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PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

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Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#151

Post by AussieWog93 »

mannerheim wrote: post #147
AussieWog93 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decentralised currencies just open up a whole new can of worms. How do you reverse fraudulent transactions? What happens if your wallet is stolen? Who do you speak to when you need help setting up an account? On a macroeconomic level, it prevents the government from setting certain types of monetary policy that benefit the economy as a whole (although I may be biased there, as the Australian government bailed out the…

You have inflation and deflation mixed up.

You're right, I did get that backwards. The overall point about stability remains, though.

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#152

Post by Blikkentrekker »

YeBanKo wrote: post #139

Recently the was a rant against cryptocurrency, now this is a case for it. I thought there were regulations in the US that would prohibit a financial institution to hold money that long. Looks like there aren’t.

It's odd enough that there are no rules against refusing service on arbitrary grounds for companies.

I do not believe this to be legal in the E.U., but from how I understand it, In the U.S.A., a store can refuse any customer service on arbitrary grounds without having to say what the reason was.

This is even more troublesome because the U.S.A. is a country of low population density where in some rural areas many people will have only one grocery store available to them, that could actually refuse them service simply because it's manager did not like the looks on their faces.

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#153

Post by xvector »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #149
xvector wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you reverse fraudulent transactions? How do you reverse paying someone with cash? You don't. You can ask for a refund and hope they give it to you. If you're transacting with a trusted business, you can expect them to adhere to the law and reverse the payment. In this sense, crypto transactions are no different than how humans have transacted for thousands of years. Chargebacks and reversals are a convenienc…

>How do you reverse paying someone with cash? You don't. Exactly, that's why centralised systems with moneyback guarantees (PayPal, Stripe) exist for online payments where you can't see the goods in person - online fraud is still a concern in 2021. >So you keep most money secure in a cold wallet, airgapped and password-protected, and some money secure in a hot wallet, PIN-protected. I'll admit I'm not super familiar…

> online fraud is still a concern in 2021.

Sure, but this is why you transact with trusted people and businesses, just like you would when using cash.

To be honest, I don't know a single person that relies on PayPal's protection when making a purchase online from an individual or business. Every single person I know that uses PayPal does their due diligence on the seller before buying. None of them assume that PayPal disputes will actually work.

The same would be true with crypto. You'd do your due diligence before buying, just like you do today, if you're buying from a random.

> this cold wallet basically sounds similar to stashing your life savings under your mattress (or, at least, in a safe in your house).

You would use a social recovery wallet, in which, say, your trusted family members could secure your life savings as a group. Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, has a great article [1] on this.

Even if you don't trust a multisig/social-recovery wallet, you can store your money on an insured exchange. It still comes out ahead of banks and PayPal in that your transactions themselves are private and cannot be censored.

> I think the overall point is whether or not the risk of being screwed over by the machinations of a giant corporation outweighs the risk of being screwed over in the "wild west" world of crypto.

Just like online payments and credit cards had their "wild west" period, crypto has its own. I don't see a big deal here. This is a field in its infancy with staggeringly rapid development. Over time the UX will get better. I'm not expecting your average Joe to move their savings to Monero tomorrow, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did (to whatever Monero-equivalent exists) 10, 20 years down the road, when social recovery wallets are easy to use and crypto prices have algorithmically stabilized itself (ala DAI) or have naturally fallen into an equilibrium.

[1]: https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/11/recovery.html

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#154

Post by 55555 »

convery wrote: 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 "…

A while ago I used paypal for transactions and I left some in the account so there was 100 grand. Six months later I tried to take some of it out and they froze the account despite no other recent activity. They said they'd keep it six months. Eight months or so after that, I asked about it, and they said they needed to freeze it for another six months. So soon we'll be at basically 18 months after the funds were earned.

The whole thing is dumb though, so I honestly don't even attribute malice. It's a ~17 year old account and I've processed millions(?) of dollars through it. The killing they earned on the transaction fees dwarfs the interest they earn on the float over the period of time they are holding it. The only way this wouldn't be the case is if a lot of people just give up and never get their money out, which, frankly, sounds possible. So either they do this intentionally because people give up, or they think I'll never sell stuff online again (I sell stuff online, right now), or they're just kindof dumb and have an overactive suppression team.

