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Avoid Paypal, I told you so!

Paypal is a company that was co-founded by Elon Musk and has grown to be a major landmark on the face of the internet.

However, in my honest opinion, it is not an ethical or honest company.

I base this opinion on my own experiences with Paypal which I documented almost a decade ago when they decided, for no apparent reason, to seize thousands of dollars of *my* money by freezing my account.

Details of that can be found in this edition of Aardvark published back in September 2016.

The bottom line is that back then, and to this day, I say "avoid PayPal like the plague".

Sadly, many of those who weren't listening to this sage warning have since been totally shafted by the company and one of its subsidiaries, Honey.

It is alleged that Honey has stolen an unspecified amount (but possibly hundreds of millions of dollars or more) from people and companies that use affiliate links on the internet. This has been called by some, the biggest fraud ever to hit the internet -- and wouldn't you know that PayPal would be involved?

Sometimes it's good to be right and roll out the "I told you so" banner. Sometimes, as in this case, it's kind of saddening to have to do so.

I won't go into the details of the heist because others have done a much better job than me so I'll include this video below, just in case you haven't seen it already.

This guy goes into detail as to exactly how Honey spent a fortune sponsoring "influencers" to promote its browser plug-in and offered consumers the chance to make "big savings at the checkout" by redeeming special coupon codes.

To be honest, I don't understand how so many people got duped by this... or perhaps I do.

Firstly, where was Honey supposed to make its profits, if everything worked exactly as they claimed (which it didn't)?

Looking at the business model, I saw no revenue stream being generated for Honey by this system and, as we know, there are no free lunches on the Internet.

However, clearly Honey was not a charity so there had to be money flowing into its coffers from somewhere -- but where?

Well as MegaLag points out in the video, Honey has effectively been stealing affiliate payments from those who use affiliate links. It does this by replacing the true affiliate's identifying cookie with one that identifies PayPal as the deserving party -- and it does so without disclosing this to anyone.

Unethical?

Certainly.

Illegal?

Well, based on the growing number of law suits currently being filed against PayPal/Honey, a lot of lawers certainly think so.

Am I surprised?

Should anyone be surprised?

Hell no -- I warned you all back in 2016 that PayPal was not a company that could be trusted and that nobody with half a brain would have anything to do with them because of their scummy policies and actions.

The real tragedy in this whole situation however, is that even those who had absolutely no relationship or involvement with Honey were still being ripped off.

If you were (for instance) a small YouTuber who reviewed (aka "promoted") products through your videos and included affiliate links through which viewers could buy those products then, if a viewer had the Honey browser extension installed, your commission would actually end up in PayPal's pockets.

I hope that PayPal is destroyed by this fraud but I know full-well they won't. They may have pocketed billions out of this scam but odds are that they'll get a slap on the wrist from the courts and they'll still come out well-ahead from a financial perspective. Once this matter is resolved I'm sure they'll continue to plot other nefarious ways to separate honest, hard working folk from their cash in ways that are far from honest and ethical -- because that's how PayPal works, in my honestly held opinion.

So, nine years after my first warning, let me give you another:

DO NOT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH PAYPAL.

Let's hope I don't have to reference *this* column in a future one.

Carpe Diem folks!

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