[UCIMC-Tech] [Imc-bookkeeper] Paypal List

Sun Sep 19 15:56:57 CDT 2010

Thanks Barry. We may want to investigate doing more with Paypal item
numbers and more. There is interest in integrating our paypal
transactions with CiviCRM for tracking donations alongside
memberships, and I'm beginning to research that. If you have worked
with the PayPal developer site and/or API for the Bike Project, I'd be
interested in talking with you about your experiences.

Thanks,
Chris

On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 3:46 PM, Barry Isralewitz <barryi at ks.uiuc.edu> wrote:
> 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
>
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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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