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PayPal Suspends WikiLeaks Account
- cloudwalking 16y agoA lot of corporations are coming out against Wikileaks, and I don't feel the same way. What are they considering that I'm not
- stretchwithme 16y agoThey're considering how uncomfortable it is to have their arms twisted.
- kmfrk 16y agoLetting PayPal keep all Wikileaks' donation money for themselves is not exactly something that requires that much arm-twisting. They've done it before, and now they have a scapegoat.
- cubicle67 16y agoyeah, what's the story with that? Shouldn't the money either be given to Wikileaks (unlikely) or returned the the donor? In what sort of world can the middle man cut one side of a deal out, and keep the money?
- ra 16y agoExactly. Who's the criminal in this picture?
- chopsueyar 16y agoPayPal! Ah, but their existence bore YouTube, and without YouTube, where would we be then? What did Mark Cuban ever do for you?
- billmcneale 16y agoWikiLeaks. They stole documents and they are publishing them without the consent of the owners. The fact that this owner is the government is irrelevant. How would you feel if it were your personal emails that were published on a public web site like this?
- rue 16y agoJust on the off-chance that you are serious: it is of the utmost importance that the owner is a government, not a private person. The argument is that the government is keeping secrets from its people without the people being able to change that by normal means. You are also incorrect about Wikileaks stealing any documents. They are only publishing.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- billmcneale 16y agoBullshit, these documents don't belong to them, which is why most ISP's are refusing to host them. I also happen to find that not everything the government is doing should be public, even in democracies like the US. If you think that 100% transparency is a requirement, you really have no clue how the world of diplomacy is working. A certain amount of privacy is necessary, just like it's necessary to keep the salaries of employees secret to a certain extent in companies. Chaos would ensue otherwise. I'm all for airing dirty private dealings and scandals that the government is doing, but the way Wikileaks is doing it is wrong.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- DougBTX 16y agoWell, that's the point. They don't want you considering their secrets.
- billmcneale 16y agoWikiLeaks is violating the terms of service of most of the companies they are trying to use, so their accounts get shut down. This has nothing to do with censorship nor giving in to political pressure, stop seeing conspiracies everywhere.
- kilian 16y agoI just donated via Paypal yesterday. Guess I'll donate again, but via credit card, today.
- config_yml 16y agothat's what I did as well. Plus I cancelled my PayPal account.
- galactus 16y agoSo did I. I wonder if wikileaks will still get that money.
- lwhi 16y agoWhere exactly will that money go??
- kilian 16y agoAs usual, probably collecting interest for paypal. I made a formal complaint demanding it back. If they don't reply timely I'm deleting my account.
- jessor 16y agoPaypal also took the account of the Wau Holland Stiftung because they collect money for wikileaks. PayPal told us we are "in violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy regarding (...) financial support to Wikileaks" and took our account. http://twitter.com/#!/wauland/status/10987193778569216 http://twitter.com/#!/wauland/status/10987193778569216
- aw3c2 16y agoThe next stop would be check their database for all account that ever sent money to Wikileaks or the Wau Holland Stiftung and close those too. And then the ones who ever send money to those.
- kgarten 16y agoPayPal went over board with this, as the Wau Holland Foundation just gave money to Wikileaks for a specific purpose holding them accountable for any spendings. It is impossible to argue that the money from the foundation was used for any illegal/criminal activity.
- trevelyan 16y agoI donated and have written Paypal to ask for clarification on why the account was closed and what their policy is for returning the money or seeing it through to the intended recipient, etc. Hopefully others who donated will do this as well so that there are at least some customer service costs associated with this. As you mention, there doesn't seem to be much if any illegality about the activities that I can spot, and fair use for political speech covers the rest.
- acabal 16y agoPaypal suspends my account at least once a month just because I sometimes use a different IP when logging in, I'm honestly shocked they didn't do this to Wikileaks earlier.
