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PayPal Redirects Charitable Contributions Without Consent, Lawsuit Says

nytimes.com

11–20 of 92 posts

Re: PayPal Redirects Charitable Contributions Without Consent, Lawsuit Says

#11
Remember when in the aftermath of Katrina, Paypal seized donations fundraised from Something Awful intended for the Red Cross for "fraud" and then refused to release them even when everyone told them they knew full well what was going on? After they got called onto the mat they finally agreed to release the funds but only to one of their own selected list of charities, all of which had vastly greater overhead expenses. In the end Lowtax finally had to tell them to refund everyone and have them make individual donations instead.

Paypal is shit, the best thing you can hope is that you fly under the radar, because the horror stories are very real. They are not a bank, they are an unholy, unregulated "money transmitter" and if they choose to screw you there is nothing you can do about it. Have fun with your mandatory binding arbitration.

Re: PayPal Redirects Charitable Contributions Without Consent, Lawsuit Says

#13
post #11

Remember when in the aftermath of Katrina, Paypal seized donations fundraised from Something Awful intended for the Red Cross for "fraud" and then refused to release them even when everyone told them they knew full well what was going on? After they got called onto the mat they finally agreed to release the funds but only to one of their own selected list of charities, all of which had vastly greater overhead expense…

Absolutely. Paypal attempted to direct the funds to the United Way, a high-overhead charity that they had an existing relationship with. [1]

1: http://www.somethingawful.com/news/paypal-fiasco-summary/

Re: PayPal Redirects Charitable Contributions Without Consent, Lawsuit Says

#15
post #8

I think this (charity donations) is one of the perfect use cases for the blockchain. To be clear, I am not suggesting Bitcoin, but the underlying blockchain technology. Having publicly visible transactions will be a huge boost to transparency and shady practices like those described in the article just won't fly. Every other month a news article about banks exploring blockchain tech keep popping up in the media and I…

Blockchain technology is (nearly) useless without the blockchain being public. Banks need stronger distibuted consensus primitives than theyre using now, but blockchain is overkill.

It would be interesting to figure out how much of the process you could make public without compromising the privacy of the donors too much.

How much additional risk would be added by just publishing a log of all donations, with just the sender anonymized (with the sender knowing or even choosing the id, so they can verify their donation went through?), and how could that be mitigated?

Re: PayPal Redirects Charitable Contributions Without Consent, Lawsuit Says

#16
post #12

Whoever owns PayPal must have had experience running an extortion racket

I'm just glad Y Combinator would never do business with a person like that.

Don't the PayPal mafia all hate the current PayPal?

Re: PayPal Redirects Charitable Contributions Without Consent, Lawsuit Says

#17
post #11

Remember when in the aftermath of Katrina, Paypal seized donations fundraised from Something Awful intended for the Red Cross for "fraud" and then refused to release them even when everyone told them they knew full well what was going on? After they got called onto the mat they finally agreed to release the funds but only to one of their own selected list of charities, all of which had vastly greater overhead expense…

FYI, Paypal is declared and regulated as a bank in the EU, declared in Luxembourg.

So if something like this happens to you as an european, either sender or receiver, use your rights.

> As of July 2007, PayPal provides localized versions of its service to customers in the EU through PayPal (Europe) S.A.R.L. et Cie, SCA., a wholly-owned subsidiary of PayPal that is licensed as a bank in Luxembourg.

Whereas:

> In the United States, PayPal is licensed as a money transmitter, on a state-by-state basis

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