
PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices - uladzislau
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32810280
======
r2pleasent
Paypal has so many things wrong with their company. The majority of employees,
even in the business support department, have absolutely no clue what is going
on. They will give you an answer to a question, you will call back later, get
a new agent, and then you'll get a completely different answer to the same
question.

Half the time the customer support is clearly just improvising, because the
system is such a mess that there are no clear processes for fairly common
situations. Let me give an example. A customer on our website makes an order
for digital goods. We collect photo ID, check their IP, call them. The
customer then opens an unauthorized claim. We call in and outline the
information we have.

Half the time, the agent will tell us that the information we have collected
is irrelevant to an unauthorized dispute. Let me clarify that. The photo ID
documents, IP address on file, and phone number of the buyer are considered
irrelevant in a claim where the buyer alleges they did not authorize a
purchase. Absolutely ridiculous, right?

Then magically, if you call back and connect to the right agent, they will
actually look at your evidence and use it to help determine the case. These
cases can be upwards of $500, and must be extremely common. And yet, somehow,
there is no clear standard for what proof we need to collect in order to win
an unauthorized dispute.

The company is a headache to work with. Half our time is spent verifying and
doing risk management in our business, simply due to the horror that is
PayPal.

~~~
arprocter
At one of my old jobs I remember Paypal closing a dispute in favor of the
buyer, who had claimed the goods were never received, despite the fact that we
supplied a copy of said buyer's signature from when he accepted the
delivery...

Things like that would happen on a pretty regular basis.

~~~
hueving
I'm always curious about this. How would you know that's the right person's
signature?

~~~
memonkey
Usually the FedEx/UPS guy asks what your name is when you sign. It goes into
their system as "Delivered at 123 Address by 'John'" as a two part 'proof'
that it was delivered to the correct address and by a specific person.

------
rip747
About time, but $25M is nothing for them.

Nowadays we have all our clients using Stripe for their CC processing, but
back in the day, our clients could use anyone they want. One poor soul choose
to use PayPal against our insisting he not. Three days before he had to give
the security deposit to the convention center where his organization was
hosting their conference, PayPal froze the account. I can't express the stress
and despair this poor guy had in voice while talking to him, explaining there
was nothing that I could do on my end and that he would have to contact PayPal
and try to explain the situation and get the funds released. Ultimately the
conference went on, but I never followed up to find out how, if he got the
funds released, worked something out with the convention center or something.

~~~
aleksandrm
Agreed, $25M is nothing and they should be slapped with a much higher penalty.
PayPal is the scummiest company on Earth. A buyer opened a dispute with them,
and PayPal robbed me of $2500, tried fighting them for 2 years but eventually
gave up.

~~~
coffeedrinker
PayPal has some serious issues with regards to what you say, but I used it
last summer to transfer money from USA to Europe for my daughter and the fee
was a fraction of what the bank wanted. Banks can be pretty scummy in their
own way.

~~~
1_player
Have you ever tried TransferWise? With customers and family around the world,
I'm thinking of switching to them to handle transfers instead of
Paypal/Stripe. They seem to have the most honest fees around.

Disclaimer: not affiliated with them. Just genuinely curious.

~~~
jotm
How does it work? I wanted to use them once, but it was the first time I heard
about them and their site doesn't explain anything.

If anything, it looks shady - "outsmart your bank, use us, we do it super
cheap, promise!" but no explanation of how it actually works...

~~~
NearAP
From their website (step 3 of how it works)

TransferWise converts your money at the mid-market rate and matches you with
people sending in the other direction. That's why it costs so little.

