PayPal is not Your Friend, Buddy

I've said it before and I'll say it again: If you use PayPal you're looking for trouble.

Lately PayPal froze MailPile's funds. MailPile is a crowdfunded project to create Free Software (GPL) encrypted email tool for the masses. Ycombinatorcom noted that perhaps MailPile's mention of Snowden and the NSA is what triggered this.

In the past they've blocked others, often acting as their own justice system. For example with Wikileaks and Bradley Manning. PayPal also freezes accounts for odd reasons, like GlassUp, Diaspora and iPredator.

Other times they're busy blocking donations for a cancer patient's medical bills.

PayPal (PayEnemy) allows anyone to create an account and use whichever "buttons" they want and so on. Until a trigger is activated, then the account gets frozen and there's a bunch of stuff about terms of service.

Everytime PayPal (PayEnemy) does something like this, there's a bunch of people who will ask about viable alternatives, if so, are they any good, etc. My simple answer is: If there's no alternative for online payments, don't do online payments.

To those who continue to use PayPal, you've been warned over and over. PayPal does whatever they want with their client's money. Please don't complain when this happens to you.

In other news, fire is hot, people have been burnt while touching it.