PayPal blocks transactions that include the word “tardigrade” | Hacker News Reader

PayPal blocks transactions that include the word “tardigrade”

twitter.com

21 pointsrideontime9 comments

Tested this myself by sending some money to a friend with a note reading "tardigrade," and was told the payment is "pending."

> As part of our security measures, we review certain payments more closely to ensure our platform is being used properly and to minimize the potential risk for us and our customers. One of the payments that you sent is currently being reviewed. We are working to resolve this matter as quickly as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience.

I'd guess this https://documentation.tardigrade.io/

Which is blockchain related.

This appears to be specifically not blockchain related.

https://documentation.tardigrade.io/concepts/decentralizatio...

Sounds like a repeat of the case that Paypal blocked an artist's account for having the word Iran inside her full name https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24359821

For those of you, who like me, couldn't remember what a Tardigrade is, they're microscopic animals that live in water and are also known as Water Bears.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade

All I can think of is that this is some obscure word used to test functionality of their the piece of software that blocks payments based on a keywords contained within. I suppose someone could test out a transaction with obvious blocked keywords like "nazi terrorist child porn" and see if it behaves similarly, but I'm not going to try it.

It would be weird to block those as they are pejorative used only by people who oppose these things. Try "national socialist freedom fighter". I don't know what child porn is called by pedophiles.

> I don't know what child porn is called by pedophiles.

There's a rabbit hole.

<SFW> https://www.wired.co.uk/article/child-sexual-abuse-keywords-...

Somebody in the Twitter posted screenshot from sanctions list for entry ”Tardigrade limited”. [1]

Sounds plausible for me that some automated tool found a match and these transactions went for manual review.

[1] https://sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov/Details.aspx?id=7935

JFC. It's 2020. Natural language processing is ubiquitous. And clowns like this are still denying service based on keyword matching. Get better programmers, Paypal.

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