My understanding - after you've given the money you want to transfer to
TransferWise, they find someone in your destination country who wishes to
transfer money to the country where you are (kind of like a swap). This way,
they cut off the banks and their fees and charge you a lower fee.

~~~
jotm
That's how I understood it, but then I thought "what if there's no one in that
country?" Do they use their own funds or does the recipient wait several
weeks.

I imagine it's the former, but at the time I just used SWIFT - rather
expensive, but guaranteed to work everywhere.

------
alyandon
I once made a major purchase off eBay and received merchandise that was
substantially different than what I ordered.

It took 4 months, many exchanges with PayPal via their "dispute center" and
many phone calls to have my purchase refunded. They even _closed_ my dispute
at one point claiming that I hadn't returned the merchandise because their
support staff was too incompetent to check the DHL tracking # on DHL's web
site to verify that I had indeed returned the merchandise (at my expense).

I will never make a major purchase with PayPal again.

~~~
gr3yh47
you're supposed to handle disputes for ebay merchandise through ebay channels,
not directly with paypal. This may have been part of the cause of difficulty.

~~~
alyandon
Sorry, but you are incorrect. I followed the exact instructions that were
provided to me at the time (circa 2009) on eBay's own web site for opening a
dispute case with the eBay seller.

------
calinet6
I've noticed and felt uneasy about their UX around Paypal credit. When
checking out, the option is "Use Paypal Credit" or "Use Paypal Balance" \-- in
standard jargon, of having 'credit' or 'credits' at a payment site, to me
those mean roughly the same thing. I've almost made the mistake a couple
times, but caught myself. To others it surely could be deceptive, and probably
did cause errors. Totally scammy.

It's really bad. I complained but got no response, and it's not a surprise.
I'm glad that this (among other things) didn't fly.

------
abalone
"Our focus is on ease of use, clarity..."

That's rich. PayPal's business has _primarily_ been based on obfuscating the
difference between card payments and bank drafts, and steering consumers to a
choice that is not in their best interests.

Bank drafts (ACH) are almost all profit for PayPal but _much_ worse for
customers, as the consumer protections are weaker, reward programs are
nonexistent and there is a risk of overdraft and associated bank penalties.
But every time you sign into your PayPal account that you've linked to your
bank account, it defaults to paying by bank draft. Every time. There is no
preference.

They are just hoping that a percentage of their customer base won't notice or
bother to switch to paying by card (which is not as easy as it could be).

~~~
colanderman
At one point PayPal's website was so broken in the web browsers I used that it
refused to let me log in. This had the brilliant side effect that I was able
to use my credit card through them; I never could figure out how _not_ to use
ACH when I was logged in.

------
rlpb
> The proposed settlement states that the company will set up a $15m fund to
> compensate affected customers and pay a further $10m fine to the bureau.

Why must there be a fund? Paypal knows exactly who they gave the service to by
default, and exactly what interest and other charges they received from them.
So why can't they just be ordered to immediately return the full amount to
each affected user?

~~~
aeturnum
That may be possible in this case, but the laws are written for the general
case. The fund is an approach that allows users with grievances to get relief
over a variety of mediums and timescales.

Even here, who knows what data paypal has retained about who used the feature
and when?

~~~
rlpb
> Even here, who knows what data paypal has retained about who used the
> feature and when?

They will have records of how they get their income for accounting and tax
purposes. If they don't, I expect they'd be in far more trouble with the tax
authorities.

------
nvk
Unrelated, but still a bit shady.

They still try to trick me into using back account instead of credit card,
even though I've set credit card as default... I know CC processing costs them
more, but It's so annoying.

~~~
irl_zebra
This is typical of them. To do my best to take a jab at them every time I can,
when I am forced to pay with PayPal, I specifically select my AMEX to pay
because it has the highest transaction fees for them.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> I specifically select my AMEX to pay because it has the highest transaction
> fees for them.

I thought I was the only one.

~~~
oddevan
Eenope. I also trust AmEx's fraud prevention infinitely more than PayPal's.

------
chimeracoder
It's ridiculous that Paypal is literally a bank at this point, yet somehow
subject to none of the same regulations and consumer (or merchant) protections
as one.

> PayPal is accused of making the service the default option for new sign-ups
> without making clear that it was doing so.

