It is most likely something else going on with the account. You need to remember the brilliant creation of Max Levchin was actually the fraud detection algorithms. The easy way to think about it is, any "uncommon" or "uncharacteristic" account activity will generate some degree of weight towards flagging or even locking the account.
If donations, or even transfers, of size X are uncommon for the account, then the fraud detection algorithms try to limit the risks. This might result in a call from paypal (happened to me), a lock on the account, the account being completely frozen or any of a number of different risk mitigation methods.
In short, this one example proves nothing about wikileaks.
Agreed. There's obviously trolling for karma going on, but then again, there's the other side of it, namely, the author trying to use the reddit post as leverage when trying to sort things out with paypal.
If the point was to convince paypal to restore the account, posting the same text to his business web page and then linking to it from reddit would be an instant 100x credibility boost.
There's a complete lack of detail in this story, and the wikileaks bit almost seems like an aside looking to cash in on some of the wikileaks sympathy.
It's humorous how bitchy people are about PayPal -- do this sort of stuff with your bank and see how that turns out. Long before wikileaks, and before 9/11, banking and financial regulations have been very tight.
Every single payment system on the planet has to abide by the laws of the countries that they are operating in. Anti-money laundering regulations, in particular, apply to every organization that does money transfers of any sort.
Further still, many of the recipients of PayPal cash got paid via credit card. For those who don't know this, when you pay someone with a credit card they normally don't get a penny for 60 days or so. PayPal, in letting you withdraw cash against credit card payments, is essentially fronting you a loan with the CC receipts as the collateral, though obviously they have risk if you have significant fraud or chargebacks. It's that element that so many fail to understand.
I don't believe there's any banking regulations that require you to have virtually nonexistent customer service. If you're required to freeze someone's account, that's not your fault. If you refuse to even tell him what's going on and what he might be able to do to sort it out, that's your fault.
Similarly, your business-critical application might go down due to problems with your host. That doesn't mean you can just kick your feet back and laugh, "Oh, those hosting companies! Sure good I don't have any responsibility to anyone in this situation!" You need to apologize to customers, possibly issue refunds and harden your infrastructure so that you don't get extended downtime in the future. If you don't do all this, big surprise when your customers hate you.
I custom built and shipped workstations as well as a variety of custom cabling and network equipment. I had shipping insurance through UPS for every order, a waste of money it turned out.
They wrecked 6 shipments in a row, and refused to pay up on the insurance. Couldn't get a lawyer to take the case (small town at the time).
PayPal froze our accounts because people complained about the broken equipment that was shipped, and due to the frozen accounts we couldn't refund anyone which led to...
eBay freezing our account because we couldn't refund anyone.
None of the three companies would work with us.
I haven't done business with any of them since and I refuse to do so.
The company was supporting 4 people with full-time incomes before it went kerplooey. I got robbed and became homeless not too long after all that.
To be fair it sounds like PayPal and eBay acted appropriately. You hadn't supplied goods or refunded payments it seems.
Now the reason appears to be that UPS screwed you over. But, I don't see how that is a problem with PayPal and/or eBay. Are they supposed to screw their customers over to avoid upsetting you because you gave them what [from their point of view] amounts to a sob story about a third party.
I really feel for you, our company is so small that a legal issue could sink us if our legal liabilities insurance didn't cover things.
Is there something missing here, you describe an open and shut case but you couldn't pay a lawyer to take it?
Where would the money have come from? It was all in Paypal because we used it for equipment purchases as well.
That's where the "playing ball with us" part comes in. We could've refunded the money had Paypal unfrozen our account. We couldn't refund because Paypal wouldn't unfreeze our account. They never distributed refunds to the complainants. They kept all of it.
The Kafka-esque absurdity of it was overwhelming.
All our problems were rooted in Paypal's unwillingness to unfreeze our account and make the refunds. Had that happened, Paypal and eBay would've had no outstanding complaints, and we could've used the rest to get a lawyer without trying to appeal on a percentage basis.
