From: Zero Powers (zero_powers@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Oct 21 2001 - 09:59:48 MDT
>From: "Alex F. Bokov" <alexboko@umich.edu>
>Yes, apparently there is something you don't know about. They demand
>personal information, including a billing address and credit card
>number before they let you spend more than a certain cutoff amount
>over the ENTIRE life of your account (i.e. not a $100 cap per
>transaction, but for the whole thing). So basically anonymity is
>shot. Furthermore, they have a history of freezing accounts for
>nothing more than what they consider to be suspicious patterns of
>activity (i.e. transfers in excess of a few grand). That makes them
>essentially useless for any sort of high volume business.
>
>What do they get out of bending over for the man and being volunteer
>police whores? Who knows. Maybe they just don't have any guts. Maybe
>some sort of legal threat. Maybe simply an informer's fee. Don't know,
>and if anybody does, please post! Liars need to be exposed.
Paypal is skirting the edges of being a "bank" but not having to comply with
all the onerous banking regulations that apply to real banks. They know
that they are already on the government radar screens and could easily be
shut down if some bureaucrat decides tomorrow that they have been running a
bank in violation of the regulations. Paypal has a lot to gain from staying
on Big Brother's good side. Not only that, they don't need any hassles from
the man while they are planning to go public. Wired magazine ran a pretty
informative article about Paypal a while back. You can get it at:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.09/paypal.html?pg=1&topic=&topic_set
-Zero
"I'm a seeker too. But my dreams aren't like yours. I can't help thinking
that somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than man.
Has to be." -- George Taylor _Planet of the Apes_ (1968)
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:11:32 MST