
“PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files” - zolder
https://seafile.de/en/important-infos-about-app-seafile-de-and-licensing-purchases-through-our-web-shops/
======
josteink
> PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as all our
> customers’ files for illegal content. They have also asked us to provide
> them with detailed statistics about the files types of our customers sync
> and share on [https://app.seafile.de](https://app.seafile.de)

That's a pretty big WTF right there.

I know PayPal has a on overall pretty scummy reputation, but I still I cannot
imagine PayPal doing this because they themselves think they'll benefit from
this data.

To me this seems like a demand which comes "upstream" from above PayPal, from
its payment providers (VISA, MasterCard, American Express, etc). Would I be
overly paranoid to imagine these demands and claims are the result of lobbing
by entities like RIAA and MPAA? They _do_ have a history for blocking payments
to known pirate-friendly services after all.

And as such, they clearly have too much power, and there needs to be some
anti-discriminatory financial regulation to stop business-hostile practices
like this from being lobbied and put in place.

Because this is just madness.

~~~
cm2187
Welcome to the world of financial regulations!

You may have not realised but banks and any financial institutions have been
deputised by the regulators to be the financial police. They need to ensure
that none of their client use financial services to commit crimes or launder
the proceeds of a crime, under the penalty of heavy (up to multi billions)
fines. Particularly in the US.

I am pretty sure this is what is forcing paypal to do this. And also why I
wish good luck to startups who think they will disrupt this massively over
regulated industry.

~~~
djsumdog
Crimes. Yes.

But payday loan companies and credit cards that charge 29% interest plus
hundreds of dollars in feeds to "help people with poor credit" are fine.

Supporting US government entities in defense that kill tons of innocent people
every day; that's fine too.

Self regulating? Man that works so well, especially in 2008. We're going to
let you keep doing that too.

Weed stores in states where it's legal? Hi it's the DEA. We're confiscating
these accounts for you. Here's a fine (at least until later this year, but
still only for medicinal marijuana)

It's a cluster fuck of bullshit. Of course you can always use a different
payment provider, but with PayPal being just so damn easy with very little
competition, it's like saying if Amazon removed your eBook, just publish it
somewhere else. The trouble is the distribution networks are so big that they
become the only means of distribution. If you control 90% of the market and
shut down a DropBox competitor, you're choosing which companies succeed.

~~~
Canutesun
Regulation has done a great job in several industries of concentrating the
industries into a few major players, because it is incredibly difficult to
comply for new/small companies. Banking and finance is one, telecom is
another.

~~~
dredmorbius
Telecoms got itself monopolised just fine _before_ regulations came along.
AT&T sealed in the concept of _operating_ as a regulated monopoly. But that
goes back to 1913.

There are industries which tend naturally toward monopolies, with transport,
communications, broadcast, and software among them. There are also industries
which tend naturally _away_ from monopolies, such as sandwich shops, cement
providers, and laundromats.

(Not that there cannot be some concentration, or even national chains among
these. But they're rarely dominant.)

~~~
tehrei
Would you say that industries with heavy network effects tend towards
monopolies, while those without tend to produce more competition?

~~~
dredmorbius
That's a large part of it.

Transport, comms, banking, and information technology, tend toward monopolies.

Consulting is a mixed bag -- if you're relying on creativity, not so much, but
if you're relying on marketing and business contacts, both of which are far
more a network effect (with strong lock-in elements), yes. Contrast your
typical small-gig design shop vs. the Big Declining n Accounting Firms, or IBM
and Oracle (consulting / business services).

Retail can be local (small effects) or global: large grocery stores, WalMart,
Amazon.

There are other effects as well. I've been curious about Maersk's adoption of
ultra-large cargo ships, even as shipping volumes have been falling. While
there's a financing-design-build lag, there's also the possiblity that _having
and operating a large ship_ puts pressures on other operators -- if you're
operating and loading, you're taking cargo which would go onto smaller
vessels.

It's complicated.

Part of this also plays into concepts of what and how technological mechanisms
actuall function: [https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/klsjjjzzl9plqxz-
ms8nww](https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/klsjjjzzl9plqxz-ms8nww)

I'd include among "network effects" urban and even empirical structures.

------
nakodari
Another victim of Paypal here. I run Jumpshare, a file sharing and
collaboration service for creative professionals. This is what Paypal sent us:

"May 8, 2016: When you signed up for your PayPal account, you agreed to our
User Agreement and Acceptable Use Policy. Because some of your recent
transactions violated this policy, we've had to permanently limit your
account.