Different but related: No matter how many times I tell them that I want to pay
with my real credit card instead of "direct bank transfer", it never persists.
I must have set this as the default in my settings a hundred times. No luck.

~~~
hussong
Funny, I had it the other way round. I wanted paypal to pull the money from my
bank account, but the UI would insist on using my credit card (it would always
jump back to credit card).

------
quadrangle
!@(*#& I was one of those tricked by this scheme which is 5,000% obviously
deceptive. There is ZERO chance that Paypal folks were unaware that people
would accidentally use the credit product.

I wrote them a complaint and changed the default but never heard back. FUCK
YOU Paypal, you MUGGED me and stole money from me.

I am CERTAIN they end up getting more than $25m out of this scheme. This
settlement just means they have to share the profit with the UK Gov.

We need a class action suit in the U.S. demanding they return the late fees
they criminally charged people like me.

~~~
atourgates
While I don't share your level of rage, I've used "Paypal Credit" and
BillMeLater (before it became Paypal Credit) accidentally several times.

For a long time I refused to add a bank account to my PayPal account simply so
my credit card would be my default payment option. Then BillMeLater had an
attractive promotion, so I used it 1x and paid off my balance before it
accrued any interest.

Since then, BillMeLater and now PayPal Credit are my default payment options.
There's no way to change this, and it's a very consumer-unfriendly practice.

I'm glad they're getting fined, and I sincerely hope this results in their
allowing user-defined default payment settings.

~~~
Einstalbert
The fact that "Paypal Credit" is my default payment choice bothers me to no
end. If you explicitly select anything else, it demands you log in even after
logging in on most sites.

I never thought I'd be on the receiving end of the Paypal horror-stick, as I
am a consumer and not a merchant, but wow.

------
jbrooksuk
When I was much younger I was doing freelance work for some guy I was
referred. He said he was using his girlfriends account because he doesn't use
Paypal himself and this was a one off job. I thought, "yeah, that's fine,
cool."

Anyway, a while later he disputes that I didn't do the work for him (I did,
with evidence) and Paypal take the money back, freeze both mine and his and
that's that. They won't re-open my account because it's been associated with a
fraudulent account.

They tell me that this guy had been using someone else's account and that I
should go to the police. The police say that the guy doesn't live at the
registered address, never has. And that was the end of it. Even though Paypal
knew it wasn't my fault they wouldn't unfreeze my account.

That was about 8 years ago and it's only recently I've setup a new account to
accept donations for my project. And I did that begrudgingly...

I NEVER use Paypal for accepting payments online, it's always Stripe.

~~~
Domenic_S
That's how these things work though. If you ran a brick & mortar store and
some guy bought $1000 of items from you with his "girlfriend's" credit card
(which turns out later was a stolen card), you'll eat the chargeback AND not
get your product returned to you.

Anyone who accepts payments of any kind is taking that risk.
Stripe/Square/whoever operates the same way. Even cash is a risk - if you get
passed counterfeits and don't catch them at first, the secret service will
confiscate them and you won't be compensated.

------
ajtaylor
Any settlement which allows the company to only pay a fine and not admit
wrongdoing is not a deterrent against future wrongdoing. The fine nearly
always is far outweighed by the profit. It wouldn't surprise me to discover
that the potential for fines are part of the product planning process.

~~~
vidyesh
The fine is $10M the rest $15M is the fund to compensate affected customers.

------
Chinjut
Wow, nothing but complaints about PayPal here. Interesting to keep in mind
next time the Elon Musk hagiography starts up again...

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Hey, he stopped having any influence on PayPal behavior years ago. Similar to
how Apple decays into senescence when Jobs is not there running it.

