Topic: Paxum.com Issues: Recommend *Against* Using Paxum Now (Read 10011 times)

PM me or email me ( [email protected] ) your username and we will get it sorted

Chris

I gave up on setting up a Paxum account as well.  In order to add a checking account, you need the bank's SWIFT-BIC code.  I understand that not all banks have a record with Swift and they often deal with intermediary banks when it comes to international transfers.  This would be fine, but the website will *NOT* let you set up an account with an intermediary this way because the primary account still requires a SWIFT-BIC code.  Seriously... the routing number+account number is not sufficient?  

FAIL.

Huge pain in the butt.  At least Dwolla was easy to set up.  Perhaps the simplest means of withdrawing from Tradehill without incurring huge fees is to simple have them cut you a check and send via U.S. Post.  

And having a razor sharp image of my driver's license rejected (taken with my Thunderbolt's 8MP camera in full daylight with no image cropping) is a joke.  The image was perfect enough that I could have laminated it to a plastic card and used it in place of the original and no one would be the wiser.

Because Canada is in Europe.

the verification process it a bit much. I'm actually irritated right now. I send pictures of drives license. it's expired on the front. cool no problem I'll send a picture of the back with the extension sticker. still get denied because the sticker expires 8/12/2011 and I'm avoiding going to the DMV until the last second. hey tell me they can't take it because it can't be expiring within a two week period? wtf ? I literally opened a regions checking account today with the same license. so my money sits on tradehill idle until I can send them something else? I'm all for being secure but c'mon... why did tradehill remove the dwolla withdrawal option again? this is a pain. do any other trading services offer dwolla withdrawal? I'm about over this paxum stuff.

... Half the shit in the US is outsourced...

is there any risk why tradehill stopped dwolla withdrawals???

Really now...

ON A FRIDAY!?!?!

I just attempted to open a Paxum account, to try them out.  The experience was extremely difficult, and at the end I called Paxum and had them walk me through the process of closing the account.  I did not feel safe using it.

Here's what I noticed in the process;

1) Paxum's automated emails use HTML, but have incorrect MIME settings.  This means that they are displayed by Thunderbird and the other email clients that I tested as plain text.  *That* means that you have to search through a bunch of HTML codes to find the information that you need to confirm your account, etc. 

2) Paxum uses attached PDF files to send certain types of critical information, but because of the broken MIME settings, the attachments cannot be viewed or detached in normal email clients.  They must be handled by hand, by saving the email as text and then using a utility to demime them.  Most users are not up to figuring this out.

3) Paxum's web site is extremely picky about the format of information that it accepts in fields when you are signing up, but does not tell you in advance which symbols are disallowed.  Among the issues: periods (.) are not allowed in street addresses, but you find that out only when you include one and get an error back.

4) Paxum will not accept a scanned image above 4 MB in size for identity verification, but states that images must be "high quality" and rejects faxed images.  It took me several tries to come up with an image that was of a size it would accept and also a quality it would accept.  This is *really* annoying.

I could continue, but frankly, the email and web site tell me that the people managing Paxum's servers are not very good at what they are doing.  I work in networking security, manage a mail server, have managed web sites since the mid-1990s, and am intimately familiar with what it takes to run a secure site.  My assessment of Paxum's setup is that their technical people do not appear to be experienced enough to be trusted running a site that requests and holds information that will allow identity theft.  I didn't run a vulnerability scan on the site, but would not be at all surprised to find cross-site scripts and other vulnerabilities that can be used to steal information.

I recommend not using Paxum.  They probably mean well, and after they get their act together on their technical services might be worth using.  For now, though, giving them the information that they request to manage your money is IMHO taking an unnecessary and unwise risk.

ROFL!  Well put.

There may be more women on the forum than many of you know.  I've noticed that a lot of women use androgynous handles on forums where there are lots of men, particularly if there's any of the typical masculine back-and-forth teasing about sex.  I'm an old lady by geek standards (50 this year), pretty tough, and perfectly willing to tell any nitwit that behaves inappropriately to BACK OFF.  Not all women are, though.  Where the topic of conversation isn't personal -- like, say, a new monetary system -- it's often easier to participate if some guys assume that we're men.  The grown-ups, of course, have long since figured out that we might be interesting for reasons other than our gender.

If you mean the same as her husband, then yes.