I made my first purchase on eBay in November of 1997 - cannot claim that I jumped on its board as quickly as I did on Amazon's, but still - merely two years after the first transaction was concluded (the famously broken laser pointer). Since then, eBay has been consistently feeding three (or four) of my collecting passions. I am not a trading fiend, but over the years I've purchased nearly six hundred items and even sold a few.
It was quite a challenge in the beginning: People's track records were still measly. There were no buyers' protection tools (now it's too much). So, it was really all about trusting, checking, communicating, being diligent about the feedback, starting small, risking little.
The most cumbersome part, of course, was the payment process. I don't even want to remember it: all the money orders I had to buy, the faxing of the credit card numbers to shops in Amsterdam, Vienna, London - brrrr... It was really a blessing when in 1999 eBay integrated with Billpoint, barely a year after the person-to-person money service launched their site.
By then, PayPal came to play the Internet-payments game as well, and I have to say that it was clear right from the start that their product was better in all respects. I actually hated Billpoint's features and started using PayPal way before Meg Whitman finally acquired it for eBay in 2002. The ease of it stood the test of time (hey, in the Internet environment, 17 years of existence makes you an uber-successful veteran). To check my legitimacy all they needed was to verify my bank account, which I linked to my profile. You have your shipping address preset, you can link as many credit cards as you want. Nowadays, they offer an array of services to both the consumers and the businesses (technically you don't even need a shopping cart on your site anymore - just integrate it with PayPal).
It's no wonder I've been using them for over 15 years now. And in all that time, PayPal never ever asked me for my Social Security Number. That is, until a week ago.
Here's what happened: I've just successfully negotiated a purchase of an antique item from a dealer in France and went to pay for it on PayPal. Imagine my surprise when, after initially seeing the familiar checkout sequence of screens, I was suddenly directed to an unusual place right before the final payment confirmation - in complete astonishment I was staring at the PayPal's request for my Social Security Number. I was shocked; I was sure that I fell a victim of some super-elaborate Internet scheme that switched me mid-process from the legitimate site to a fraudulent one.
I don't want to bore you with the multiple ways I've used to reassure myself that my privacy indeed being violated by none other than PayPal. You just have to trust me - it was them. Finally, faced with the reality that I will not be able to bypass the abhorrent screen, I slowed down and studied it in detail.
One thing became clear right away - this screen was definitely targeted to US payers only and not PayPal's entire international customer base. Then, there was an explanatory sentence - an attempt to separate PayPal from the action its system was performing (i.e. violating my privacy). It stated that PayPal is under a "government requirement" to collect further personal information from payers of amounts above "certain" threshold.
This is what I call an ambiguous lie! First of all, note that the actual end-user of the requested information is vaguely defined as "government," which could be any division of our multi-sectional administrative body. And the reference to the size of the transaction - that's absolute and utter bullshit! I paid twice as much for a purchase made a week before and three times more for another item two days ago. Neither of those transactions had to go through the additional security step.
If you decide to do a bit of an online research and see if anybody else had the same experience, you will find out that there is a significant, but not overwhelming, contingent of people who went through exactly the same ordeal. Evidently, not all users encounter this inquiry - otherwise the Internet would be flooded with discussions.
But of those who've been asked to provide their SSN's in the checkout, the majority assume that PayPal is doing IRS's bidding. This is how the minds of the general population work: monetary transaction + SSN = IRS. It's totally understandable - both Federal and State tax authorities have been working for 20 years trying to impose income and sales taxes on the Internet-based transactions; and they have been gaining more and more ground. In fact, PayPal is already obligated to distribute 1099-K income information forms to sellers with commercial volume of more that $20,000 and at least 200 transactions.
Ah, here is a key word - SELLERS, i.e. people who generate income when using PayPal. But I was not selling, I was buying, and so were the other users venting their frustration on the discussion boards. So, why us then?
I think that people get too shaken up to notice that the request is not limited to just SSN. Actually, it's a list: Social Security indeed goes first, but then there is a Passport Number and even an Alien Number for US residents who are not citizens. Moreover, "they" don't want all of it - when you look closely, you realize that it's a choice. As a matter of fact, I did not provide my SSN; I entered my passport information and smoothly sailed into the completion of my purchase.
Huh? But IRS cannot do anything with my passport number - they don't know it, neither does any financial institution, nor the Social Security Administration. You know which parts of the ambiguously termed "government" do? The ones that also have the word "security" in their names, but in a completely different sense. Hmm, okay. Still, why? What was it about that particular transaction that triggered this strange protocol? We already know it's not just the amount.
What was that famous question Juliet Capulet asks Romeo Montague in Act II? "What's in a name?" Nothing for "star cross'd" lovers, but, I suspect, enough for the said government bodies to raise warning flags.
Let me explain: The recipients of the larger amounts I paid before and after the transaction in question were Donald Green of New Jersey, USA and Alice Tang of Australia (due to privacy concerns the names are not exact). But my French dealer's name is Muhammad Ardabil. And PayPal is made to collect my personal information because I paid him a certain sum.
The awful truth is, I don't even know how to feel about this bullshit. Normally, I'm all about personal freedom as a #1 priority; always ready to quote Benjamin Franklin - "Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty nor security," and stuff like that.
Yet, it is absolutely horrific to think that PayPal is used as a transmission channel for contributions into terrorist activities. I remember how, after September 11, 2001, the news that the alleged al-Qaeda kamikazes used rewards points to buy tickets for the death planes made the tragedy even more macabre.
So, I don't know how to feel about the security agencies looking into everyone who makes payments to people with Arabic names overseas. But the most troubling sign of the changing times is the fact that I hesitated to write this post - was not quite sure about revealing my logical deductions. Didn't the same Benjamin Franklin also said that "without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech?"
I wonder, though, if PayPal would ask me for additional info if, for some reason, I had to make a payment to Pierre Morad Omidyar, let's say as a charitable contribution. After all, he is a French-born Iranian and the name may hit a nerve in the selection algorithm. Never mind that he is the founder and chairman of eBay and as such is PayPal's major shareholder. On the other hand, maybe his name is specifically excluded from the search program. Who knows?