PayPal Dumped Cloud Company After It Refused To Monitor Customers' Files (fortune.com) 126
German Dropbox rival Seafile claims PayPal dropped it as a customer after it refused to comply with the payment services company's demand to spy on its users' data. In a blog post, the company informed its customers that they can no longer pay for the service using PayPal -- the only payment method that Seafile currently relies on. CEO Silja Jackson told Fortune, "We're looking into alternative payment services, but currently we're running a cloud service and not getting paid." Founded in 2009, Seafile has over 250,000 users, many in universities. The service offers an open-source file-synchronization system that organizations can install on their own servers -- for a fee, if they want enterprise features -- and last October the firm decided to also start offering a paid version that's hosted on Seafile's German servers, for individuals and small businesses.
So... (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing of substance has changed at PayPal since the old days. Check.
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True, but I just assume my cloud storage is being monitored.
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I run my own Seafile instance, on encrypted disks. All communication between my clients and the server is encrypted. All the storage is encrypted.
Why?
Because I also assume, in a post-Snowden world, that all my communication is monitored.
Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
http://paypalsucks.com/ [paypalsucks.com]
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but this is a good thing. paypal gets bad publicity, seafile gets exposure (and new customers). the more public this gets, the better.
I've been modded down for saying Paypal is evil (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow, Paypal might not have changed much, but maybe Slashdot is starting to change. I've been modded down in the past for suggesting that Paypal and the electronic bay of thieves were evil, apparently by people who like to use them and don't want to consider the moral implications. Now it comes out that Paypal, a private company, is trying to get access to files that I store on a German server (obviously I don't really, since I absolutely will never use Paypal), based on nothing more than the account was paid for through Paypal.
I'm shocked! Shocked that Slashdot users might finally be waking up to some of the abuses of this company!
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Funny you should mention that. Back in the day (this is at least 13 years ago now) I lost mod privs because I would mod up posts like yours that pointed out what piece of shit scum Paypal was. The same thing happened to people who dared show support for climate skepticism, or anybody seeking to expose the evil of the scientology cult.
The mod system here is too centrally controlled and deeply flawed. Always has been and probably always will be.
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Idiot AC (Score:2)
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...PayPal thought that this service was facilitating illegal file sharing, similar to MegaUpload, and that violates PayPal's ToS... I just understand why PayPal did what they did...
I understand that PayPal did what they did because they're hypocritical shits with hypocritical ToS, and they shouldn't be given even a hair's width of slack when they pull stunts like this. They regularly steal money from their clients, and the last time I checked that was illegal. I know PayPal enjoys the power and immunity that seem to apply so universally to banksters, but that's no excuse for them to also be such assholes about holding others to a standard which they clearly refuse to apply to themsel
Re:So... (Score:4, Funny)
now that Slashdot is a kook blog
You say that as if something has changed.
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
EUDP laws in Germany prohibit any activity such as that running out of datacenters hosting German citizen information. If the company is legit, there was no way it could comply with PayPal under those restrictions imposed by the EUDP.
Is file-sharing wrong? (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow... So, file-sharing is wrong and "out of China" is an aggravating circumstance.
And I read it on Slashdot, where people used to scream and fight anything suggesting that. And where referring to "out of $country" used to be a sign of "racism"...
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The original poster, quite obviously, expressed personal disapproval of the activity. Whether the activity is, in fact, illegal (and in which country), does not matter — whether it is wrong, is what's important.
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In the context of copyright law, "illegal activity" means "activity someone with money doesn't like". Fear can be forced through draconian punishments but respect must be earned, and an utterly corrupt institute simply isn't worth any.
Some racism more equal than others? (Score:3, Insightful)
By that logic, pointing out, that welcoming refugees [reuters.com] from countries with a comparably flagrant disregard for women's rights [nytimes.com] may not be smart, is Ok too.
And yet, Donald Trump, who suggested a freeze of such immigrations, was widely denounced as just that — a racist everywhere, Slashdot included [slashdot.org]... But bashing the entire China is Ok?
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When people talk of a country doing something, it's usually directed at the people running it. In this instance, it wouldn't be the whole of china which would be running a company or service.
America is by far the world's leading terrorist state; has been for decades, and they're responsible for most of the violence that happens around the world. But that's despite - not because - of the American people, who are kept in the dark about what is being done in their name; they're often the first to complain abo
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So, file-sharing is wrong
Some file-sharing is illegal. Whether it is "wrong" or not is subjective.
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if you cant see the difference between "Mexicans are rapists" and "an illegal file sharing site originating in china" then there is no hope for you.
Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
I did not, in all likelihood, read the article.
Indeed. Seafile is an illegal file sharing site run out of China. They may call themselves a "cloud company", but that is really stretching the definition. Paypal is not asking for any user-specific data, but just anonymized aggregate statistics about file types and traffic. Of course, if Seafile did that, they would 100% match the profile of illegal file sharing (because that is what they are), so they refuse and pretend to be a victim standing up for principles. Paypal was going to cut them off, no matter what, so at least this way they garner some free publicity. Whatever.
