Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 8:03 pm Post subject: online/offline donations-there is a safe way
I stopped all online finance in 12-06 after our pcs hijacked two weeks before. I had never lost a dime on ebay or any other online e-commerce site. Granted, I was very choosy about the few I bought from. Now the way to go is to buy one of those 'cards in cash' which have a certain dollar amount based on what you are buying. Otherwise, there are a few 'open source' sites I would like to donate to including this one. If those sites provided a 'snail mail' address, we could send a money order bought from 7-11. Even the phone is not safe.
Our 2.4 cordless is at the same frequency as wireless/bluetooth and is easily picked up by a 'scanner' or some am channels, our cell conversations can be picked up by a walkabout walkie talkie. The cell frequencies are going up, but geez, I guess those scanners which pick up ems stuff will get them too. Those scanners can be hacked of course to pick up stuff they are not supposed to. So, no to giving credit card numbers on the phone, cept a fake one.
This'rootkit' has been missed by all scanners. I knew when it invaded cuz 'I sensed an alien presence in the pc', so it was intuition. I was most unskilled, certainly no pc expert. I thought myself a 'low level' tech. You know the type. I could repair, upgrade pcs, basic networking and I was a really good teacher to those who were not 'pc saavy'. My teaching involved aps, basic smart security/how to surf safe etc. My coding and Linux/unix knowledge was 'infantile'.
A microsoft person said about rootkits, 'be afraid, be very afraid'. I agree be afraid. They not only own the kernel, the ones that hit us own the board.
Reports of 'board logic errors', an increase in failed hard drives and corrupt ram sectors, burned out board circuits from how it overclocks the FSB, only an idiot would ignore. The 'malcode' is in the board. Apple has a job position for the type programmer who can decode the chips on the board and Intel is certainly worried about their cpu. So worried, they announced a new one 'to help the os'.
I was saying a month or two to my husband that that is the only way they will find it. This gives me more hope than I have had in months.They will find out if a part is 'defective' and who made it. If there is no preplanted 'malcode', then they will have to design boards which cannot be compromised by rootkits.
Hang in there. Looks like we are going to have better days ahead. First fix the hardware, crucify the crooks. haha. In the meantime, with most not knowing if they have a 'rootkit', please do the smart thing. Take the inconvenience of no online finance other than 'dummy cards' for your own safety and peace of mind.
Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 8:18 am Post subject: Donation Alternatives to PayPal
pluby wrote:
I've looked at some of the other options out there, but I must admit that I found no improvement in security with any of them.
Patrick
You might want to consider Kagi. They have been around for many years. I have transacted business with many software publishers through Kagi for many years with entirely satisfactory results. They accept credit cards directly and now also accept PayPal payment.
(I no longer use PayPal after being subject to a ~$12K fraud. I accepted payment via PayPal for an associate (a small manufacturer) that had a UCC trade relationship with a PayPal payer; the payer filed (apparently) a dispute; I submitted more than 150 pages of documentation from my associate regarding their transaction with the payer, including the contract establishing UCC law as governing and voiding such consumer disputes and instead requiring court action; it appears that PayPal only did automated processing of the dispute (as if it were some trivial sum); PayPal never responded to my correspondences, nor ever supplied any of the actual details of the (apparent) dispute--PayPal did not even supply requested copies of their agreement(s) governing their relationship with me and the payer; all of my correspondence appeared to be ignored by any human being; eventually, PayPal just demanded the ~$12K back, including their service charges. I realized that PayPal's business model did not involve any useful provision for protecting payees and that their phenomenal growth had allowed them to be lulled into thinking their behavior was moral.)
Joined: Jun 11, 2006 Posts: 481 Location: Great Britain
Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 9:17 am Post subject: Re: Donation Alternatives to PayPal
swebert wrote:
You might want to consider Kagi. They have been around for many years.
FWIW I also have made many transactions with Kagi without any problems. That said, I personally have never had any problems with PayPal. But Kagi is worth considering - and they seem to have a longstanding status as the transaction provider of choice for many Mac software developers.
I've had good relationships with both Kagi and eSellerate over the years.
Both of them have a diversity of partnerships in the software community and a lot of experience in secure **private** arms-length transactions. On the rare occasion that I have had to adjust payments and associated details - both these third-party agents have been responsive, helpful and always ethical.
My own bank will also manage credit-card receipts for a retailer, without the retailer having to handle or retain any financial data on their customers. Most banks will set this up for a customer.