~~~
marcosdumay
When did he get out? PayPal is misbehaving since essentially forever.

~~~
azernik
Sometime in 2002: PayPal was acquired in September of that year, and he'd
already founded SpaceX in June. So, more than a decade, which is pretty
"forever" in this industry.

------
yc1010
I think PayPal has been instrumental in illustrating to people that their
money once it is in the paypal system is no longer THEIR money

I had trouble before with paypal holding onto funds for months nearly killing
my business, when I contacted the Financial Services Ombudsman, their reply
was along the lines of "they are a private limited company in this country,
they can do what they want"

------
arbitrage
PayPal is not a bank, although people seem to think it is, and they seem to be
more than happy to let people think that. It's long overdue for some serious
regulatory oversight.

~~~
s73v3r
Why aren't they a bank? Because they claim they aren't?

~~~
dangrossman
Because federal regulators said so over 10 years ago. They don't accept
deposits as defined by FDIC, engage in fractional reserve banking, or
otherwise meet the definitions of a bank in the US. They're more like an
escrow service, holding funds on your behalf in accounts at actual banks. They
are a money transmitting entity, which means obtaining 54 state/territory
licenses to operate in the entire US, and they hold all of those.

------
NelsonMinar
This is the product PayPal advertises in every single purchase customers make
online. I don't understand why any serious business uses PayPal for payments
when the company is injecting an extra step (or two) into the purchase
workflow. How many sales do merchants lose because of the interruption?

~~~
Osiris
I sell a software production online. The purchase page has a simple credit
card payment form, and off the side is a small "PayPal" button an an
alternative payment method.

Despite the fact that the PayPal button is tiny compared to the credit card
form, a full 2/3 of customers use PayPal to complete the purchase.

That's why people use PayPal, because a large percentage of customers prefer
it over credit card payments.

Also, I prefer PayPal disputes because they don't charge a chargeback fee like
credit cards.

~~~
sombremesa
For me, it's not that I prefer PayPal, it's that I don't want to give my
credit card details to a business if I'm not sure they can keep it reasonably
secure.

And the fewer places I have my card the better. You might get the same results
with Amazon Payments, unless you have an international audience.

~~~
jliptzin
You can use a virtual credit card number for such instances

~~~
fastball
What's a virtual credit card?

~~~
Domenic_S
Some banks will issue one-time use numbers for your cards, limited to a
certain transaction amount and then they're gone. A pretty cool idea, but
until they have an app that generates these numbers at the push of a button
nobody really uses them. Too much of a hassle.

------
railsisfails
Right now, any other payment company could hold your money, kill your cat,
fill your car with stinky waste, spoof rude emails to your friends and family,
and finally blow raspberries at you, and it would still be heads and shoulders
above the stinkfest of paypal.

~~~
nish1500
I am paying my payment processor 10% - 15% of each transaction in processing
and cross border fee, because, I am told:

1\. They are small, and don't get good exchange rates 2\. My location makes
for a long money route, so I pay between 4% - 8% in cross border fee on every
transaction

The above fee doesn't even include the final transaction and conversion fee
when I withdraw the USD balance to my home currency.

From where I stand, I would be saving 3% - 5%, or more with PayPal, on every
transaction. I am willing to take the risk.

~~~
tim333
Transferwise when I just looked only charge 1% off interbank for USD to INR.
Maybe use Stripe (2.9% + 30¢) for USD and then that?

~~~
nish1500
Stripe isn't available in my country.

------
joshstrange
> The eBay-owned company has offered to settle the case, without admitting
> wrongdoing.

I'm getting REALLY sick of this shit. Wish normal people could just pay off
the government to avoid facing consequences for their actions...

