I've been interacting with a gung-ho PayPal apologist, so I'll close this out for the record and go on my way. I bought an item on eBay and the seller reneged, issued a refund. For me to collect that refund, PayPal says I must provide them with a Social Security number. They're holding the money hostage in an effort to get me to turn over confidential information. The PayPal User agreement says that they have to report to the IRS, so they need your Social Security Number IF you earn $20,000 a year through them or make 200 sales per year. I do neither. The refund is only 22 bucks, which makes this a really, really cheesy little holdup attempt on the part of PayPal. Fascist banking. And no amount of smoke blown at me from Bombay can change that simple fact.
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