Please remove any references to PayPal from your website."

They never mentioned which transactions violated the policy, we have never had
any complains from our customers. There was no prior warning. We called them
and they asked us to email them. We sent multiple emails and nobody bothered
to respond back. We lost 30% of our recurring monthly revenue right away!

We now use Stripe as our sole payment service provider. After this experience,
we will probably never accept Paypal again.

~~~
benevol
Having read during the last few years about the endless horror stories
businesses have endured with PayPal, I honestly don't understand why anyone
would still use PayPal when there clearly _are_ alternatives (be that US
companies like Stripe or EU companies like Paymill).

~~~
WA
Because they're still anecdotal and for most people, PayPal works just fine. I
find the stories horrifying, but I ran about 40,000 transactions through
PayPal in the last 5-6 years and never had any problems.

I guess this is how it is for most people, at least, I can use PayPal as a
buyer on most online businesses I deal with.

~~~
alyandon
Sure, using PayPal as a buyer is great as long as you never get into a dispute
with a seller. It took about 4 months for me to get PayPal to refund my money
when a seller on eBay ripped me off.

PayPal support was so inept they claimed that I had not returned the
merchandise despite giving them the DHL tracking number and shipping receipt
multiple times and eventually they closed my case in favor of the merchant.

I had to keep calling and harassing them and finally threatening to have the
charges reversed by my credit card company when they suddenly reversed their
decision.

I will never use PayPal for anything if I can avoid it.

~~~
joshmanders
I used to accept PayPal as a payment method when I was doing freelancing, ran
hundreds of thousands of dollars through my account over the many years of
having it. One client refuted a payment SIX MONTHS later, and they granted it
to him based on the fact that it was a digital service and there's no way to
verify it was successfully transferred.

I immediately closed my bank account (PayPal wouldn't let me remove it while a
refund was being made. Yes they were going to debit my bank account since I
had no funds in my account, which I never kept).

Now they've put that amount in collections and honestly, as someone who cares
about his credit, that one will stay the time until it's removed. I'm not
paying them, or the thief.

~~~
alyandon
You could get together all your documentation with respect to that transaction
and dispute that negative credit item directly with the three credit bureaus.

~~~
tombrossman
Exactly right, up to now the dispute existed in PayPal's walled garden and
played out under their rules. PayPal's dispute resolution process has some
serious flaws - with many high-profile examples - and often drags out to just
slightly longer than the time limit for chargebacks (funny that, huh?).

I would raise the stakes a bit more and send PayPal a hard copy of supporting
documentation and tell them that you will be disputing any negative report.
Send this by a recorded delivery method like registered mail or courier. This
means you can go to court and prove that PayPal had clear evidence of fraud
and failed to take appropriate action. It also proves that they had knowledge
of these facts prior to making the negative report to the credit agencies,
which puts them in a bad spot if this all ends up in court. In the USA, the
Fair Debt Reporting Act covers this scenario but similar laws exist in other
countries.

Keep good documentation and send everything by a trackable method and never
let these companies get away with ignoring you when you have a legitimate
issue. Just make sure you are sure you have proof that you are correct,
otherwise keep better documentation next time.

------
rio517
Given that we've all read similar situations happening all over the web, I'm
surprised organizations aren't including "paypal drops us for arbitrary
reasons" or "paypal freezes our funds with them for arbitrary reasons" in
their risk assessments when choosing vendors. In almost every case, that risk
should probably push decision makers away from Paypal.

It is also a little entertaining that their "brand risk" department is
probably doing so much unintentional damage to the brand.

~~~
simonswords82
The reason PayPal continues to be provided with the opportunity to fuck people
over is primarily due to their low financial/technical barriers to entry. A
website can be configured to accept PayPal payments in less than half a day,
and setting up a new PayPal account is a very straightforward process.

Compare this with setting up a merchant account to take payments (here in the
UK), which takes weeks, involves finding a payment gateway, all sorts of
paperwork and hoop jumping.

Fortunately companies like stripe.com have appeared here and will now eat in
to PayPals user base. I can't wait for PayPal to go away.

