Paypal Risk Management, was Re: Paypal WAS: PostgreSQL speakers needed for - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

Hi Mark et al.

It seems to me that if we use a service such as Paypal as a venue for
recieving payment, that our risks are pretty minor.  The risks people are
talking about here come into play only when we are storing sums of money in
Paypal.  Paypal has a number of issues that I would like to avoid:
1:  They don't have a very good security record. (Abiword comes to mind)
2:  They are large and well known, making users susceptible to fraud in the
same way e-bay users are.  This means that their security record may not
always be under their control, as less knowledgable customers may fall for
such scams.

Even if they have improved their terms of service, I still am unsure based
on these points.  So here is my counterproposal.  This viewpoint errs on the
side of security and safety.

1:  Have a separate bank account or money market (if we have enough of a
ballance to make it worth it).


2:  Clear out the Paypall acct weekly and transfer to the bank account.
That way if somethign happens, we lose 1 week's worth.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

----- Original Message -----
From: "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@postgresql.org>
To: "Josh Berkus" <josh@agliodbs.com>
Cc: "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com>; "Dan Langille"
<dan@langille.org>; <pgsql-advocacy@postgresql.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2004 4:59 AM
Subject: Re: [pgsql-advocacy] Paypal WAS: PostgreSQL speakers needed for


> On Tue, 6 Jan 2004, Josh Berkus wrote:
>
> > Josh:
> >
> > > Odd.   I was told by an Abiword person in November that the money was
never
> > > returned; I will contact them to clarify.
> >
> > OK, clarified: what Marc had *meant* was that Paypal did not cough up
(or
> > event respond to e-mails or faxes) until the Abiword theft story got
> > slashdotted.
>
> Not this Marc, by the way .. :)
>
> > Still doesn't really improve my impression of PayPal ....
> >
> > This is similar to a discussion we had on OpenOffice.org regarding
Kazaa.
> > Kazaa had offered to let the OOo 1.0 distribution be a free pilot for
their
> > "Kazaa Gold" service.   We discussed it, and decided that participating
in
> > this program would be effectively putting OOo's "stamp of approval" on
> > Kazaa's whole business model, of which we were not fond, and declined.
> >
> > For similar reasons, I would not favor setting up a donations account
through
> > PayPal.   However unlikely it is that PG would come to harm through
PayPal,
> > the company has not changed its customer-abusive written policies and I
would
> > not want to do anything that would encourage more people signing up with
> > them.
> >
> > Of course, I could be outvoted ....
>
> I'm still anti-Paypal, even more so after this ... I'd hate to have to see
> us, at some point, having to go the same route as abiword just to get at
> the money, *especially* if it is/was at a time when we were at the last
> minute on something .. imagine being at the last minute on paying for a
> booth at Comdex and finding out Paypal has arbitrarily locked our funds?
>
> ----
> Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services
(http://www.hub.org)
> Email: scrappy@hub.org           Yahoo!: yscrappy              ICQ:
7615664
>
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