PayPal Suspends WikiLeaks Account Yet Again; Freezes Assets
from the no-payments-allowed dept
Wikileaks is an incredibly useful and important site, but there are many (mainly in the government) who would prefer it go away. It's somewhat upsetting to find out that PayPal has (for the second time) frozen all of WikiLeaks' assets. Apparently, the last time this happened it took nearly six months to resolve. That seems problematic:Paypal has as of 23rd of January 2010 frozen WikiLeaks assets. This is the second time that this happens. The last time we struggled for more than half a year to resolve this issue. By working with the respected and recognized German foundation Wau Holland Stiftung we tried to avoid this from happening again -- apparently without avail.Update: Wikileaks has now removed this message from its website, so it appears that things have been resolved. I'm a bit confused, however, as to why Wikileaks continues to use PayPal given this issue.
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Filed Under: account frozen, paypal, wikileaks
Companies: ebay, paypal, wikileaks
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Many would like to see this as some government conspiracy but is more likely S.O.P by PayPal
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Thanks for the weirdly timed tip, Anti-Mike. I'll keep that in mind when I have a legitimate band or cause and decide to ask for donations from my legitimately owned website that I sell my own legitimate copyrighted works that may be frozen by PayPal illegitimately.
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The only 'wait' you might have as a merchant is the lag time between one bank confirming the transfer of funds to your account is valid.
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1 week for a transfer!? Thankfully, in Europe at least I have at most 24hr wait for transfers and no-one uses cheques anymore. We use plastic cards that magically transfer our money immediately - and they are usable virtually everywhere...
Why do Americans put up with such lousy bank service? I mean, there should be a better provider somewhere in the US!
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I imagine a lot of people who do business with Wikileaks are the kind of people who don't want to be known.
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re: Anti-Mike's advice
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Re: re: Anti-Mike's advice
No sense in even discussing it.
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Any Financial Regulations Apply?
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Re: Any Financial Regulations Apply?
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Re: Re: Any Financial Regulations Apply?
Paypal issues VISA cards. Paypal takes money and transfers money as a service. At what point do they do enough things banks do to be considered a bank?
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Re: Re: Any Financial Regulations Apply?
A friend gave me a PSP to sell for him and I did. Thank god I transfered the money out real quick, as they froze my account the next day, and wanted proof of purchase for the PSP. Of course, I didnt have it. And they wanted all kinds of BS like they wanted me to fax them the proof. Thats garbage. I eventually gave up and made a 2nd account. Foolishness is all I can say.
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Re: Any Financial Regulations Apply?
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On the WikiLeaks website there is this statement:
"To concentrate on raising the funds necessary to keep us alive into 2010, we have reluctantly suspended all other operations, until at least Jan 18."
Sounds to me that WikiLeaks was in some financial problems before PayPal took action.
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The message used to be on WikiLeaks itself, but appears to have been removed, so perhaps things are resolved.
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So are wikileaks censoring themselves?????
(Get the multiple layers or irony!)
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But as you point out, they still need money! Give now!
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Fool Me Once
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So Why Did PayPal Freeze WikiLeaks???
Second, A quick review of various underlying articles did not explicitly disclose why PayPal took the action it did. For example "The last time we struggled for more than half a year to resolve this issue.". But this "issue" was never explained. So what is (was) the issue??????
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Re: So Why Did PayPal Freeze WikiLeaks???
Paypal is not a place to leave your money, IMHO.
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Re: Re: So Why Did PayPal Freeze WikiLeaks???
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now how do they pay for the seedboxes
look hte real reason is some govt ass made noise a while back remember about wiki leaks?
now it takes time for the govt to move on you and guess what
they went for wiki leaks money
yup no story hear just wiki leaks should have more then one means to get and receive donations.
my bet hear is that its a multi pronged approach again and an attack to limit peoples freedoms again by obscurity
the mpaa and riaa won't be satisfied people until they actually start causing people to rise up in revolution
just remember what the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy said
"and when the revolution came the lawyers were the first to go", i'll add then the actors and musicians that support the lawyer model.
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trust...
So it doesn't help much to choose another service instead of Paypal, people will just be reluctant to use it and will ask for a Paypal account to donate to.
In my case, often it's just easier to use Paypal because I don't feel like searching through my pants for my credit card, type the number and verification code and so on - it's faster on Paypal.
However, I made it a habit not to have more than 50$ on my Paypal account, just in case it's hacked or limited and so on. I get my wage on Paypal and withdraw it the next day... The 20-25$ they take as processing fees for receiving about 1000$ is less than the fee my bank takes for processing a check and it doesn't take 4 weeks to clear so it's worth the risk.
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Re: trust...
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re
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When Will a Business Die?
We assume that the free-market responds fairly quickly to supply-demand, but the reality is that it does not.
One of my pet concepts on this, consumers to a degree do business on a RANDOM basis. The also purchase things with minimal knowledge and for the sake of convenience.
Considering that this country has 300,000,000+ people, quite a lot of business could do a profitable business base on the random selection of their products even with crappy products and poor customer service.
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another data point
They also said CC donation can be made at https://tipit.to/wikileaks.org
They do not currently have US 501c3 status, but are working on it.
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Paypal's policies and customer service are legendary for being horrible. Just imagine the tsunami of customers a competitor would see as people switched over to a similar company that doesn't suck.
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Merchant Account better than Paypal
if seller is in high risk business like selling tobacco, pharmacy, time sharing, replica merchant account, travel merchant account services or any related field they better choose activemerchant.com ... thats their best bet!
I hope in future there will be many companies providing ipsp solutions so paypal cannot be alone in market taking all control over all merchants located world wide.
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will i get my check from paypal
Your help is much appreciated. Thank you
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Wikileaks/Paypal
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PayPal is going down!
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Boo, paypal
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Re:PayPal Suspends WikiLeaks Account Yet Again; Freezes Assets
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