[UCIMC-Tech] [Imc-bookkeeper] Paypal List
Barry Isralewitz
barryi at ks.uiuc.edu
Sun Sep 19 15:46:26 CDT 2010
Hi,
No objection to the end of that mailing list.
Here, though, are some reminders / background for any who might be
interested in getting notification of PayPal transactions, or
generating _automatic_ responses to certain kinds of Paypal
transactions.
I have Paypal send me IPN (Instant Payment Notification) messages
whenever UCIMC Paypal transactions take place -- Paypal contacts our
server, which runs a script to generate appropriate emails. You can
get some or all of these emails too, if you want. There is no spam,
but a good number of events (payments, but also cancellations, pay
attempt failures, etc.), order of 100 - 200 per month, half that if
you don't count debug messages. I set this system up years back
since, as Mike mentions, the Paypal email notifications have in the
past worked unreliably, or simply not worked at all for stretches of
many months (with this acknowledged by PayPal tech support at the
time). In addition to the always-reliable IPN notifications, the
standard Paypal email notifications for thebikeproject at gmail.com on
the UCIMC Paypal account have actually been working pretty reliably
the last year or two; the Bike Project payment notifications are sent
to thebikeproject at gmail.com, which forwards to our nine-person
steering committee.
IPN mail details, for those interested: I auto-screen out a few
classes of IPN events for closer attention. Most relevant here,
"Completed" transactions (i.e. actual payments), separated further
into Bike Project and non-Bike Project. All the IPN mails have a
leading "[IPN]" for easy sorting out of one's Inbox.
Even more detail: I'm using a prefix to "Item Number" to identify
Bike Project items
This prefix is "2000-'. Over last four years, no other other UCIMC
groups have used the Item Number field (i.e. are leaving it blank).
If anyone wants to start using "Item Number", just choose another 4-
digit integer + hypen for prefix, and let me, IMC-Tech, and Joy know.
For those reading this mail in future to diagnose tech problems:
the IPN notification is effectively one-way, it never stops Paypal
transactions from happening due to problems with notification
processing; notifications are sent from Paypal after a transaction/
event takes place. There's a confirmation step, but only can effect
the notification, not the originating transaction.
On generating automatic responses with IPN and Item Numbers:
I use the IPN messages, Item Numbers, and Paypal transaction-type
codes to send out the automatic "Welcome to The Bike Project" and "How
to stop your auto-renewing subscription" emails when someone signs up
for a Bike Project Paypal membership subscription. Other groups could
do the same, or similar, with new signups, end-of-subscription
notifications or other types of messages.
Cheers,
Barry
On Sep 18, 2010, at 2:56 PM, Mike Lehman wrote:
> Chris,
> Thank you, thank you, thank you!
> Mike
> [who didn't want to sort through 7000+ or whatever many were
> uselessly in that cubbyhole]
>
> On 9/17/2010 6:32 PM, Chris Ritzo wrote:
>> Finally got around to removing the IMC-Paypal list. I did make a
>> backup in case you want it.
>>
>> Chris
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 5:10 PM, Mike Lehman<rebelmike at .net> wrote:
>>> Since it's been nothing but a nuisance, I'd say it's easier just
>>> to pull
>>> the plug.
>>> Mike Lehman
>>>
>>> On 9/10/2010 1:41 PM, Chris Ritzo wrote:
>>>> So it was intended to really only receive email from one address-
>>>> the
>>>> official paypal notification? and then of course send to a list of
>>>> folks who might login to check.
>>>>
>>>> If that's still useful, perhaps we could reconfigure the list to
>>>> only
>>>> take messages from that specific address.
>>>>
>>>> OF course if you want to just drop the list, I'll go ahead with
>>>> that.
>>>>
>>>> -Chris
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 10:11 AM, Mike Lehman<rebelmike at earthlink.net
>>>> >
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> Who? Just me, AFAIK, at this point, but I've turned off getting
>>>>> notices
>>>>> to
>>>>> myself. It originally was simply a means to notify Finance and
>>>>> fiscally
>>>>> sponsored groups when Paypal funds arrived. Over the years,
>>>>> whatever hack
>>>>> applied to send the email notifications became obsolete and we
>>>>> gradually
>>>>> got
>>>>> to the point where most Paypal funds did not generate a proper
>>>>> notice
>>>>> when
>>>>> submitted.
>>>>>
>>>>> The info on it, even when it worked, was all duplicated inside
>>>>> our Paypal
>>>>> account, so it is no actual consequence to Finance. And our
>>>>> fiscally
>>>>> sponsored groups haven't used it in some time.
>>>>>
>>>>> What's happened is the any email with "paypal" as part of the
>>>>> address
>>>>> attracts lazy scammers, who think that they're finally going to
>>>>> find a
>>>>> sap
>>>>> at the other end of the line, despite ten of thousands of previous
>>>>> attempts
>>>>> at exactly the same thing having failed. There no way that it's
>>>>> worth
>>>>> moderating the 1,000s of spams to find the one or two legitimate
>>>>> notifications that are valid.
>>>>>
>>>>> It needs to have the archive preserved, but to quit accepting
>>>>> any new
>>>>> mail.
>>>>> Mike Lehman
>>>>>
>>>>> On 9/10/2010 6:26 AM, Chris Ritzo wrote:
>>>>>> who is on it and what was it's original intent?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 1:02 AM, Mike Lehman<rebelmike at earthlink.net
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>> We discussed shutting down the IMC-Paypal list, but that
>>>>>>> never got any
>>>>>>> further. We're up to 5,000+ messages held in there and the error
>>>>>>> messages
>>>>>>> this generates everyday to IMC-Info are up to 800kb.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Just saying,
>>>>>>> Mike Lehman
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> IMC-Tech mailing list
>>>>>>> IMC-Tech at lists.chambana.net
>>>>>>> http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/imc-tech
>>>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Imc-bookkeeper mailing list
>>>>> Imc-bookkeeper at lists.chambana.net
>>>>> http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/imc-bookkeeper
>>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>
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--
Barry Isralewitz
Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group
3043 Beckman, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Office Phone: (217) 244-1612
email: barryi at ks.uiuc.edu http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~barryi
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