~~~
sovande
> Fortunately companies like stripe.com

The sad truth is that Stripe is behaving exactly like PayPal. What's worse is
that Stripe's fraud protection is non-existing. In other words, Stripe is
actually worse than PayPal, as you risk the same account freeze, closing etc,
but in addition, you will be swamped down with fraudulent purchases and
chargebacks.

~~~
tarstarr
(Disclaimer: I work at Stripe) Stripe does have a fraud protection product,
which is enabled by default for every user. It centers around a machine
learning system, that uses static signals (e.g. card issuing country) and
time-dependent, dynamic signals (e.g. "how many different devices have tried
to use this card in the last N hours?") to analyze every charge that hits our
systems. Transactions that are deemed almost certainly fraudulent are
automatically declined (but can be reviewed in the dashboard or via the API.)

We're constantly working on product & performance improvements, but feel free
to get in touch with me directly (tara@stripe.com) to ask questions or share
feedback on our models (and fraud product in general).

~~~
sovande
For posterity, yes you do have this "neural network" thing. It does not really
work now AFAIK, but I do hope you will succeed as we definitely need a viable
alternative to PayPal.

Though I'm sceptical to this approach. In machine learning 101 we learned that
there always exist a statistical method that would beat a neural network. In
this case, a system that gathers actual relevant data for statistical scoring.
You know hard data, like an up to date list of stolen credit card numbers, a
history of chargeback per credit card etc. PayPal has this and of 1000
transactions, we have 1-2 fraudulent chargebacks. Compared to Strip this is
the difference between heaven and hell. PayPal sucks, but at least they have a
working fraud protection system.

Nothing kills an online business faster than being swamped in fraud and
chargebacks. I mean, good APIs are great and Stripe certainly has that, but a
working fraud protecting system is what really matters to those of us who sell
online.

------
Draiken
I'm once again astonished with how much control of our businesses is simply
out of our hands.

When looking at practices these financial institutions use it makes me wonder
what can't they do?

Everyone cites "regulations", but as far as I understand, they make the
regulations. Directly or indirectly.

Take for example the known cases where PayPal freezes accounts holding
people's money. If I take someone else's money and refuse to give it back to
them, it's a crime in pretty much every nation. But when banks and financial
institutions do that, they get away scot-free (with maybe some small rants
from the internet) and keep doing this systematically profiting in almost all
cases.

If we're not bound to middle men like Stripe and PayPal, we're bound to Visa
and Mastercard. Is there any way out of this madness?

~~~
chinathrow
Essentially, it goes way further than what these financial institutions can
do. It goes directly to what the U.S. fed can do - the clearing house for the
USD. It can cut off any bank for misconduct/doing business with e.g. Cuba etc.

~~~
speeder
Also, the UN bank can threaten to kick out your central/federal bank too.

Also an interesting example of bank politics is that Khadaffi made several
laws in Libya against UN bank rules, for example providing loans with infinite
term and zero interest for newlyweds. During the civil war, one of the first
things the rebels did was create a central bank in Misrata, pledge loyalty to
UN and then redquest to be recognized as the true Libyan Government.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _the UN bank can threaten to kick out your central /federal bank too_

This does not exist. Central banks interface with each other. The closest
thing to what you're describing is the European Central Bank.

> _pledge loyalty to UN_

This is gibberish. One can be _recognised_ by the United Nations (UN). One can
also, by accepting its Charter and paying one's fees, become a UN Member. But
there is no pledging of fielty involved.

~~~
speeder
You never heard of World Bank, BIS, FSB, whatnot?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _You never heard of World Bank, BIS, FSB_

None of these is referred to as "a UN Bank". Only the World Bank is a part of
the United Nations system. It makes loans to developing countries. The only
way being "kicked out" of the World Bank makes sense would be if it refused to
lend to you (which it does often and usually with minimum consequence). Note
that the World Bank System lends to many non-UN member entities, _e.g._
private businesses and non-profits. China got pissed off at the World Bank and
IMF last year and effectively kicked itself out by starting a competitor in
its "New Development Bank".

The Bank for International Settlements is a discussion forum whose
recommendations are not binding. The United States, for instance, added its
own touch to Basel III, Switzerland layered on a "Swiss finish" and China,
India and many others simply ignored it. Being "kicked out" of the BIS would
simply mean you don't get to go to its meetings. Many countries do fine
without being BIS members. The Financial Stability Board is an even smaller
group with even less tangible activity than the BIS. (It published a book
report on rules it thought sovereign wealth funds should follow. Compliance is
voluntary and one need not be a member to read or implement, or as more
countries have done, ignore, the report's suggestions.)

The closest international financial systems one can be "kicked out" of with
consequence are the electronic-dollar transmission system operated by the New
York Federal Reserve [1] (you can still use printed dollars if America "kicks
you out") and the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication
(SWIFT) [2]. SWIFT is not a club for only central banks–many private banks are
SWIFT members, too, and many get "kicked out" for doing varieties of stupid
things. They can still move their money around by asking other banks to do it
for them.

The international financial Illuminati you think exists does not.

[1]
[https://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed20](https://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed20)

[2] [https://www.swift.com](https://www.swift.com)

------
MichaelBurge
File sharing services are listed as requiring pre-approval, so Seafile
should've sent them an email before accepting it as payment:

[https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-
full](https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full)

They're well within their rights to decline your business. If a bank told the
government, "We have no absolutely no idea what our customers are doing with
their money or who they're sending it to. Maybe they're sending it to
terrorists or drug lords, maybe they're not; it's none of our business and we
respect their privacy", they'd get shut down in a heartbeat.

I can understand if Paypal doesn't want to appear on the front page of the
news for funding an underground child porn ring that signed up as one of your
"enterprise clients".

