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PayPal bans Linux users with a GPU name containing the string "Apple M1"

123 points| robin_reala | 4 months ago |vt.social | reply

43 comments

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[+] ndiddy|4 months ago|reply
I'd guess this is due to some Paypal fraud protection thing thinking that Linux on M1 is an "impossible" configuration to have and that anyone with that configuration must be spoofing their hardware.

If you click onto the bug she filed, it's also kind of sad/funny that the Mozilla employee responding to it ALSO assumes that nobody can actually run Linux on M1 and renames the bug to "paypal.com - Spoofing as Apple M GPU breaks the login process by triggering a block to the security challenge".

It's a shame because Asahi runs really well on M1 & M2. I hope that they're able to get this resolved and that other issues like this don't pop up in the future.

[+] salawat|4 months ago|reply
Wouldn't be a problem if everyone wasn't probing every bit of the User's system for their own ends, but given the incentives we've put in place, that ship has sailed.
[+] rnhmjoj|4 months ago|reply
I think the real problem is that any website can get a ton of information on your GPU, including vendor, model, supported extensions etc. via WebGL/WebGPU.
[+] fnands|4 months ago|reply
Yeah, I understand it's probably part of their fraud protection, but feels weird that they get my GPU info when doing a payment.

Seems very unrelated.

Anyone who works on fraud protection who can explain how this info is used?

[+] OptionOfT|4 months ago|reply
They even query if the monitor is connected in a HDCP compliant way.

There is a bug in either that process, my monitor, or the DP protocol.

Sometimes when that detection happens, my monitor turns grey, which is what it's supposed to do when you play HDCP content over a non-HDCP link.

But I'm not doing that. I'm just visiting a website.

[+] herbst|4 months ago|reply
PayPal is the only semi reliable payment method attached to my credit card that doesn't constantly fail payments on my desktop computer.

Glad to hear that's going to change as well.

[+] hulitu|4 months ago|reply
> Glad to hear that's going to change as well.

It changed a long time ago.

[+] j-bos|4 months ago|reply
That's disastrous, imagine getting cut off from financial services because of being an early adopter.
[+] general1465|4 months ago|reply
With PayPal you don't need to imagine, you will get cut off randomly just by using it. Oh you have triggered fraud detection, let's waste a week of your time talking to customer support.
[+] mid-kid|4 months ago|reply
As a rooted android user, I don't really have to imagine. It's been a constant fight for the last decade...
[+] em-bee|4 months ago|reply
or using an old device, like one that is, you know, not supported by win 11...
[+] tgma|4 months ago|reply
Probably tripping some client fingerprinting/fraud detection system because it thinks of it as an anomaly mistaking it for a bot or something. Unlikely to be intentional malice against Asahi users.
[+] Timshel|4 months ago|reply
Yes but shit like this still means that if your hardware is in a minority category you will lose access to services.

For a time I couldn't access a number of website because Linux+Firefox was apparently too rare, with Linux+Chrome at least I could pass a captcha (was Akamai I believe).

[+] chii|4 months ago|reply
so the question is should fraud protection err on the side of too lenient, allowing _some_ fraud to go thru to ensure zero innocent users get marked?

Or should fraud protection err on the side of stringency, where all fraud gets caught, but at the cost of getting innocents blocked too (in some greater number)?

[+] leothetechguy|4 months ago|reply
Why?
[+] netsharc|4 months ago|reply
My guess would be they're using some 3rd party library of "fake user agent detection", and this library just has a whitelist of what's "acceptable".
[+] ajb|4 months ago|reply
This is just a guess, but maybe "inconsistent" identifiers are a good signal of being an attack bot instead of a user.

Not defending that btw. Auto-generated signals are likely a problem for any desktop Linux user, not just Asahi, since most bots will run on Linux VPSs.

[+] general1465|4 months ago|reply
Why would anyone use PayPal at the first place? I have only negative experiences with them. Constant blocking, freezing account and then unfreezing it with no explanation why it was frozen in the first place just panacea "fraud detection", chargebacks months after the purchase.
[+] hulitu|4 months ago|reply
> Why would anyone use PayPal at the first place?

> A lot of people do not have a negative impression of Paypal. They think it always works.

I, for myself, i read a lot of negative stuff about it: accounts blocked because of various reasons, people denied access to their money because of various reasons.

They are not treated as a bank so they evade financial regulations.

Thanks, but no thanks.

[+] shiroiuma|4 months ago|reply
For small merchants, it's really easy and convenient for accepting credit card payments from customers. You don't needs sophisticated card-processing stuff on your end (you just send the invoice and redirect the customer to paypal.com), and the fees are (relatively) low and simple, unlike traditional credit card processors that are really geared for big customers. There just isn't much competition in this space, maybe Stripe.
[+] hombre_fatal|4 months ago|reply
One click checkout vs filling in credit card info on yet another website. None of your issues apply to using PayPal as a form of payment; you don’t need to keep a balance at all.
[+] dontlaugh|4 months ago|reply
If you need to split a bill across people from many different countries, there aren’t other options.