- jessor 16y agoThey did: http://slashdot.org/story/10/01/23/2138204/PayPal-Freezes-the-Assets-of-Wikileaksorg http://slashdot.org/story/10/01/23/2138204/PayPal-Freezes-th...
- navyrain 16y agoBeing frustrated with PayPal's poor support, but pleased with its ubiquity, this was an lost opportunity for PayPal to earn my goodwill. I, for one, am advocating against paypal from now on.
- csomar 16y agoPlease don't blame PayPal that much. If you have been in their situation, you'll very likely do the same. So if you have any issues, go and blame the US gov.
- cubicle67 16y agoer, no. I blame PayPal fully.
- iwr 16y agoWhile PayPal deserves the negative rep for screwing their customers, it doesn't deserve it for being a US corporation, vulnerable to the US government. The bad guy here is not PayPal.
- ghostDancer 16y agoPaypal is helping and aiding the bad guy. So what does that make them?? Minions ?? An image : http://milhaud.tumblr.com/post/2091089035/julian-assange-es-portada-de-la-revista-time-con http://milhaud.tumblr.com/post/2091089035/julian-assange-es-...
- iwr 16y agoCan PayPal really afford to say no? The government has many ways it can make life miserable for the company.
- dualogy 16y agoIsn't that the VERY PROBLEM Wikileaks is showcasing here?
- sliverstorm 16y agoIt's a problem that a company has to obey the laws of the country it resides in?
- random42 16y agoWell, I hope all this does not come as a surprise to Wikileaks. They are essentially screwing the US government, and using services (Paypal, Amazon etc.) which are incorporated in the US, and operates under the US regulations.
- Roritharr 16y agoI just closed my PayPal account because of this. Here is a direct Link if you want to do it yourself. https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_close-account https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_close-account
- cubicle67 16y agoAlready done when I first heard about it. The link is useful though; I ended up using one from a different source because I couldn't figure out at all how to close my account
- kzar 16y agoI'd just donated to Wikileaks and PayPal wont let me close my account until next week when it's cleared. I hope they actually see the money :o
- steveklabnik 16y agoThanks. The direct link was the difference between me closing it right now, and me saying "I'm going to," and then forgetting.
- sgrove 16y agoI just closed my account, sent them and email, and retweeted the link. Thanks for putting it there?
- Vivtek 16y agoI can't close my PayPal account yet (although I will be encouraging my European customers to move to Moneybookers), but ... there's no way to email them about their own corporate actions. Does anybody know of an email address that I can just address with a complaint? Although a paper letter with a real stamp may get their attention more effectively...
- Roritharr 16y agoMoneybookers already blocked Wikileaks. Sorry :( http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/oct/14/wikileaks-says-funding-is-blocked http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/oct/14/wikileaks-says-f...
- hackermom 16y agoI'm surprised PayPal didn't "bend over" sooner on this one. No more will I use PayPal.
- bjonathan 16y agoHuge marketing opportunity for WePay! (and also a huge opportunity to do the right thing)
- buro9 16y agoAre WePay being used by Wikileaks? How will WePay as a US company offer any real guarantee not to do the same? Can WePay make any commitment or guarantee given that they are integrated into a system and other entities (i.e. Visa, Mastercard, etc) could pull their plug over this? I'm really just curious. If WePay honestly will do the right thing and treat money as money regardless of how people choose to spend it (the whole thing here... porn, politics, etc) and to do so with a real guarantee that means this can never happen, then I just do not see how this is any opportunity for them.
- nerfhammer 16y agoAnd how will WePay's board like this idea?
- Flow 16y agoConsidering PayPal is actually a real bank in many countries, can they really discriminate like this without a proper legal process first?
- robryan 16y agoSince when can what Wikileaks does be considered criminal activity? I'd think that it's at least not clear cut enough that companies would wait for some kind of conviction before labeling it all illegal/criminal activity.
