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PayPal
The disliked payment system, reviewed at Zyra's website
It's only fair to mention that we don't get on well with PayPal. There are too many rules at PayPal, some of which are merely bureaucratic and some of which were considered a danger to the personal safety of the character who runs this business, because of the risk of stalkers.
Incidentally, although PayPal is considered evil, they still don't deserve to be spoofed by phishing attacks. In fact, there are some interesting financial hoax messages on show here to help you to avoid being caught out.
If you read PayPal's terms and conditions you may notice that in theory at least, PayPal can legally just keep your money and tell you to get stuffed! Also, there is an issue with eBay making PayPal compulsory, and PayPal and eBay being to some extent the same company yet them not paying affiliates properly (for example if a customer signs up for eBay through affiliate links when they happen to already have a PayPal account).
What are the real banks doing to stop PayPal from taking over the world? There are surely much more efficient ways of doing international money transfer?!
Anyway, let's start at the beginning with what's wrong with PayPal. This has been going on for some years, and as more and more nasty things happened, the need to write this page increased. You'll see what finally did it in the end.
* First, the problem with PayPal is Identity. Obviously online you need safety of identity, so it's typical for you the honest person to have an online identity and an offline identity. PayPal ignores that safety and insists that you use your offline name online. In my opinion, that means they don't care about your safety. It's like some very shoddy security company having a policy that everyone must keep their house keys under the flower pot so the security guards can easily find them. This isn't just a matter of identity theft, but a matter of your safety from stalkers. You can see some of the sensible security here, which PayPal goes completely against, by seeing the sort of thing on the email address choosing page.
The correct solution is for the money transfer company to have a secret lookup table of the online names and offline names and not to give away the private information. PayPal fails miserably in this, and that was the original reason I avoided them.
Since then it has become apparent that PayPal doesn't really respect online personalities at all. It's an oldfashioned system dressed up to look like it's Internet-savvy when it's as stuffy as writing with a dodo feather dipped in octopus ink.
* Then we get the "PayPal can just keep your money" problem. Well, read their contract. As I read it, I can see something to the effect that if they choose, for any reason, they can just keep your money.
So, let's not be too surprised if one day PayPal executives all retire to somewhere nice and take everyone's money. If anyone grumbles, they can point out that legally they have the right to do this; it's in the contract.
* Another thing that I found was bad about PayPal was their stuffy attitude to gambling. Please bear in mind, casinos and gambling are Legal in most of the world. It's not for PayPal to make puritanical judgements on the sinfulness of gambling and to deprive you of your fun and your freedom to spend your money as you choose.
The immediate upshot of this pseudochristianist headmasterliness by PayPal was that all the online gambling casinos switched to alternative payment methods. Even if you don't wish to gamble, you can still visit the casinos and take a look at the dozen or more little flags along the baseline where numerous alternative payment systems are linked-to.
* It is a fact that Many people dislike PayPal, and some of them have felt strongly enough to set up websites denouncing PayPal. Some of these websites have collections of PayPal Horror Stories which are articles written by people about their own experiences. For example, "I did no wrong and yet PayPal just kept my money for months", etc.
Here are just a few of the "Down With PayPal" sites...
www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=44376
www.blogcatalog.com/discuss/entry/has-anyone-had-any-trouble-with-paypal
www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?248376-Paypal-problems!
http://dan.tobias.name/thenet/paypal/
www.talkgold.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-158234.html
www.iris-inc.com/auction/pp.htm
www.bitterwallet.com/worst-company-in-britain-2009-paypal-v-vodafone/22843
http://fryol.net - PayPal Blocks WikiLeaks – Hundreds Closing Accounts
http://seanmalarkey.com/paypal-powerpay
www.wickedfire.com/industry-news/29692-paypal-destroy-my-business.html
http://forum.davidicke.com/showthread.php?t=92083
http://paypal.pissedconsumer.com/paypal-stole-my-money-20110523239189.html
... and there will nodoubt be many more. Please write in if you'd like to add some.
* The most appalling thing which PayPal did, and the thing which has caused this page to be created rather than just imagined (I had hoped that PayPal would be out of business long before now), was that when a political prisoner fighting for freedom-of-speech was jailed, PayPal pulled the plug on the donate buttons. Well no, we don't let tyrannical bullying governments win, whether they be North Korea, Burma, or the United States. Freedom is Freedom anywhere, and it needs fighting for. If the government goes against that, it's time to overthrow the government. In fact it says in the US Declaration of Independence "When..." etc. (If you're not sure what it says in the US Declaration of Independence about the citizens' right to overthrow the government if it turns bad, you are welcome to visit Gutenberg and download a copy).
* Alternatives to PayPal
There are many. I may yet compile a list of them, but for now I suggest you visit any of the gambling casinos and have a look at their "Payment accepted by... methods".
A few alternatives to PayPal include: Neteller, PaySafe, uKash, Entropay, Click2Pay, MoneyBookers/Skrill, NoChex, Wepay, Plimus, and many others.
We would be far better going back to writing cheques than to suffer the oppression of PayPal!
* Other things: It may be that PayPal is in league with the evil Facebook (Down with Facebook!). The things that suggest this are to do with the government-sponsored campaign against personal freedom. However, we can not say yet for certain whether this is true.