[Arm-netbook] Paypal sabotage crowdfunding

[Paul Boddie]

On Sunday 6. December 2015 21.40.45 Alain Williams wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 06, 2015 at 09:29:13PM +0100, Paul Boddie wrote:
> > PayPal has a poor-enough reputation that I refuse to use their service at
> > all: I've seen people struggle with getting an account enabled to be
> > able to pay people fairly urgently, seeing them go round and round in
> > the stupid card- sampling verification loop to no avail; it used to be
> > possible to pay random merchants by card via PayPal, but now they appear
> > to want you to create an account to do so, and even with an account in
> > the bag, a simple transaction
> 
> I had a big fight with them a few years ago.  I bought something (theatre
> tickets IIRC, no other payment option) via paypal, ticked the box saying
> that I did NOT want an account; then received an email welcoming me to
> said account ... long phone calls to Eire and Luxembourg finally got it
> closed and they then banned me from ever making any other payment via them
> - although I did make one a year later - and they did not open an account
> on that occasion.

That reminds me of their one-time corporate bedfellows, eBay, and the matter 
of me closing my account with them after some data spill or other. After 
having been assured that my account was closed, I would still get "Welcome 
Paul!" on the site, and still they insisted that the account really was 
closed.

Now it could be possible that they stash salutations in cookies that then 
activate when people go to the site, although I was quite sure I deleted all 
my eBay cookies, but I rather suspect that they just keep all the data and 
pretend that they're not trying to collect every last detail and associate it 
with my identity (also via a bunch of cookies issued by random tracking and 
advertising sites operating on their behalf).

And I only had an account with them in the first place because a merchant from 
whom I wanted to buy something seemingly had to do business via eBay and 
presumably through no other channel. It's all a bit like "friends don't make 
friends use Facebook" but with buying and selling things and involving real 
money.

Paul