- randallsquared 16y agoEr, PayPal has only ever needed vague suspicion to close an account and keep the money.
- gbrindisi 16y agoI am reading a lot of boycott statement against Paypal in the comments – and I fully understand – but guys... where have you been when Amazon refused to host Wikileaks? And what about EasyDNS? Paypal is a company doing business and I dislike them as much as you do but please don't forget that Government >> Company. Always.
- dualogy 16y agoIsn't that the very problem Wikileaks is showcasing here?
- steveplace 16y agoFYI: EasyDNS had nothing to do with this, it was a misprint by some online journalists. Source: http://blog.easydns.org/2010/12/03/wikileaks-takedown-fiasco-underscores-pathetic-state-of-internet-journalism/ http://blog.easydns.org/2010/12/03/wikileaks-takedown-fiasco...
- X-Istence 16y agos/EasyDNS/EveryDNS/ Please don't confuse the two because of shoddy reporting! EasyDNS is being dragged through the mud unfairly...
- euccastro 16y agoI closed my Amazon account too.
- steveklabnik 16y agoAmazon is much harder for me to move away from than PayPal. with PayPal, I just transfer my money out and click the cancel button. With Amazon, I have to re-do my entire deployment setup, since Heroku has made it so freaking easy. Not to mention migrate all of my addon accounts too... significantly more complicated. I'll still do it, it just won't happen today.
- Vivtek 16y agoI have the same problem with PayPal. 70% of my income comes from Europe through PayPal. I'm seriously considering moving to Moneybookers, though, for my European customers. This really stinks.
- veeti 16y agoThere's a mistake in this article: Wikileaks DNS wasn't provided by EasyDNS, but by EveryDNS.
- vaksel 16y agoGotta give props to wikileaks for opening the eyes of many to the type of country they live in.
- marquis 16y agoAccording to wikileaks you can still donate by credit card via https://donations.datacell.com https://donations.datacell.com. I'm not clear if the processor is based in Iceland or Switzerland.
- lwhi 16y agoAnd so, we begin to see the far-fetched narrative of Sandra Bullocks 'The Net' start to swing into full effect. Who'd have thought it would become so prescient ...
- Keyframe 16y agoTBH, I was amazed they didn't pull the plug sooner, considering all the negativity surrounding paypal. I haven't had any issues with paypal myself, but reading all the stories from other people having issues with them... I don't know, I would really REALLY like to have an alternative somewhere, but sadly there isn't one.
- steveklabnik 16y agoUsually, PayPal is "evil" because of false positives on fraud. They'd know that an account for an organization like WikiLeaks is legit. There is a YC-company alternative: https://www.wepay.com/ https://www.wepay.com/
- Keyframe 16y agoI'm sorry, I meant paypal alternative for payments and money transfers through internet, not as a collection/donation service for groups. Sad fact is that nothing is as widespread as paypal. And even paypal doesn't have an option to receive money here (Croatia) because national bank (governs bank policies among other things) wants them to be regulated like other banks here, so they're "talking about it". To me, it sounds like a pretty obvious route for a startup disruption opportunity. I guess bar is set too high (financially and logistically) for a small-ish startup to make a significant entry to that market (global). There are compatible businesses that could make a significant entry/impact, but they didn't do it (Western Union, Moneybookers, Google Checkout, Amazon...) - I always wondered why (if we choose to ignore the stronghold of ebay paypal has behind it).
- steveklabnik 16y agoWhat, you're not just a group of one? ;) But yeah, dunno about Croatia... The bar is extremely high, mostly due to fraud, from what I understand. We only hear about false positives, but it's a huge problem.
- patrickaljord 16y agowepay and paypal would face the same issues of false positive on fraud. The only thing that could help would be the day all banks implements OpenTransact which is basically OAuth for payment http://www.opentransact.org/ http://www.opentransact.org/ with no intermediary between banks, maybe one day... I know Banksimple said they would implement it.