Public Data Extortion scheme using Paypal still live | Hacker News Reader

Public Data Extortion scheme using Paypal still live

5 pointsduked3 comments

Hello,

I recently had a traffic ticket, nothing too serious just license plate issues. However I "uncovered" a huge extortion scheme going on and supported by Paypal. This website is crawling public data (such as court records, traffic tickets) and then gets it index by Google. The idea is to publicly shame people and extort money to remove the data from the website. The surprising part is that it processes payments with Paypal ...

It's obviously a scam that's been going on for a while and already brought to Paypal's attention on their forum: https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/About-Payments-Archive/Illegal-Website-using-Paypal/td-p/649217

The person behind it is running several other extortion websites, so I guess it is somehow a profitable business.

Paypal is usually over cautious (to say the least) to disable/freeze legit accounts but this one is still up and running.

I understand that the data is public so you can probably crawl it (need to check some robots.txt before confirming it) but using that to extort money is probably not that legal.

Anyway this is my discovery of the day.

> but using that to extort money is probably not that legal.

It's all in how it's worded. If someone creates a website that lists the names and shows the faces of convicted drunk drivers for example, the creator can justify it as a public service, using public records as its source of information. And the creator can agree to remove a listing for a fee, as long as he doesn't explicitly say that a payment is required to effect the removal of a particular article -- that would be extortion, illegal nearly everywhere.

But there's more. If the website's location is unknown, or if it's sited in a place with a flexible attitude toward law and order, then the prohibition against extortion may essentially go away.

Some of the U.S.-based extortion sites are being threatened with lawsuits, but on shaky legal grounds:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/07/mugshot-removal-ext...

Quote: "“First of all, I think [plaintiff attorney] Scott has insurmountable problems with the First Amendment. The mugshots, as you may or may not know, are public record,” said Lance Winchester, a Texas attorney for BustedMugshots.com and MugshotsOnline.com, which charge under $100 to remove mugs from their sites."

I agree it depends on the wording but this particular website: http://court-records-management.com/ (just realized I forgot the add the link) the wording is clear you pay to remove a particular court record: "Remove Record XXXXXXXX from the court-record-management.com website. The court record and all information pertaining to the case will be removed from court-record-management.com within 24 hours of payment clearing. See our Terms for our return policy and conditions. Court Record Management reserves the right to refuse a removal request. If this occurs, they payment will be refunded within 24 hours."

I didn't realize someone was already taking legal action against such website but it's an interesting grey area of the law.

Okay, to me that's extortion, and I think it's only waiting for someone to take the necessary legal steps.

It's true that the records are public, and the First Amendment needs to be honored, but an explicit payment demand turns it into extortion regardless of the status of the material.

Old-fashioned pre-Internet blackmail is a crime, even though the information the blackmailer threatens to expose is usually true. In my view, this is an Internet version of blackmail, and it's only waiting for the authorities to apply existing laws to it.

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