~~~
benihana
They can. It's called a fine.

~~~
heynk
Yeah but you're still charged with something and it's still on your record. It
would be more like if you could write the gov't a check to 'pretend this never
happened', with nothing on your record, and probably a written promise from
the gov't that they'll never say anything bad about you.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Yeah but you're still charged with something and it's still on your record.

Not if its a civil settlement.

> It would be more like if you could write the gov't a check to 'pretend this
> never happened', with nothing on your record, and probably a written promise
> from the gov't that they'll never say anything bad about you.

The government says negative things about firms that enter into a settlement
without admitting to guilt all the time, including about the specific conduct
that led to the investigation that was settled.

In fact, in this specific case, the CFPB said all kinds of negative things
about PayPal and the actions that led to this settlement _in the press release
announcing the settlement_. [0]

So, its hardly at all analogous to "a written promise from the gov't that
they'll never say anything bad about you".

The consent decree also includes additional restrictions (beyond those in the
law) on and oversight of PayPal's behavior going forward, so its also very
much not analogous to "pretend this never happened".

[0] [http://www.consumerfinance.gov/newsroom/cfpb-takes-action-
ag...](http://www.consumerfinance.gov/newsroom/cfpb-takes-action-against-
paypal-for-illegally-signing-up-consumers-for-unwanted-online-credit/)

------
analog31
This is only an anecdote, but I use PP to process payments for my side-
business, selling a small gadget for a fairly specialized market. My
experience has been overwhelmingly positive. And I closely monitor traffic on
web forums for comments from customers, which are fairly frequent, so I think
I'd know if PP had negatively affected their experience, or if they were
hesitant to buy my product due to PP.

Most of the complaints that I've read about, concerning PP, have to do with
the eBay side of the equation. And it probably helps in my case that I sell a
tangible good at a pretty modest price. I don't have an eBay store, but sell
through my personal web page and hand-crafted web order form. Simply based on
the my little corner of the market, it wouldn't break my heart if eBay and PP
split up.

Two benefits of PP for me, both are kinda weird:

1\. I can just download the entire year's list of transactions, dump it into a
spreadsheet, add some more columns, and it becomes my ledger. I spend no more
than a few hours a year on accounting.

2\. PP has a deal with the post office. You can generate a first class
shipping label from your transaction, whereas the post office website only
offers priority mail and above, so PP reduces my shipping costs. And I've also
had fabulous service from the post office, so maybe I'm just a freak. ;-)

With all this said, I can't discount the horror stories. It's useful
information, since I certainly wouldn't want a decline in PP's reputation to
affect the trust that people put into my own business.

------
JustSomeNobody
Things like this amaze me. I really would like to be a fly on the wall just to
see if this is incompetence or if they actively choose to deceive people. I
would love to hear the conversations that occur around this.

I've never worked for a company that was shady, so this really does fascinate
me that companies do this and think they can get away with it (assuming, of
course, that this simply was not incompetence).

------
DigitalSea
This has been a long time coming in my opinion, but $25m is nothing for
Paypal. I have had my fair share of troubles over the years, but none worse
than the time I got paid for doing some freelance work into my Paypal account,
I ended up with a balance of around $8k and it took me 3 months to get it
released. I went through their ID process, sent them stuff and would wait a
week only to be told to send it again.

The problem with Paypal is they are too big to care. They've essentially
become a bank, nobody knows what is going on, you get passed on from
department to department when you need answers and they are always quick to
freeze your Paypal balance when they want you to do something or want to
insinuate you have done something wrong.

I would have slapped them with a $100m penalty, $25m is just too little to
make any kind of impact or different to Paypal.

------
hurin
Many years ago I tried to sell a World of Warcraft account via. Paypal. I got
lots of buyers -- all of whom tried to pay with stolen paypal accounts.

After they made a payment I would ask for a photo-copy of their ID, or to wait
3-days to make sure the payment went through properly (Paypal's normalized way
of handling this was to mark the Payment as confirmed leaving the seller
thinking everything was okay only to reverse it say 3 days later, screwing the
seller). If I recall one of the buyers even offered to try a different account
when I told them the payment got flagged.

In about a week's time I had received $5000 or so worth of transfers (all of
them from stolen accounts!) Subsequently Paypal froze my account. I never was
able to sell that World of Warcraft account either.

~~~
TorKlingberg
Does PayPal even allow selling things like WoW accounts? Otherwise you don't
really have a right to complain.

~~~
hurin
PayPal isn't a merchant platform -- it's a payment service so yes you can
accept personal payments, it might not be covered by seller protection if
that's what you mean. That's no excuse for terrible security policies though.
I mean literally every buyer had a stolen account!