What?
Seafile is a German company that sells licenses to software that lets you run a Private Cloud (file synching/sharing server).
It's like DropBox you run yourself.
Yes, Seafile does offer a hosted version, where you run your private cloud on their servers, but they do not encourage or make easy the sharing of illegal files, any more so than any other file syncing platform (again, the obvious comparison is DropBox).
Do you think DropBox is an illegal file sharing service?
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Do you think DropBox is an illegal file sharing service?
Dropbox or any other cloud-based storage do not market themselves as an illegal file sharing service, but that doesn't mean they can't be used for that. You can quite easily make a shared dropbox/box/seafile folder only accesible to people with the link, and share the link with whoever you like.
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Yeah, but when you refuse to takedown items after being notified of infringing content, you should kind of expect to be prosecuted under the local laws.
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DropBox also has a nasty habit of deleting your account if you're sharing your files a bit TOO publicly.
People love to share their files via Dropbox - it's very
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Seafile is a German company
No. Seafile is a Chinese company with a German subsidiary. They started in Beijing, helping college students illegally swap music and movies. Today, they also help German students do the same.
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> helping college students illegally swap music and movies
Citation needed.
They created an opensource dropbox clone. That's what they did and they did way better than owncloud.
Hosted service as business model is the reasonable option to fund that.
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It is always amazing that idiots like you always need to let the world know their ignorance an incompetence. I mean seriously are you really this dump and stupid?
Next time try to read and comprehend
https://seafile.de/
Next time you try RTFA:
Seafile was founded in 2009 by students at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and has in the last couple years gained enough traction in Germany to form a subsidiary there.
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So, did you read the sentence?
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There IS a german company selling the product. AND there is a chinese company developing and selling the software in Asia. And it really doesn't matter. If I buy software to host my own files I don't want anyone snooping in.
This issue is about the German company's hosted cloud service, not the product that you can buy and install yourself.
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Are you out of your mind? Seafile offers an open-source self-hosted cloud platform, optional closed source enterprise features and, in addition, cloud-hosting à la dropbox. I've never seen it used for piracy (and believe me I'd know if it was). And what has it being run out of China to do with anything?
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
Paypal is not asking for any user-specific data, but just anonymized aggregate statistics about file types and traffic.
As if that's an acceptable demand. The information Paypal gathers should not go beyond the transaction itself.
Wrong tag, what is the matter with Slashdot?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why was this voted "informative"? This comment is meant sarcastic, if you only read the article.
Seafile offers software that allows you to operate a private service akin to Dropbox. They are open source, so they have source packages as well as precompiled versions of their server and client for download. Their business model consists of offering a version of their software with additional features that costs money. They also offer paid support.
The German company by a similar name (Seafile GmbH in Germany vs. Seafile Ltd. out of China) started offering space on Seafile servers operated by themselves last year.
Spying on their users is not only impractical, since the client offers encryption, but also illegal in Germany, where the servers are located.
Like Dopbox, Google Drive and similar services, Seafile offers file sharing via a web link, of course, which makes illegal file sharing possible, but also pretty dumb, since German law has legal options to force Seafile to divulge the identity (only paying customers, remember?) of someone providing a link to a file on the server space they rented, if the file contents are illegal in some way.
So why the "Informative" tag on something so entirely misleading?
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I did not, in all likelihood, read the article.
Indeed. Seafile is an illegal file sharing site run out of China.
Seafile GmbH
That's a German company, run out of Germany, which is evident even from a light skimming of TFS. Paypal has no need of knowing anything about the hosting side of things.
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PAtpal don't need to know that. Their overseers (in the whip-cracking sense) at the NSA and MPAA do, however need to know that. Likely, the State Department and or international commerce branches of government will also be interested to know if there is something worth stealing in there. Obviously, someone in German needs to set up a work-alike for Paypal, but which kow-tows to the EU TLAs, not to the American TLAs.
Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
Seafile is an illegal file sharing site run out of China
Whoever marked this drivel informative needs their modpoints suspended.
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Seafile is an illegal file sharing site run out of China. They may call themselves a "cloud company", but that is really stretching the definition.
..and you know this without access to their data?
I dislike the general idea that if someone cannot look at someone else's private property than it must be criminal.
Strange digestive system (Score:1)
All that sausage and the germans still have a low tolerance for this kind of shit.
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Re: Europe (Score:2)
Please clarify - which candidate? I can't tell which of six you're referring to.
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'Ferocity'.
You clearly define that differently than I do.
Hillary defines 'them' mostly as Bernie does. Two for one there. The who should be obvious by now, but for clarification, I am one of 'them'.
Johnson seems to define 'them' as other politicians and their lackeys. He may be a poet in hiding. He seems sincere, but don't they all?
Cruz defined 'them' as Democrats and their sponsors, I think. He neglected the leadership of his own party, largely to his detriment.
Trump of course changes his definition to fi
Financial Fascism (Score:3)
Hawking radiation (Score:5, Informative)
Paypal officially fell into a black hole as viewed from my frame of reference a year ago.
