Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent

> I realize some don’t like it, agree we should respect their wishes. But the ability to paypal or western union or otherwise send to people without their consent exists and is not illegal or unethical. Nominative fair use of public data also legal.

There's a huge difference between sending someone money without their prior permission and creating a system to solicit money to send to someone without their prior permission.

> the ability to paypal or western union or otherwise send to people without their consent exists

Surely the recipient has to create a PayPal or Western Union account first, which constitutes giving permission for that company to take payment on their behalf.

And in fairness, the complaint isn't even that money is being sent to people without their consent. The problem is that the money isn't actually being sent to those people at all — Brave are keeping it.

That's not how Western Union works. The recipient goes to WU and presents matching ID.

What kind of inane rationale is that? Western Union asks the sender to provide detailed address and contact information, and has technology available to send a text to the recipient letting them know that they can pick up their money at a WU location.

Since Tom Scott didn't sign up, how would Brave know to contact him? Some default webmaster@example.com email that may or may not even be registered?

Western Union doesn't claim to be accepting donations on creators behalfs.

Western Union can refund money sent if it hasn't been collected by the recipient.

Western Union doesn't require a minimum amount of money be sent to a recipient before they collect.

Really, it is 1 & 2 together that seem to mark this clearly as fraud. 3 doesn't help either.

I've never used WU, but I'm guessing that they don't divert all payments that go unclaimed for 90 days into their advertising budget.

>>Western Union doesn't claim to be accepting donations on creators behalfs.

Strictly speaking, Brave is not doing that. The fact that the originator of the solicitation is Brave, and that the potential end-recipient may not sign up to receive the funds, is disclosed.

It's an escrow fund that would release the funds to a particular party should they choose to claim it. That's how the contribution service is marketed.