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

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

#91

Post by Dahoon »

seanhunter wrote: post #68
pieno wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well completing Know Your Customer checks and audits is sort of their job, isn’t it? They provide a service, saying that they will process payments unless the payment is prohibited by government sanctions. But instead of carrying out actual due diligence, they just block anything remotely related and put the onus and cost of doing their own job on their customers. At least they should have a better process to start p…

You're right but I think you'd perhaps be surprised how international sanctions monitoring works. Example, I know one of the largest banks in Europe used to have payments they sent to one of their South American branch offices blocked from time to time because their address in Brazil or Argentina or something was on a street called "Avenue de Cuba".

But PayPal specifically isn't under banking laws which is how they cover their ass normally (like if you have money at PayPal and they terminate your account you never get your money , which there are thousands and thousands of cases of PayPal doing which would be illegal for an actuall bank), so banking law has nothing to do with PayPal.

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

#92

Post by _jal »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #57
bleepblorp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the kind of thinking that lead to the TSA putting infants, and even a US Senator, on the US no-fly list because their names matched those of "known terrorists." The Washington concept of NATIONAL SECURITY is a brain-eating parasite that seemingly renders compliance managers unable to tell the difference between categorically different things, such as US Senators and IRA terrorists, or Serbian companies named…

> seemingly renders compliance managers unable to tell the difference between categorically different things Because it renders them liable. The whole system will turn against you if you give it an opportunity to nail you for using discretion. And this happens everywhere in society after a certain size is reached due to the need to hold people accountable without actually being able to fully evaluate who or what is t…

> Because it renders them liable.

Yep.

This is how you tell the difference between financial crime that the authorities don't care about and financial crime they do.

Look for personal liability.

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

#93

Post by nraynaud »

Dahoon wrote: post #91
seanhunter wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right but I think you'd perhaps be surprised how international sanctions monitoring works. Example, I know one of the largest banks in Europe used to have payments they sent to one of their South American branch offices blocked from time to time because their address in Brazil or Argentina or something was on a street called "Avenue de Cuba".

But PayPal specifically isn't under banking laws which is how they cover their ass normally (like if you have money at PayPal and they terminate your account you never get your money , which there are thousands and thousands of cases of PayPal doing which would be illegal for an actuall bank), so banking law has nothing to do with PayPal.

in the EU they are an actual Bank based in Luxembourg.

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

#94

Post by Dahoon »

Krasnol wrote: post #61

I hope the EU will come up with a central bank backed alternative soon.

The whole problem with PayPal is exactly that it isn't a bank so they can get away with all kinds of stuff a bank cannot. I doubt a bank backed competitor could survive against a business that can just lock an account with money in it and never pay them back. Not really a level playing field.

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

#95

Post by EE84M3i »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #89
EE84M3i wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what's the problematic substring of "Tardigrade"?

Probably not "grad", maybe "tard" ? ;p

Reminds me that around 2006 you couldn't say "Saturday" on runescape because it contains "turd"

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

#96

Post by thiht »

_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…

My guess is more simply that "tardigrade" contains the substring "tard", which is sometimes used as short for "retard" in their state of the art regexp filter.

Their filter is probably like /iran|tard|cuban|.../i (see also: https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/news-opinion/paypal-w... and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24359821)

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

#97

Post by tuiq03 »

blunte wrote: post #37
tuiq03 wrote: post #33

I work europe based ecommerce company. paypal was blocking orders for any product that had “cuba” as pat of the name/description due to us cuban sanctions. although after talking with account manager, they have removed this filter for us.

Based on my experiences helping a client with Paypal, even though we had written approval from one of their executives in Paypal risk management, we got shut down weeks later for violating the thing we explicitly got permission for. If I were you, I would expect something to trigger a blockage again (and ultimately decide, like many companies, that Paypal just isn't reliable).

that’s proven by all other problems we have working with. but you cannot simply turn it off since it has huge payment share vs other payment methods

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

#98

Post by afiori »

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…

I'm not from the US and to me PayPal was always only a way to avoid filling in credit cards details on (random) websites.

it always feels a bit weird to see people elsewhere rely on it for much more.

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

#100

Post by Kubuxu »

ganomi wrote: post #54
mrweasel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know if PayPal ever claimed otherwise, but I’ve suspected that much of the AI powered moderation online is simply advanced keyword matching. We have to start accepting that either websites are unwilling to or unable to do moderation in any meaningful way, unless they hire human moderators at huge costs. Hearing an interview with the country for Facebook on Danish radio just two weeks ago, it’s pretty clear to…

Another example for keyword matching: I work on a German/Polish team. We sent money for a birthday present from Germany to Poland. Someone used the colleagues' nickname "Kuba" in the subject line. The Paypal account of the Polish colleague was blocked afterwards. But he could resolve the issue via support afaik.

Just to augment the story: Kuba is not an internet nickname. It is a shorter form of given name Jakub (Jacob). I use Jakub only in documents and during formal events. For everyone else I'm Kuba.
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