PayPal Will Be Able To Robo-Text/Call Users With No Opt-out Starting July 1 [slashdot.org]
All this shit they still do at this point amounts to Hawking radiation.
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Illegal in Canada under CASL. Can't wait for them to start doing it to me so I can sue them.
And nothing of value was lost (Score:5, Funny)
If your sole payment method was PayPal, I'm not sure I trust you with my data.
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I have used them as a credit card merchant ("Paypal Here" scanner), and I've had decent luck with them over the years. I have read horror stories left and right, but maybe I'm just lucky, but I wind up using them quite often for paying on commissions.
Next to BitCoin, they are definitely one of the easiest ways to get cash to someone.
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The software is open source. The client offers client side encryption. Thus you don't have to trust them at all. You can simply turn on encryption and check the source if said encryption is secure enough for your needs.
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Funny or not: can you suggest a viable alternative? I'm personally very interested as well.
I'm running a small local tour company (not in the USA, by the way) and a few years ago I built a system to allow people to book tickets to my tours through my web site. Payment options are local bank transfer and PayPal/credit card. Many people here don't have a PayPal account but most do have a credit card, so I get many payments by credit card. It works fine, fees are at about 4.5% (so 3% for the credit card compan
Can you say privacy shield? (Score:1)
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now they will.
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privacy shield does not mean anything. It's like "usa says they won't do evil, but they reserved the right to do so". That's why the eu activists want to stop it (and keep at the current "data should not leave safe countries" policy, which is just covered by the normal laws regarding privacy in the eu).
Others (Score:5, Interesting)
Makes me wonder what other cloud storage providers didn't say no.
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I think it would be easier to just give them Arabic names.
"We're looking into alternative payment services" (Score:3)
Issues with Paypal's policies aside, this is what can happen when you don't diversify your payment processing. If your one vendor dumps you, you're boned.
It's forgivable during the startup phase, but c'mon, you've been around since 2009 and have a claimed 250K users.
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PayPal is a bad idea even for a simplistic personal transaction. But what "organization" uses PayPal of all things? It's absurd. If they can't handle a credit card transaction then they shouldn't be an online business. I can just see someone from IT shouting over the top of the cubicle, "Hey, anyone have the PayPal password so I can renew our cloud?"
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PayPal is much more than just peer-to-peer transactions. They offer businesses a credit card processing service called PayFlow, which is used by many large tech companies to collect customer payments. It's really not that unusual for merchants to have only one credit card processor.
Old News (Score:5, Informative)
Paypal has been doing this for a long time [americanbanker.com].
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I have never given PP my bank info. I only use them for making payments, and the charges are made against a CC.
Awefuly clickbatey summary (Score:5, Informative)
I initially thought the summary meant PayPal wanted access to the customer data, but the story told me they just wanted analytics showing the file sharing website was attempting to combat copyright infringement.
I still side with seafile, but that's not nearly as douchey as I interpreted the summary.
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I wonder what the "analytics" mean. Would this be a scan of all the user data and handing over names, sizes, and file hashes of files, names of files uploaded/downloaded, or something less intrusive?
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That puts Seafile in quite a bind. If they do a "file foo" on everything uploaded and hand that over, that can get them in some legal hot water, or at best, net them bad press. If they don't, they lose PayPal.
Looks like they made the best decision they could. As for Bitcoins, someone would make a mint if they could make an easy to use processing service, on the level of Square or PayPal. BitCoin is still a unsteady currency, but as a means to move real money to it, make the transaction, then move out of
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Really.... (Score:1)
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You probably use PayPal even when you don't know you are using it. PayPal isn't just about peer to peer transactions. They also offer businesses credit card clearing services through PayFlow. Customers don't need a PayPal account to use it, and they don't even know they are using PayPal. They're a lot bigger than you think.
Paypal has been doing this for a while now.. (Score:2)
http://arstechnica.com/busines... [arstechnica.com]
Whoever pulls strings at PayPal (Score:2)
- needs a shrink or detox, probably busloads of people all over the planet!
Ever heard of
"Hypercapitalism and Digitization,
the total exploitation of humans...."
Milking and classifying every human for profit.
Acxiom - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
PayPal's philosophy is big part of that religion..
But everybody's doing it... (Score:2)
And then the crying starts (Score:2)
Government Left Hand: You damned well better make sure you are not knowingly an illegal file sharing service!
Government Right Hand: You damned well better not be spying on your customers' stuff!
What porn is it when someone takes it from both ends simultaneously?
EBay (Score:2)
Wait, is this the same PayPal that is owned by EBay, the company that has for years refused to do anything about the selling of copyright infringing software through their site, instead offering an "official" complaint system which is just completely ignored, and continues to do nothing about it to this day? Are they afraid of a little competition?
*Cough* Bitcoin *Cough* (Score:1)
The time has come.
I looked around a little bit (Score:2)
Why not SEPA? (for Europe) (Score:1)
USA laws != German laws (Score:2)
My emphasis. Paypal do not say who's laws they are enforcing, I suspect that they are talking about the laws of the USA; they are not interested that their (Paypal's) cu