~~~
ominous
> They're well within their rights to decline your business.

They are. Should we condone it?

> "Maybe they're sending it to terrorists or drug lords, maybe they're not;
> it's none of our business and we respect their privacy"

Isn't this similar to the idea of banning web browsers, as they render HTML
which, as we all know, can be used to write text (<span>plaintext!</span>)
inciting terrorism? And it sometimes is. Are you using a browser _right now_?

Things we deem "evil" are planned using technology. Should we ban technology?

~~~
lmm
> Isn't this similar to the idea of banning web browsers, as they render HTML
> which, as we all know, can be used to write text (<span>plaintext!</span>)
> inciting terrorism? And it sometimes is. Are you using a browser right now?

Search engines and hosting services already monitor for illegal content.

Reasonable people can disagree over whether requiring a filesharing service to
monitor for illegal content is excessively onerous, but the slippery-slope
fallacy does noone any favours. You can make any policy sound absurd by taking
it to a far enough extreme. Often we do need to weigh up costs and benefits
and take a policy line somewhere in the middle.

~~~
woodman
> slippery-slope fallacy ... sound absurd by taking it to a far enough
> extreme.

Assuming that you actually value logic, given your choice of words, how do you
not see that the magnitude of the absurdity is directly related a faulty
premise - a fallacy?

    
    
       Live and let live * [1..1000] = nice .. nice
       Kill at random    * [1..1000] = bad  .. horrific
    

So no, not every policy can be made to sound absurd.

~~~
lmm
"Live and let live" can absolutely be made to sound absurd by taking it to the
extreme. Does the amount of taking-far-enough needed to make something sound
absurd vary? Sure. But the post I replied to was doing a whole lot of taking-
far-enough.

~~~
woodman
> ...needed to make something sound absurd vary? Sure.

That is your point, not mine. I'm saying that you're focusing on the wrong
part of the equation. Imagine a machine with two variables that you have
influence over, calibration error and runtime. You are suggesting short
runtimes in order to minimize the impact of calibration error, I'm suggesting
recalibration.

I'd love to hear an extreme for "Live and let live", but I'm guessing that
whatever scenario you can imagine is based on a faulty premise like "How can
we wreak revenge without a death penalty?!".

~~~
lmm
> That is your point, not mine. I'm saying that you're focusing on the wrong
> part of the equation. Imagine a machine with two variables that you have
> influence over, calibration error and runtime. You are suggesting short
> runtimes in order to minimize the impact of calibration error, I'm
> suggesting recalibration.

Please stop with the extended metaphors and just say what you're trying to say
directly.

> I'd love to hear an extreme for "Live and let live", but I'm guessing that
> whatever scenario you can imagine is based on a faulty premise like "How can
> we wreak revenge without a death penalty?!".

Whatever. Are you interested in a constructive discussion or not? There are
plenty of silly extremes for "live and let live" \- harming the environment in
ways that don't kill anyone? Harming themselves in all the various ways that
can happen? Harming their children?

~~~
woodman
> metaphors

I count two metaphors, used only because the direct explanation failed to get
through to you.

> Whatever. Are you interested in a constructive discussion or not?

I think it is clear that won't happen, "Whatever" is a strong indicator of
disinterest.

