mastercard or whichever company owns the card network the card is part of.

No, it is the merchant bank that processed the charge. To be allowed to process charges through Visa, MC, etc, the merchant bank has to agree to cover all credits the issuing bank gives when consumers successfully dispute charges if the merchant cannot cover them.

Merchants that want to accept credit cards have to get an account with a merchant bank. It acts as an interface between the merchant and the credit card system, submitting charges and collecting the payments from the issuing banks, and depositing them in the merchant's regular business bank.

Merchant banks hold back some of those payments to maintain a buffer to cover their potential obligations in the case of disputed charges. How much they hold back and how long they hold it for varies depending on things like changes in your sales volume, how risky your line of business is, how often you've been getting chargebacks, and probably a ton of other factors their actuaries have identified.

PayPal doesn't look like a traditional merchant bank from the merchant point of view, but if people are able to use credit cards to buy your stuff there is a traditional merchant bank or something else with the same obligations as a traditional merchant bank somewhere in there, and that means that for a merchant using PayPal they are going to have someone holding back a reserve.

When you use a traditional merchant bank and are directly exposed to all that you know it is going to happen, and quickly realize that the whole damn credit card system is designed to make sure that if anything goes wrong anywhere in the chain it is the merchant that is going to eat it.

With these services that try to do it all in one and make it easy to accept payments, such as PayPal, it is easy to not realize that credit cards work that way and so you get surprised when PayPal won't let you take all your money out right away.

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#106
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.

Not touching tether with a 10 ft' pole. Stay away from that junk. Use USDC or something else to on ramp.

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PayPal has been doing this for more than a decade now. I wouldn't be surprised if its part of their business model to hold funds indefinitely and to collect interest on them.

There's hardly any such thing as interest in the US and there hasn't been for at least a decade. Besides, if that was their business it'd be in their S-1 and it isn't. (IIRC it says they keep customer funds in interest free accounts)

>IIRC it says they keep customer funds in interest free accounts

exercise for the one's imagination - you come to a banker and say "i'm thinking about keeping with you an N billions of dollars, interest free. Any ideas?" (in mid-199x i did some work around large Russian municipal funds to be kept in banks, and what i saw helped develop my imagination :)

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#109
> PayPal denied that the shutdown was related to the concerns about Tor, claiming only that “the situation has been determined appropriately” and refusing to offer a specific explanation.

I feel like everyone is ignoring this part. Paypal says it isn't about Tor. Are they believable?

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#110
post #99

At least I'm not being held hostage, but PayPal has just had their last interaction with me. After few sales of an un-marketed old product for most of the pandemic, someone tracked me down and wanted to purchase. Agreed on options and I said I'd have an invoice out in minutes. Should be easy, right? Login to PayPal, fill out invoice info, hit [Send] . . . . Nope, something wrong, contact support. Phone w/half-hour+ w…

Agree. I do all that I can to avoid using them.
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