Which didn't work, which was also bizarre to us since it was, as you said, an open and shut insurance claims case.
It's been years since all that happened, and I've since paid off all my outstanding debts. I prefer not to dwell on it, as I've gone on to put my software career together nicely.
Interestingly if you were paid by credit card directly, you wouldn't have seen a penny for months. During which time your buyer would have challenged the charges, you wouldn't have gotten paid...same story.
It sounds like you completely misunderstood PayPal.
They froze the account that had all of our money. Our existing savings would've still been in action, allowing us to sue for the insurance which would then allow us to issue refunds.
You understanding of the scenario is flawed, and your bias is bleeding through. Stop looking for excuses to blame someone in something you know nothing about.
Comment deleted as you simply are irrational, and in my opinion financially ignorant. I have no vested interest in the PayPal issue, yet it remarkably seems that every bad story I've heard is the same tale of incredible financial irresponsibility and borderline businesses.
Stop pretending there isn't something horribly wrong with the company just because it suits your rhetoric.
This sort of trollish nonsense has no place on HN.
I built a banking AML system (not for PayPal, which is a company that I have zero affiliation or interest in). I know the incredible burden that the financial industry lives under, and to say that PayPal -- which is absolutely the wild-west of payment systems (it exists for a reason, often serving those organizations who in many cases would have had trouble getting a merchant account) -- goes "above and beyond" is patently ridiculous. No seriously, file that patent, because you nailed it.
Some subsection of users have trouble with a large organization. Big whoop.
>Some subsection of users have trouble with a large organization. Big whoop.
Quite an understatement. You seem unconvinced of the overwhelming number of people who have had issues with Paypal, and the relentless pain they had to endure just to get their money back, buyers and sellers both.
I don't deny the existence of the regulations they have to abide, but Paypal isn't a bank and doesn't operate like one either. They're given a great deal of freedom in their contract to seize accounts at will.
I would like to see the relevant law that Paypal was abiding by to seize Wikileak's account.
There is no law, they did it of their own accord. I won't make any assertions about why but I'd say there are two or three guesses, of which at least one is close to the mark.
As a person, you do have the freedom to donate to whomever you like but you, alone, have to bear the consequences. But to use your business account to donate money puts you and your clients (and their livelihood) at risk.
Under US law, you can not donate to whomever you wish. Sending money to organizations flagged as terrorist organizations is illegal. (Not that the US has officially declared the wikileaks org to be a terrorist organization.)
If you read past the top dozen or so comments on Reddit, you get to the likely real explanation. The guy is (1) emptying his account every day, and (2) making unusual large oversees payments.
These are things that correlate pretty well with scammers, and that is probably why his account is being investigated.
OT, but I recently updated my credit card information in PayPal. New information is valid and verified. Bank account information remains unchanged and is the first choice as a source of funds.
My couple of crappy little subscription payments start failing. "No secondary source of funds specified."
I look through all the configuration settings -- which it turns out are not at all clear about funding sources for existing subscriptions. About three times. It all looks fine / as good as I can set it.
I email PayPal. It's like talking to a blank wall. Customer support? Buwahahaha! (That would be their response, not mine.)
Fuck them. I wouldn't trust them to buy a lollipop.
(Which reminds me, I should probably just close my account, though I've kept it up to this point for the occasional crappy little payment.)
CORRECTION: I recall now, I used their own web site form to 'report a problem / as a question', not email.
What do you mean, you have complete freedom! Why, all you have to do is simply to start your own international payment processing system, convince enough people to use it, and voila; convenient money-transfer freedom by your own rules! Oh, what's that you say? You don't have a multimillionaire co-founding CEO to force your idea on the masses by partnering with existing internet monopolies? Well, then obviously you just need to work harder for your liberty (erm, I mean, it's not as if you're actually entitled to political expression or anything—that's for people with money).