~~~
daj40
How were you determining the accounts were stolen?

Also, as much as we would love to say companies are responsible for the
security of our accounts, losing credentials is also a user issue.

~~~
hurin
> How were you determining the accounts were stolen?

About 3-5 days after each payment was confirmed Paypal would reverse it due to
it being unauthorized. More so the payment would show up as confirmed/valid
initially, at no point during the process did Paypal make you aware of the
possibility of the payment being reversed nor to help you confirm/validate
that it was in fact authorized by the account holder.

> Also, as much as we would love to say companies are responsible for the
> security of our accounts, losing credentials is also a user issue.

Of course it's a user issue at a certain scale, but when it's that prevalent I
am inclined to say that company is primarily at fault.

It was just a WoW account, so not a big deal for me, but I'd really hate to be
a merchant or someone otherwise relying on Paypal day-to-day, that sounds
absolutely horrible.

------
avarius
Fun fact: PayPal's founding CTO, Max Levchin, has since then founded
Affirm[1], a credit startup that directly competes with this product.

Wonder what he thinks?

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

------
thewhizkid
My account was permanently frozen a few weeks ago with no (valid) explanation.
I have $2k sitting in their that I cannot retrieve for 180 days.

I also bought an iPhone on Ebay using PayPal weeks before. It turned out to be
stolen (i.e. it was killed) and returned it back to the seller immediately.
The seller issued me a refund via PayPal using an e-check that not
surprisingly bounced. Took me hours on the phone over a few weeks, being
transferred back and forth between PayPal and eBay (both parties told me to
take it up with the other), in order for PayPal to finally open a ticket to
dispute the transaction and force a refund to me.

Never again.

------
joering2
People's lives have been seriously damaged because of this -- why no criminal
charges??

This is no difference than being caught with $100MM bag of heist outside the
bank and giving cops $1.5MM as a form of penalty.

What is also very interesting, is that, yes PayPal is probably one of the most
hated tech company in the world, right after Comcast, which I don't believe
offers anything outside US. Then why we glorify those like Musk that made its
initial fortune off of PayPal sale?? I never heard pointing fingers at PayPal
founder, but ultimately should't those in charge be accountable??

~~~
tim333
Ebay acquired Paypal in 2002. If anyone's held accountable it should probably
be them rather than Musk.

~~~
geomark
PayPal's evil ways predate that acquisition. My own bad experience happened
before it was owned by eBay. It was the usual - arbitrary freezing of account
due to unspecified suspicious activity that they would provide no response
about and was going to take six months to resolve. I eventually got my funds
out and never kept a balance there again.

The "PayPal mafia" is such an ironically apt title for the group that founded
it. So proud of their anti-fraud tech which is actually horrid - just sweep up
anyone's account for whatever reason and call it successful fraud prevention.

------
fonnesbeck
I closed my PP account 2 years ago and would never consider using the service
again. Once upon a time it was a necessary evil, now it is no longer necessary
(just evil).

~~~
atourgates
Doesn't this significantly impact your ability to use eBay?

~~~
yc1010
Amazon marketplace is significantly cheaper and cleaner. Here in Europe a lot
of eBay sellers are 100% not paying any VAT either it is only a matter of time
before they or ebay endup in serious trouble over that.

------
random3
PayPal said I can't change the country on the account but instead have to
close it and open a new one. I closed the account and let them know I'm not
opening a new and it's not (only) because of that inconvenience, but for all
the crap that I keep reading they do to other users. It my mind it's a crappy
company and the only impactful way you can express that is by not using it.

------
atmosx
Hm paypal. I used my account last month. I used paypal regularly to make
online payments (never in order to receive money). I had no major problem,
only strange thing is that... In order to un-subscribe from services (e.g.
like the NBA league pass, which I wanted for a month, not lifetime) I need to
follow a step-by-step tutorial because the subscriptions listing is literally
hidden.

------
baliex
I made use of PayPal Credit the other day to defer payment of an item for 14
days. Is this the same thing or something different?

Having looked at my transaction history, I don't seem to have been charged
anything for the service. Where might I check to be sure?