> There are plenty of silly extremes for "live and let live"

None of those examples make any sense, which can be explained in two way: you
don't know that "live and let live" is an idiom related to coexistence and
tolerance, or you think that "extreme" necessitates mutual exclusivity.

------
howfun
Apparently the other filesharing companies spy on user data,that is why they
are on Paypal.

~~~
RachelF
I wonder. It is a bit worrying that DropBox accepts PayPal.

~~~
rmc
Dropbox is a US based company, is not bound by EU data protection law, the
Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU (basically the EU's Bill of Rights),
and additionally the US Constitutional ban on warrentless searches does not
apply to EU citizens in EU.

~~~
DrJokepu
EU Dropbox customers are the customers of Dropbox Ireland Limited (a company
registered in Ireland), not Dropbox, Inc., a company registered in Delaware,
so actually all of the EU regulations apply to their EU customers.

Source: I'm a paying Dropbox customer living in the UK and my invoices are
issued by Dropbox Ireland Limited.

~~~
duhast
But where is your data stored?

~~~
DrJokepu
[https://www.dropbox.com/privacy](https://www.dropbox.com/privacy)

Where Around the world. To provide you with the Services, we may store,
process and transmit information in the United States and locations around the
world - including those outside your country. Information may also be stored
locally on the devices you use to access the Services.

Safe Harbor. Dropbox complies with the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Safe Harbor
("Safe Harbor") frameworks and principles. We have certified our compliance,
and you can view our certifications here. You can learn more about Safe Harbor
by visiting [http://export.gov/safeharbor](http://export.gov/safeharbor). JAMS
is the independent organization responsible for reviewing and resolving
complaints about our Safe Harbor compliance. We ask that you first submit any
such complaints directly to us via privacy@dropbox.com. If you aren't
satisfied with our response, please contact JAMS at
[http://www.jamsinternational.com/rules-
procedures/safeharbor...](http://www.jamsinternational.com/rules-
procedures/safeharbor/file-safe-harbor-claim).

NOTE: When transferring data from the European Union, the European Economic
Area, and Switzerland, Dropbox relies upon a variety of legal mechanisms,
including contracts with our users. Dropbox doesn’t rely upon Safe Harbor as a
legal basis for data transfer but does adhere to the Safe Harbor Privacy
Principles while specific guidance for the forthcoming EU-US Privacy Shield
program is developed. For information about data transfers from Europe to the
United States, please visit this page.

------
xavier9050
Compliance Officer in financial sector in Luxembourg here. The request you
have received is related to anti money laundering regulations. As you guys
seem to be based in Germany. So bear in mind that PayPal operates across the
European Union as a Luxembourg-based bank. Anti-money laundering regulation is
typically stricter in Lux than in the USA. The Lux regulator is the "CSSF",
and you can find the detail of the regulation here:
[http://www.cssf.lu/en/supervision/financial-crime/aml-
ctf/la...](http://www.cssf.lu/en/supervision/financial-crime/aml-ctf/laws-
regulations-and-other-texts/)

------
jeena
So, suprise suprise, my 6 years old blogpost continues to be spot on
[https://jeena.net/paypal](https://jeena.net/paypal) that is when I deleted my
PayPal account. But it was not all dance on roses after that, suprisingly many
only offer PayPal as a way to pay them, so I always have to try to contact
them and to try to explain and to ask for another way to pay. Most of the time
they won't/can't help me.

~~~
celticninja
look into bitcoin.

~~~
tobltobs
Sending money in an envelope would be easier and more accepted.

~~~
celticninja
Not if you are in Germany, with bitcoin.de it is a very simple process.

------
contingencies
Had to use Paypal today to make a payment to a company who can't otherwise
find a reasonable way to take credit cards online. I feel their pain, having
been in that position. Paypal randomly saw that it was reasonable to demand I
answer a phone in another country (though I haven't been based there for
perhaps 15 years) if I wanted to log in to my account. I had to work around
this by having them send a payment request, then paid about USD$1000. Wish
they accepted Bitcoin, I was livid at the experience. Every time I deal with
Paypal it's the same. Their PR crap a year or two back about "sorting things
out" was obviously empty. Stripe isn't much better: after a reasonable start,
last time I wanted to use them I couldn't because my address is in a different
country to my card (ANYONE LISTENING?). These abuses are reaching a breaking
point, nobody is going to deal with credit cards soon. Here in amusingly
progressive mainland China, they are a minor mode of payment and shrinking:
good riddance!

~~~
sisk
Am I misinterpreting something? It sounds like you're upset with PayPal
because you tried to make a payment from a country other than the one on
record (which trips every fraud detection out there) and that they tried to
contact you for verification with the number they had on file which you
haven't updated in 15 years. That sounds like reasonable behavior from their
end.

