PayPal requesting access to VPS

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Forums › Finance and wealth management › PayPal requesting access to VPS

sbaird

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#145334 15-May-2014 11:38

I have a VPS with seedstuff.ca
Got an email this morning saying that PayPal has suspended there account and that payments through paypal are cancel,
Apparently PayPal also requested access to user accounts

"One of the many demands from PayPal was unrestricted access to client information and client accounts to be able to log into services and audit the content which was being downloaded as well as IP's of those connecting."

I have emailed PayPal asking for an explanation,
Now a bit reluctant to use PayPal in the future if this is true.
has anyone had any experience with PayPal asking for such details in the past?

freitasm

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#1045426 15-May-2014 11:43

I didn't know PayPal was the World Copyright Police now... Unless they have a warrant or something like that? I can't find any reference to this request so it may not be in the news/grapevine yet but I wonder if we're missing some bits of the story?

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ubergeeknz

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#1045428 15-May-2014 11:45

They have done this kind of thing before, shutting down accounts if they think they're doing "illegal" or "immoral" things or just because they decided something was off. Often suspending funds in the process. They do fancy themselves the Internet police.

Sidestep

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#1045437 15-May-2014 11:52

ubergeeknz: They have done this kind of thing before, shutting down accounts if they think they're doing "illegal" or "immoral" things or just because they decided something was off. Often suspending funds in the process. They do fancy themselves the Internet police.

A likely reason is - rather than being the "internet police” - they're reducing the risk they'll later be sued for facilitating those Illegal or immoral things.

Edit: spllling

sbaird

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#1045440 15-May-2014 11:57

freitasm: I didn't know PayPal was the World Copyright Police now... Unless they have a warrant or something like that? I can't find any reference to this request so it may not be in the news/grapevine yet but I wonder if we're missing some bits of the story?

SeedStuff side of the story, More in there email but its rather large to just copy and paste
http://www.seedstuff.ca/announcements.php?id=21

nigelj

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#1045659 15-May-2014 16:45

Not a surprise, there are countless stories around the net (especially Slashdot) a few years (sometime around 05 comes to mind) back of PayPal seemingly taking the morale high ground.

I don't think it's fully to do with 'illegal activity' but more with as everyone says risk, but also brand association. PayPal I'd assume get some pretty good processing rates from the likes of Visa & co, and would need to do whatever they can to protect them (i.e. protect themselves against chargebacks), so naturally the super-high risk industries are out (gambling, pornography, etc).

There were strings of cases at one point of time of people (particularly adult/softporn sites) complaining about their PayPal accounts getting closed/locked because of the association with such activities, sounds like this is just the continuation - the extension into another area PayPal don't want to be associated with.

The sad things are, a) sadly PayPal it seems haven't cleaned up their Ts & Cs and made things crystal clear, b) if SeedStuff's account is correct then PayPal are still communicating as poorly as ever.

Side note; The subject of the post is quite misleading, based on:

May 13th, 2014 - 2 hours later, Paypal contacts Seedstuff informing us we are required to give information about our business practices and policies.

May 13th, 2014 - Paypal sends Questionaire to SeedStuff.ca. Paypal request Personal Details, Login Details and IP addresses of clients to determine the risk of the content which is being uploaded. SeedStuff refuses to give any personal information or account information to paypal.

The best shock & awe inducing subject would really be: "PayPal demands provider breach privacy of customers"

hio77

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#1045674 15-May-2014 17:02

yep, heard of this earlier today..

feral dropped theirs quite awhile ago, now seedstuffs..

as a bit of an insider insight into it, rumours are going around about a sizeable amount of charge-backs leading up to this, think back to the whole OVH ordeal, take a good guess at how many would have been ramped up with all of that?

on a unrelated note, i find your name interesting..

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sbaird

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#1045698 15-May-2014 17:59

on a unrelated note, i find your name interesting..

My name? Why is that? its my initial and then my last name

Anyway PayPal have replied with

Thank you for contacting PayPal.

I checked the details of the Subscription you've had with SeedStuff Hosting and it shows that it was cancelled by the merchant.

There was no record of nay request sent to them to get your Personal details such as IP addresses.

Please provide us more information with these requests so we can further review.

Thank you for choosing PayPal.

Sent them back a link to SeedStuff's announcement and questioned if they normally request the IP address from merchants

hio77

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#1045699 15-May-2014 18:05

sbaird:

on a unrelated note, i find your name interesting..

My name? Why is that? its my initial and then my last name

the last name more than anything, im sure it will make sense if you look at my profile :)

sbaird:
Anyway PayPal have replied with

Thank you for contacting PayPal. I checked the details of the Subscription you've had with SeedStuff Hosting and it shows that it was cancelled by the merchant. There was no record of nay request sent to them to get your Personal details such as IP addresses. Please provide us more information with these requests so we can further review. Thank you for choosing PayPal.

Sent them back a link to SeedStuff's announcement and questioned if they normally request the IP address from merchants

challenging them! great! will be interesting to hear what they come back with!

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SeedStuff

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#1045974 16-May-2014 05:43

Thanks to everyone on this thread for your support. Its been quite a wild ride the last few days!

I signed up here as it seems to be one of the places our site is being discussed and we are trying to keep the story straight and clear as we have nothing to hide :)

hio77: yep, heard of this earlier today..

as a bit of an insider insight into it, rumours are going around about a sizeable amount of charge-backs leading up to this, think back to the whole OVH ordeal, take a good guess at how many would have been ramped up with all of that?

In this regards, the OVH scandal actually never affected us. All of our servers were untouched by any limiting and we did not see any charge backs because of this situation. We also kept a very low fraud score in paypals eyes and multiple paypal reps couldn't believe how low our chargeback rating was which made many of them question the decision.

Anyways I am here for any questions about the situation anyone might have :)

hio77

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#1046304 16-May-2014 14:40

SeedStuff: Thanks to everyone on this thread for your support. Its been quite a wild ride the last few days!

I signed up here as it seems to be one of the places our site is being discussed and we are trying to keep the story straight and clear as we have nothing to hide :)

hio77: yep, heard of this earlier today..

as a bit of an insider insight into it, rumours are going around about a sizeable amount of charge-backs leading up to this, think back to the whole OVH ordeal, take a good guess at how many would have been ramped up with all of that?

In this regards, the OVH scandal actually never affected us. All of our servers were untouched by any limiting and we did not see any charge backs because of this situation. We also kept a very low fraud score in paypals eyes and multiple paypal reps couldn't believe how low our chargeback rating was which made many of them question the decision.

Anyways I am here for any questions about the situation anyone might have :)

hmm, maybe i got you guys mixed up, pretty sure i recall a fair few situations..

oh well, props to spreading out to here :)

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Any comments made are personal opinion and do not reflect directly on the position my current or past employers may have.