July « 2009 « Hackers For Charity

I had a subscription system running under WP-MEMBER for about a year before that software flaked out on me. Multiple domains caused problems that were irreconcilable. I had donations for our work in Africa coming in (not through wp-member) and a few hundred subscribers to Informer through wp-member. All said, when I switched to Suma, I had 10,000$US in my personal paypal account. That was my family’s support money as well as money for our food program in Kenya.

So I shopped around and picked up Suma. In the process, we had to switch to a business account (although I don’t understand why…wp-member was happily doing recurring payments without a business account). That’s when all hell broke loose. Paypal required a proof of non-profit status (we’re not a non-profit yet, no 501c3 paperwork from IRS) which we don’t have (I selected the wrong box I guess) a printed bank statement (harder to get than you might realize, being overseas) which because a REAL problem because the account was in my name, not the business name and other information. Because I couldn’t provide some of the info (501c3 paper) and the other info (bank stuff) took a LONG time, PayPal restricted my account, meaning my subscription payments are bouncing, and I can’t transfer money out of my account.

PayPal has frozen my assets. We have no source of income beyond the car money we just spent in Kampala on Monday. I may very well have to return to Kampala and get the car payment money back to live off of. We are stranded financially and physically without a vehicle because of PayPal.

I’ve called (Contact PayPal Customer Support toll-free at 1-888-221-1161) to lift the restrictions, but they tell me to email service. Emailing service is ridiculous, and a week goes by between responses. Last I got from them was that I couldn’t talk to them because I emailed from an address that wasn’t on the PayPal account. So I had to create another email account, and try again (a painful process).

Now they are telling me that the bank info I provided isn’t correct because the bank account isn’t in the business name. Now I have to switch bank accounts in PayPal (again, overseas, less that dial-up, VERY HARD), get another statement to them and hope they accept it.

At that point they will probably deny me again because I haven’t sent them the 501c3 papers.

I asked to switch to a for-profit account (even though we’re not) through the “PayPal resolution center” but have received no response. This would remove the requirement for the 501c3 paperwork, but I have no faith in this process because everything submitted to the resolution center must be in a graphic format (png, jpg, etc) and I was forced to take a screen cap of a text document explaining my case. (I mean seriously??) Nothing from them on switching to a for-profit account.

I’d love to go back to having a personal account, but I can’t even imagine how I would request that, how long it would take, or if it would even be possible,

The bottom line is PayPal has frozen my assets (which aren’t theirs.. how can they do this?) including all the support money my family is relying on.

I’ve spent hours on the phone (on hold) to PayPal at approximately 30 cents a minute to try to get this resolved only to be told to use email. I’m considering legal action over this.

HFC is at a complete standstill. We can not order shirts for the conference. Subscriptions are bouncing. Informer is down. Subscribers are (rightly) pissed because they don’t have what they’ve paid for. I can’t order the items for the DEFCON auction. There are too many problems to list here. The biggest is that PayPal has locked down my family’s survival money.

I have no clue what to do at this point.

Does the EFF have any leverage? I can’t tell you how tempted I am to just turn to the dark side here and…

Yes, you’re reading it right. I get like 40+KB/sec but that’s PEAK. That’s when things are going well. Up here in Njeru, with the huawei e220′s internal antenna, I can only seem to manage a consistent WCDMA connection. When I use a long USB cable and hang the modem by the window, I get HSPDA which is when my speeds really start to crank.

So, I have two options. One is this: http://www.poyntingdirect.co.za/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=ADPT-026, which does not involve opening the modem. I’m going to try to get my friends in SA to buy three and bring them to DEFCON. I’ll also put out a call for some antennas. Now, even at it’s best, HSPDA here may not be enough sustained bandwidth, especially considering the fact that I’m sharing that with the rest of Jinja. Theoretically, HSPDA has bandwidth capability of ADSL, but I’m not sure how much they have implemented here. The fact that WCDMA is rolled out and HSPDA is even available is a good sign.

The other is a “Real” bandwidth landline provider. I’m researching that. I’ve gotten some info that UTL, which lots of people (many Internet cafes, especially) seem to favor, is teh suck. Two providers seem to offer more speed: “More telecom” and “Datanet.com” (written by one of the fastest cafes in town but I’m running into a brick wall researching those. I’ll spend some time this week doing real research on these (ie I’ll pay a few bucks, sit in a chair and pillage as much info from the cafe computers as humanly possible…or I’ll just ask more questions.)

There is also rumor of a fibre channel running from Mombasa. That will bring REAL broadband. I haven’t gotten a good lead on that yet though.

But I am thankful that I’m on a decent starting spot. The UTL connection is much better than what I had. I average 10k down, but can never get more than 4k up. That’s an issue. Now with antennas and some hacker magic we’ll see what we can do. Also, we’re WAY up on a hill here in Njeru, so we have a great line-of-site to Jinja, where the majority of wireless services operate. Maybe we’ll get a hacker team to pull a real signal from Kampala. =)

More on this later.

Johnny

Amazing community support from Luiz Eduardo and the staff and attendees at YSTS! We’re so very grateful for this amazing show of support! Here’s the details:

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Last June 22nd, the third edition of the security conference “you sh0t the sheriff” (also known as YSTS) happened in São Paulo, Brazil.

Born in 2007, YSTS brought a new format to the security conferences in Brazil, having a balanced mix of technical and not-so-technical presentations, and has established its place in the calendar of the security conferences world-wide.

In 2008, YSTS raised about USD 400 for HFC, and, following the growth and success of the conference, this year we’re pleased to announce that we raised a little over US 1,000 for HFC via auctioning some gadgets purchased by the YSTS organization, as well as items donated by some of the attendees and sponsors. Some of the top items auctioned this year were two subscriptions of Microsoft’s MSDN, gently donated by Microsoft’s MSRC, as well as other items like books and some miscellaneous swag. YSTS and HFC would like to thank all that have reached-out and helped the cause. We’re looking forward to do better in the next edition.

Disclaimer: This post took several days to submit. This is because I wasn’t at all sure if I should let the raw emotion of the story of the Americans see the light of day. There is probably some reason why things worked out the way they did, and I should be less willing to jump to conclusions. So at first, I decided to edit the anablog and remove the bit about the Americans until I could get more information about how things went down. I decided against an edit, and decided that as a matter of policy, the anablog will be raw, and completely unedited. This is my journal and will reflect my thoughts, ideas, weaknesses and most likely many of my failures which I will hopefully learn from. So with that said, I am still intensely frustrated over the vehicle situation. From this side, the Ugandans are stuck with a pile of parts, a huge bill and no money to do anything about it. The American’s sponsors are most likely oblivious to the damage they left behind, but the Americans are just as worthy of compassionand second chances as the Ugandan are, as I am and as anyone is. So the disclaimer is this: the anablog was, is, and will remain raw and unedited, and the verdict is still out on how this issue will be resolved. I must forgive and move on, as the Ugandans are doing. As hard as that may be.