~~~
contingencies
... except that I haven't changed my behavior and the 'reasonable' action they
took was permanently locking me out of my account. Note that they presented
this whole experience to me in a foreign language because obviously my GeoIP
is the same as my location because privacy, China and VPNs don't exist. And of
course, I had no choice but to leave that number on record because it matches
my credit card address. Because of course, there is no such thing as a credit
card with an address outside of the issuing country, or someone that lives at
many addresses or an address where there is no reliable mail. It's basically a
number of bad assumptions layered with bad customer service and algorithms.
Every year my credit card company randomly stops my card because they think
it's weird a transaction occurred in some country or other. I say "See how I
just bought a plane ticket right before that? How is that strange?". Right on
my card it says "World Mastercard". I have or have had accounts with this same
bank in 5 countries. They know this. But we can't just blame the bank, it's
the credit card system. Apparently in every corner of the world, idiots run
these algorithms. Finally, note that for this wonderful experience I pay 5% of
USD$1000 = USD$50. The US intelligence sponsored monopoly of card companies on
payment has to end.

------
mootothemax
Here's PayPal's page on what they require for file-sharing services:

>Merchants offering file-sharing programs or access to newsgroup services must
monitor for and prevent access to illegal content.

[https://www.paypal.com/selfhelp/article/FAQ1116/?country.x=J...](https://www.paypal.com/selfhelp/article/FAQ1116/?country.x=JP&locale.x=en_US)

~~~
raimue
"Article is currently unavailable"

Searching for this entry with keywords like "file-sharing" did not turn up
anything.

~~~
mootothemax
>Searching for this entry with keywords like "file-sharing" did not turn up
anything.

Well that's really helpful of them.

I've updated the link, can you read it now?

Edit: FWIW, this was on the first page of Google for me - in Poland - when
searching "paypal file-sharing"

~~~
raimue
Thanks, the link works now for me.

Apparently this depends on the country. Your link includes JP for Japan and
the contact mail address for Japan (which ironically is spelled wrong).

I really cannot reach it from Germany without this ?country.x=JP.

------
raverbashing
Paypal only exists because the current infrastructure of payments in the US is
a joke

Nobody needs paypal in Europe. Of course, they try to sell themselves as "the
easiest way" (which is right to a point) but it's mostly unneeded

~~~
ladybro
What are the alternatives in Europe that make Paypal not needed? Genuinely
curious, not saying you're wrong by any means.

~~~
mschuster91
Germany: SEPA direct debit, sofortueberweisung.de, giropay, and if you're
willing to put up with PCI compliance bullshit, credit cards. All three are
vastly cheaper than PP, too.

~~~
lorenzhs
I still find the idea behind sofortüberweisung shady. Maybe they're actually
the nicest people in the world with the best security practices known to
humanity, but I still won't hand them the login credentials to my online
banking or my card's PIN.

~~~
_up
They actually admitted (2011) that they scrape the last 30 days of transfers
of your banking account. German Source:
[http://www.golem.de/1105/83811.html](http://www.golem.de/1105/83811.html)

------
adrianmsmith
Presumably with TTIP harmonizing laws between the US and EU, violating the
privacy of users will stop being illegal in the EU at some point.

~~~
Qantourisc
Hopefully the other way around in the US.

------
reitanqild
Improvement: PayPal at least asked first, IIRC that was not always the case.

Still I advise people not to depend solely on PayPal because of their tendency
to freeze funds over nothing.

------
Matt3o12_
I wonder if legal action can be taken against PayPal for demanding this kind
of information. PayPal blackmailed them into breaking a law (they didn't break
it but they suffered financial loss from not doing it).

If I told a customer who absolutely depends on my business to harass/attack
somebody, I would certainly hold liable as well.

~~~
mrgoldenbrown
Or can PayPal take legal action against _them_ for violating ToS? Did they
properly disclose they were a file sharing site (as required by PayPal) before
signing up to take payments? If they can't meet PayPal's ToS, they shouldn't
have signed up. [Paypal sucks, but this doesn't seem like a cause for legal
remedy]

~~~
tremon
ToS do not trump the law in Europe, so no. If a company is offering services
in Europe with terms that contradict local law, the terms are void.