On the other hand, Paypal's ethics and general dispute resolution setup make me loath to let them have a single piece of information about my finances. And their privacy policy alone would make an exhibitionist cringe
I also find the emphasis that Paypal will not require membership for credit card transactions to be questionable; a straw poll of friends has failed to find one person who has not been asked by the Paypal credit card payment routine to open a Paypal account when they have attempted a simple credit card payment. This may be a function of these payments originating outside the USA, but I suspect that Paypal has such a poor security setup that they are forced to collect isp relationship data as a hedge against card fraud over-and-above the normal security steps provided by credit card companies (eg only POP mail addresses will be considered by Paypal as good enough for a plain credit card transaction, and what idiot would give Paypal their POPmail address without some reciprocal contract over and above a straight online transaction?) In contrast, both Kagi and eSellerate, my examples of good third-party payment facilitators, will manage a transaction without needing any other kind of financial data except the credit card and the purchaser's matching address.
Everything's ok when transactions are straightforward, but a company's strength is only as good as how it handles problems.
Many donation seekers find Paypal the easiest third-party solution because it appears to be the cheapest one to use.
My feeling is that money saved will never pay for lost good will.
You get what you pay for in financial services, just as with any other product.
For anyone doing online payments, all online payments need your most up-to-date stable installation of CommonSense V1.x - no matter what kind of method you employ.
I live outside the USA, so am sadly unable to donate directly to bypass Paypal.
The use of the donate button could be called a smidge heavy-handed on in the donate routine, but if that's how important funding is to the developers, then perhaps they may like to look at a more regular source of income. I can't in all conscience begin to use Neo Office as things stand; it feels as though I would be exploiting the developers. I can't even offer to test releases, my work wouldn't justify more than a single new spreadsheet a day - if that.
Thanks for this forum to make my points in, looking forward to one day giving Neo Office a good workout.
Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 10:07 am Post subject: Re: Paypal's ethics questionable
NM wrote:
The use of the donate button could be called a smidge heavy-handed on in the donate routine, but if that's how important funding is to the developers, then perhaps they may like to look at a more regular source of income. I can't in all conscience begin to use Neo Office as things stand; it feels as though I would be exploiting the developers. I can't even offer to test releases, my work wouldn't justify more than a single new spreadsheet a day - if that.
The point of the donate button is to make people aware that developing and supporting an office suite for several hundred thousand Mac users costs time and money. Most users do not donate when they download as our point is not to force people to donate, but to make people aware that we are a user-funded and user-staffed organization. In essence, our project is run like a non-profit service organization: many people benefit from the generous donations and volunteer work of others.
Which brings up a very important point: monetary donations are nice but volunteering your time to help support other users is extremely beneficial to the NeoOffice project. A base level amount of donations are necessary to run the project but after you pay for servers, developers, and insurance the next big cost is support. Setting up a formal user support staff would be enormously expensive and, most likely, far more expensive than the servers, developers, and insurance costs.
By volunteering your time, you benefit other users directly in two ways:
1. You use your knowledge and time to help other people solve their problems
2. You help the NeoOffice project avoid having to hire paid support staff
Both of these allow more people who cannot afford a donation to use NeoOffice without stretching the project past its limited resources.
Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 11:35 am Post subject: Re: Donation Alternatives to PayPal
Re: the several comments about Kagi
I don't really see anything different security-wise about Kagi. Maybe because they are smaller they get attacked less, but is there any concrete security features that they have that PayPal doesn't? It is clear that Kagi takes a huge cut of small donations, but other than that I don't see anything that makes them any more or less secure than the PayPal or the various brick-and-mortar banks that I have used.
This is a very important question as adding Kagi or any other service provider is not a trivial amount of work and would require that some of our existing donations to used to implement such support instead of being used for new features.
Joined: Jun 11, 2006 Posts: 481 Location: Great Britain
Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 12:00 pm Post subject: Re: Donation Alternatives to PayPal
pluby wrote:
is there any concrete security features that they have that PayPal doesn't?
To be honest I don't know, although I believe they do have a much more transparent process for paying for purchases by credit card without registering.
My immediate thought is why not ask Kagi? If they have benefits over PayPal I'm sure they will happily give you the hard sell if you ask them, then you can decide for yourself if there is any merit to their claims.
All times are GMT - 7 Hours Goto page Previous1, 2
Page 2 of 2
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You cannot download files in this forum
