This is one of the many reasons that I don’t use paypal or any sites that require it.
Reminder that I had attempted to purchase a pinephone pro from ameridroid, and they sent my personal information to paypal without my knowledge or consent; there is nothing about paypal being their payment processor anywhere in their privacy policy or terms of service, and I had selected the payment option that was not paypal, specifically to avoid interacting with paypal at all. I wasn’t allowed to receive the phone because paypal demanded that I send pictures of my payment card and video scans of my face.
Lesson learned: use uBlock Origin or similar to block paypal domains on all sites
paypal.com
paypalobjects.com
If you find that a site is frozen when confirming your order and submitting payment, this is likely because they are attempting to send your personal information to paypal; I’d recommend avoiding such sites.
That’s a very good point. I had left paypal out of my network block, but I should probably just go ahead and add it to the list, joining bytedance, facebook, google, and others.
Also, your devices (including the Librem 5) might travel outside your home network, so it’s worth it to apply it on every device.
For traveling with proprietary OS devices (if any), a good tracker-blocking app will do the trick, if PayPal and Venmo domains are added to the blocklist.
Hmm. I’m currently using OpenSnitch on my Librem 5 for domain blocking, and I think that’s generally enough for me, at least for now. I also have a personal vpn setup on my router so that I can connect to my home network when I’m away. I should probably make a separate topic about troubleshooting my vpn setup though, as it seems to work without issue on android devices but not on my Linux devices currently.
From a practical standpoint, I can’t easily avoid using PayPal to process credit card transactions for some web sites but I can at least avoid having a PayPal account.
It is unclear from the article whether this further Surveillance Capitalism applies only to those who have a PayPal account or also to anyone just using PayPal to process a CC transaction.
I expect that in the EU questions would be asked about the legality of the latter (not that that would help me in any way).
I logged into my PayPal account to delete it. I’ve forgotten why I even created this account over a decade ago, but I definitely don’t want it now. Clicked to delete account - couldn’t complete request. Reason was non-specific (of course).
After checking all kinds of FAQ “help,” I determined that it was because there was some sort of pending US$5.00 gift from PayPal that I had not yet/ever accepted.
OK… thanks for the free money…?
Clicked to accept - presented with 3 options:
(1) Deposit to a bank account “for a small fee.” (Nope. Don’t want to give PayPal my bank account number.)
(2) Keep in PayPal. (Requiring an open account, of course.)
(3) Mail check to address on file. ($1.50 fee… a 30% cut for PayPal. Lol/nlol.)
I chose (3), for the win.
I’ll try to delete again after I’ve received that $3.50 check.