------
benevol
It's time to share & spread information about PayPal's competitors:

What has your experience or market research yielded (stripe.com and paymill.de
probably being the most obvious ones)?

~~~
joergsauer
Paymill seems to have a somewhat uncertain future at this point:
[http://ecommercenews.eu/german-payment-provider-paymill-
file...](http://ecommercenews.eu/german-payment-provider-paymill-files-
preliminary-insolvency/)

------
herghost
This is the reason I stopped using Paypal.

The want to position themselves as a financial services provider equivalent to
traditional banks, except that they reserve the right arbitrarily - and
without recourse - remove their services.

As a customer this means you can be cut out from your ability to use
"currency". As a business this means you're beholden to arbitrary decisions
that you can't really risk assess against - and if you've built your business
on this service it could be devastating.

------
morganvachon
I think I just found my new cloud provider. It's rare to see a company stand
firm on their values like this.

------
mzd348
I was under the impression that European wire transfers were cheap (free),
fast, and reliable. If that's true, why is something like PayPal even needed?
Can't Seafile just have their clients transfer money to Seafile's account? Or
are wire transfers not free for "retail" use like this?

~~~
Strom
One time SEPA transfers are already really simple, yes. Recurring ones, not so
much. However SEPA Direct Debit [1] does look like an interesting new
recurring system, with a compliance deadline of 31 October 2016. I will
definitely be looking more into this, and probably will be trying it out in
the wild.

[1] [http://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/index.cfm/sepa-
direct-...](http://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/index.cfm/sepa-direct-
debit/sepa-direct-debit-core-scheme-sdd-core/)

------
joopxiv
I have quite some personal experience with PayPal, and their policies seem
quite random. If one person gets it into his or her head that something is not
allowed, no voice of reason will change the decision. I wouldn't shed too much
tears over it though, there are many better and cheaper alternative forms of
payment.

~~~
Hondor
Can you give some examples? I know in America there are lots of startups doing
it, but what about the rest of the world? I looked into Skrill a few years ago
which seems to be just as international as Paypal, but also with just as
horrible terms and conditions.

~~~
ar0
In Germany (where seafile is located), there is for example Paymill [1] for
accepting credit cards and SEPA direct debit. It is pretty expensive (2.95% +
28 cents per transaction) but it seems to have a good API and if it is more
reliable than PayPal (which isn't exactly cheap either) it might be worth it.

[1] [https://www.paymill.com/](https://www.paymill.com/)

~~~
thesimon
Quote overpriced and uncertain future (they recently filed for Chapter 11)

------
leommoore
What is the most disappointing is PayPal's lack of Customer Service. Why would
any vendor want to use their services when they are so badly treated? It also
throws into question the data security of other vendors's cloud storage. Is
everyone looking at my stuff?!?

------
premasagar
Shenanigans like this will only hasten the onset of a bitcoin economy.

~~~
imron
Yes, because the bitcoin economy is totally free of shenanigans.. ;-)

~~~
vocatus_gate
"But our shenanigans are cheeky and fun!"

"Yeah, and his shenanigans are cruel and tragic."

"Which... makes them not really shenanigans at all."

------
mathattack
_Since complying with this demand would violate German / European data
protection laws (and also be morally wrong in our opinion) we have declined to
comply with this demand._

Is everyone in Germany going to have this issue?

------
ohitsdom
Has anyone made a site yet detailing all of these horror stories? Paypal's
behavior is unacceptable and needs to change, yet years later things still
seem just as bad for their customers.

~~~
simonswords82
Yep, there's loads:

[https://www.aboutpaypal.org/](https://www.aboutpaypal.org/)
[http://www.paypalwarning.com/](http://www.paypalwarning.com/)
[http://www.screw-
paypal.com/horror_stories/horror_stories.ht...](http://www.screw-
paypal.com/horror_stories/horror_stories.html)

Some of the content is NSFW

~~~
ohitsdom
Thanks, just what I was looking for.

------
infodroid
To a corporate lawyer, every file sync and team collaboration solution looks
no different from Megaupload.

~~~
794CD01
To a user, too. That's why every file sharing service eventually gets taken
over by the same people with the same problems.