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#155

Post by ivalm »

xvector wrote: post #143
AussieWog93 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decentralised currencies just open up a whole new can of worms. How do you reverse fraudulent transactions? What happens if your wallet is stolen? Who do you speak to when you need help setting up an account? On a macroeconomic level, it prevents the government from setting certain types of monetary policy that benefit the economy as a whole (although I may be biased there, as the Australian government bailed out the…

> How do you reverse fraudulent transactions? How do you reverse paying someone with cash? You don't. You can ask for a refund and hope they give it to you. If you're transacting with a trusted business, you can expect them to adhere to the law and reverse the payment. In this sense, crypto transactions are no different than how humans have transacted for thousands of years. Chargebacks and reversals are a convenienc…

I feel like you make a better argument against using cash rather than for using crypto. I don’t use cash anymore because I do want transaction reversibility and fraud/theft/loss protection. You say it isn’t “necessary” but in the same vein nothing that crypto offers is “necessary.”

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#156

Post by nootropicat »

xvector wrote: post #72
swensel wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why Monero specifically though, with all the options in crypto available? If you want privacy there are also Zcash shielded transactions. Or if all you want to do is eliminate central parties then why not just Bitcoin? My understanding with Monero is if you don't run your own node there's not that much privacy guarantee anyway (otherwise you have to trust the third party node you point to). Someone please correct me…

Monero is much more private than Zcash. The issue with Zcash shielded transactions is that something like 14% of transactions are shielded, but only 1% are truly private. Optionally shielded transactions make chain analysis much easier and immediately make said transaction suspect. So you cannot comfortably use Zcash for private transactions. See the report by Chainalysis [1]: > 14% of the ZCash transactions use a so…

>Clearly, optional privacy is not privacy at all.

This is a marketing term without actual meaning. There's a system with some anonymity. Then there's the external world. There's no 'optional' anonymity. The error lies in incorrectly comparing monero to zcash as a whole, instead of shielded transactions themselves. Names themselves are irrelevant. Depositing xmr to an exchange is equivalent to withdrawing from the anonymity pool.

From the design perspective, the mixin model is vulnerable to an active adversary that has spent output data from exchanges and spams the chain to generate recent known outputs when the target makes transactions. Full zk-snark anonymity is fully resistant to this.

A problem of both xmr and zcash is that they have no other use than anonymity, making it easier to ban and impractical for larger amounts and forcing commerce to hedge price risk, generating deanonymizing metadata. For actual commerce anonymous dollar is the ideal, for as long as dollar remains the main unit of account in the world.

https://zk.money supports dai, although it's still in alpha with a limit of $1000 per external deposit.

https://aztec.network/index.html

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#157

Post by YeBanKo »

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #152
YeBanKo wrote: post #139

Recently the was a rant against cryptocurrency, now this is a case for it. I thought there were regulations in the US that would prohibit a financial institution to hold money that long. Looks like there aren’t.

It's odd enough that there are no rules against refusing service on arbitrary grounds for companies. I do not believe this to be legal in the E.U., but from how I understand it, In the U.S.A., a store can refuse any customer service on arbitrary grounds without having to say what the reason was. This is even more troublesome because the U.S.A. is a country of low population density where in some rural areas many peop…

Well, to make analogy with the grocery store complete, it’s not just refusing service, but accepting the money and refusing goods, while holding the money for 180 days.

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#158

Post by nabakin »

55555 wrote: post #154
convery wrote: 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 "…

A while ago I used paypal for transactions and I left some in the account so there was 100 grand. Six months later I tried to take some of it out and they froze the account despite no other recent activity. They said they'd keep it six months. Eight months or so after that, I asked about it, and they said they needed to freeze it for another six months. So soon we'll be at basically 18 months after the funds were ear…

Have you considered threatening them with a lawsuit?

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#159

Post by ls15 »

lostgame wrote: post #74
c01n wrote: post #62

Paypal is a scam. Use crypto-coins!!!

So I can pay with crypto on Amazon? Etsy? Discogs? I don’t understand why there are so many posts here saying ‘just use crypto’, like - PayPal is a scam and needs a replacement but the problem is until sites start accepting crypto as simply as PayPal works then things will stay the same. What you’re saying to do in your comment - on most major online retailers - is not yet possible, and it will probably take a long t…

Maybe "Use crypto-coins" was a message to Amazon, Etsy and Discogs.

Re: PayPal shuts down long-time Tor supporter

#160

Post by pitay »

heavyset_go wrote: post #34
unethical_ban wrote: post #14

"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…

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.

They certainly have. Here is one from 2010 when they held over 600,000 euros from Markus Persson, the creator of Minecraft for 'suspicious activity' that they wouldn't disclose. It's a good thing for him that he was so well known. https://notch.tumblr.com/post/1096322756/working-on-a-friday..., https://www.devicemag.com/2010/09/10/paypal-holding-over-600...
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