~~~
daj40
The issue that they've been nailed with isn't so much that they over charged
people, its that they signed people up without notifying them.

If you are using the service intentionally, then you aren't affected.

On another note, I have been using PayPal for years and haven't had any real
issues with it. I mean it takes a while for eBay to get the money to me after
a sale, but other than that its not bad. Have I just been lucky? Or is anyone
else not experiencing problems that others are?

------
WDCDev
I had a missed payment on a less than $10 balance and was hit with a $25
overage. I complained, had the overage removed, paid my bill and since then
have never used their service again.

------
daj40
Maybe a lot of these issues will be resolved when eBay spins PayPal off? Most
of these issues seemed to have really started right around the same time they
were acquired.

------
seiji
Related: why doesn't anybody take down LinkedIn?

They run consistently _obviously_ illegal spam/marketing practices. Why do
they get a free pass? Is the "mafia" part of PayPal mafia too strong? Too many
cross-bred investor attachments all the way down making some services
"untouchable" no matter what they do?

We need something like the EFF but for out of control tech companies needing
to be denounced for the public good.

~~~
ohitsdom
I'm missing the LinkedIn comparison. PayPal handles money. Their track record
of horrible customer service has caused a lot of financial trouble for people
and institutions.

What are the complaints with LinkedIn? As far as I know, it's more of spammy
contacting behavior. Which I get that's annoying, but not even in the same
ballpark as PayPal.

~~~
logicallee
The claim I heard is (from the perspective of the complaint), that they "use
your gmail account [with your nominal permission] and get the names of your
contacts, to whom they then 'impersonate' you." (scare quotes because I don't
view it this way.) i.e. your contacts will get a message "from you" as though
you were asking them to do something. Even though you have not actually taken
that action.

Personally this is _not_ my perspective, and it doesn't bother me because when
I receive these messages it's pretty obviously automated mail from linkedin,
and it's pretty obvious that LinkedIn got it from the person's email contacts.
It doesn't cause me to think the person actually necessarily took any action
or sent that to me themselves. I also haven't been bothered by the volume of
it. To me, it's the kind of thing that's a small price to pay for hacking a
network of connections together, which is probably a benefit to everyone in
it. we need more social networks, not fewer.

~~~
seiji
> they use your password to log in to your gmail account

and that is a federal crime. Why do they go unpunished?

There sure are a lot of products and services I'd like to create if I knew
laws were just suggestions. Every massive-growth startup seems to have some
underlying "we did these five illegal things to get started" backstory.

Almost every garbage social media company either directly tries that
(password-proxy to other services for scraping) or they use a scam to trick
you into "consent" by offering so many forced options to click through you
eventually accidentally hit a "yes don't not contact my un-friends with not my
unconsent" button. (Or the super jerk version: "If you don't opt-out of this
feature within two days of creating your account, we will take actions X, Y, Z
on your behalf" in fine print.)

~~~
tim333
Apparently they ask for permission to log in which is not a crime. There is a
class action suit going on saying they only ask for permission to do it once
but then repeat it:

[http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/243419/linkedi...](http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/243419/linkedin-
moves-toward-settling-class-action-over-e.html)

~~~
logicallee
so I don't know why I was downvoted, I pretty much reported the exact claim.
it's worth pointing out that linkedin hardly has a reputation here and other
tech places as scammy spammers, people seem okay with it, again, probably due
to the benefits. (compare the tech reaction to uber's practices regarding
lyft, or when people disliked paypal's freezing of accounts.)

~~~
ohitsdom
I didn't downvote, but I'd guess it's because you seemed to dismiss/minimize
the LinkedIn sneaky emails because it was obvious they were automated.

