PayPal Updates Policy To Prevent Users From Suing

PayPal has been hit with a lot of grief recently, namely due to holding your funds under review for no reason and making changes to your account with your permission. Obviously, these things are what lead to users suing the company, so PayPal ended up updating their policy a few days ago, which now requires users to to mail in an "opt out" form if they want to retain the ability to sue PayPal in class action.

This is arguably one of the most deliberate moves we've seen a company make in order to protect itself from its users, and it shows that they know they're making decisions that could get them sued by their fellow users. Obviously, they know that most users are too lazy to actually mail something nowadays. Then again, Sony is also guilty of this.

You have until November 1 to opt out, and the letter "must state that you do not agree to this Agreement to Arbitrate and must include your name, address, phone number, and the email address(es) used to log in to the PayPal account(s) to which the opt-out applies. You must sign the Opt-Out Notice for it to be effective."

So, if you use PayPal on a regular basis (like I do), we would strongly recommend that you read over the updated PayPal policy. And if you're not willing to ditch PayPal, then it's probably in your best interest to mail in an opt-out letter. For your convenience, a letter template is already available for you, thanks to Engadget's Darren Murph.

[via Darren Murph]