PayPal to Users: Drop Dead!

There’s chutzpah and there’s chutzpah. PayPal’s latest would be the latter:

The payments company is rolling out an update to its user agreement that threatens to bombard you with “autodialed or prerecorded calls and text messages” — and worse, by agreeing to the updated terms, you’re immediately opted in.

PayPal can even reach you at phone numbers that you didn’t provide. Through undisclosed means, PayPal says it has the right to contact you on numbers “we have otherwise obtained.”

I found this story via Jim Dalrymple, who calls it an “egregious abuse” of the data PayPal collects on its users. It’s downright creepy, abusive even, that PayPal would use “undisclosed means” for “otherwise obtaining” private phone numbers — for the purpose of bombarding you with aural spam.

The only thing I use PayPal for is the occasional sale or purchase on eBay, but I guarantee you (and PayPal) that I am done with them, not one more penny, until they quit abusing their customers in this manner and promise never to try crap like this again.