------
mk89
Another great example of the so called "democratization".

~~~
mk89
Whoever down-voted the comment above doesn't probably know that
"democratization of management and movements of money" is really one goal of
this company. ( [http://fortune.com/2015/05/21/paypal-ceo-dan-
schulman/](http://fortune.com/2015/05/21/paypal-ceo-dan-schulman/) )

Now it's seafile.de, a couple of months ago they started to block accounts
used to pay VPN services. What's next?

I am not judging the company, because I am sure that they would like to have
users to pay everything possible via their services. That's fine. I just find
it incoherent to claim that they are democratizing the way to manage/move
money around.

------
kriro
That's a pretty huge WTF request.

Can you sue Paypal for basically telling you "break the law or don't use us"
(I think that's a pretty bad idea on ideological grounds but I wonder if it's
technically possible)? Especially since Paypal has to be regulated within the
EU in some way I'd say such a request should result in at least a cursory
check if the EU license (iirc. they operate as a bank) of Paypal should be
revoked/suspended/investigated.

------
sandworm101
For those thinking this has something to do with "regulation", it does not.
Paypal has done this sort of thing for years. In the past it has been the
"cyberlockers" and VPN services, even Wikileaks. Someone is putting soft
pressure on Paypal. Someone in government or, more likely, someone within the
copyright-lobby is threatening them. That has been the pattern in the past.

------
0xmohit
Paypal apparently has plans of coming up with a sequel to "The Lives of
Others" [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others)

------
sjreese
"AML" this is all cover for CIA economic espionage as always the people asking
the questions are the competitors. Who need know how, who and where your
customers are marketing reasons to undercut your prices for selected
customers! You see never hand over your member list when you don't know who
the end users are. Think T-mobile and at&t then about the switch offers to
selected user based on data usage.

------
lucaspottersky
This means that it's easier than ever to spot companies that are monitoring
YOUR data: just check whether they accept PayPal or not.

------
derFunk
AFAIK PayPal only do this if they have internal proof that laws are already
being broken on the according websites. I don't know Seafile, but the same
happened to other file hosters in the past which silently and willingly
accepted that copyrighted material is exchanged by using their services.

------
mrbill
Last year I worked for a Dropbox-like service, and PayPal was continually
giving us grief over using them as a payment service as well. I don't recall
them asking us to monitor every user's traffic, though.

------
Taylor_OD
I use PayPal often for online stores where my Discover card isnt accepted but
I cant believe they are still around and have a huge market share. The
platform is so broken.

~~~
DavideNL
For me it's the opposite, i never use Paypal because i keep reading evil
stories about them - i don't want to support a company which behaves like
this...

------
reiichiroh
I've seen detractors lambaste Seafile as an untrustworthy Chinese company/app
originally. Anyone know if there's any truth to this?

------
INTPenis
Well, sorry paypal, but I've seen a host of new payment services crop up
lately. Now is not the time to push your clients around.

------
sschueller
A little of topic but has anyone else noticed the paypal website being
extremely slow?

~~~
the-dude
Paypal has been (extremely) slow for years, at least 6 years.

------
CommanderData
Isn't this why we pay paypal fees in the first place?

------
nxzero
Anyone have a link to the notices PayPal sent Seafile?

------
mertens
OP, are you from Zolder, Belgium???

------
phyyl
faith in humanity restored

------
uncletammy
I don't think they need regulation. I think they need to carry on like they
are for a few more years so I can watch them be eaten alive by crypto
currencies and other fintech innovations.

~~~
daix
I think the problem is that PayPal almost have a monopoly on e-commercial
market, and because of the stickiness of users, it's hard to break the
monopoly.

~~~
syshum
I do not believe they have a monoply any more. a few years ago they where much
more prolifict, I paid for ALOT of things via paypal. in the last 5 years I
have made 0 transactions on paypal.

With Amazon, Stripe, and others merchant solutions, as well as Apple and
Google geting into the game soon for webpayments in addition to app paymets I
do not believe the reliance on paypal as a quick way to process credit cards
for business is as high as it was, further the reluctance for consumers to
enter their credit card data never really materialized.

Currently I think a business that only has PayPal as a payment option is
harming their business, while you might keep it around for those few users
that still only want to use paypal if I see an option to use anything other
than paypal I will take it.

~~~
outworlder
> With Amazon, Stripe, and others merchant solutions, as well as Apple and
> Google geting into the game soon for webpayments

Most merchant solutions you mention are only available in a handful of
countries. Paypal way more widespread.

------
tn13
I stopped using file-sharing software long back. I use s3 now.

