SETI@Home needs your help - urgently!

[Simon]

I'm transferring donation data to SETI@Home once a week, so it may take about that long after you donate to show up.

Please be patient Donor data will be transferred more often than money, to save on charges.

HTH,
Simon.

[UBT - Halifax--lad]

Thats ok then just couldn't seem to find anything with that info on

[hiamps]

My star showed up in an hour or two.

[Simon]

hiamps,

you probably donated directly via SETI@Home's donation page, not the PayPal one here, right?

In any case, I just sent the first donation data over to SETI@Home. Eric Korpela said he will try to find time to process them tomorrow, so people who donated up to now should see their green stars appear.

One restriction - SETI@Home requires that you donate a total of 10 USD or more in the past 12 months so you get a green star. So smaller donations will still be counted, but may not receive one.

This isn't something I have any control over, it's in their policy. They require a minimum donation of 10 USD for this reason, I don't

Please look a few posts up for an estimate of how much PayPal charges for donations from 1 USD to 100 USD, respectively.

Regards,
Simon.

[Lloyd]

At the risk of sounding ignorant (if not outright stupid), just what is the "SETI@Home Account Number" that the PayPal form asks for?  Is this the same as my "Account Key"?

[popandbob]

At the risk of sounding ignorant (if not outright stupid), just what is the "SETI@Home Account Number" that the PayPal form asks for?  Is this the same as my "Account Key"?

I would guess that this was the case... They need to identify who to give the star to somehow!
BoB

[gpl_racer]

At the risk of sounding ignorant (if not outright stupid), just what is the "SETI@Home Account Number" that the PayPal form asks for?  Is this the same as my "Account Key"?

Isn´t that the one you can see when you login to Seti@home and look in "Your account" at the bottom part of the page under "Work done" for "Account number  Used in URLs"?
Giving them your account key is like telling them your password (or worse actually as the account key can be used to login without having to know the e-mail address). Although I don´t think they´ll missuse it or anything but still telling someone your password isn´t very wise, you never know who else might be able to get access to it.

[ajs]

Isn´t that the one you can see when you login to Seti@home and look in "Your account" at the bottom part of the page under "Work done" for "Account number  Used in URLs"?

Yes it is that number but that isn't your account key (or password).
Look at any of the seti user stats pages and you can see everybodies account number, mine for example is 1178.
Don't worry, its the public number they want NOT your secret account key.
DO NOT GIVE THEM YOUR ACCOUNT KEY

[gpl_racer]

Yes it is that number but that isn't your account key (or password).
Look at any of the seti user stats pages and you can see everybodies account number, mine for example is 1178.
Don't worry, its the public number they want NOT your secret account key.
DO NOT GIVE THEM YOUR ACCOUNT KEY

That was the point I was trying to make, perhaps I should have expressed it a bit more clearly Thanks for clearing it out, ajs

[Lloyd]

Thanks, everyone.  Believe it or not, I am an IT professional, which probably kept me from doing something dumb, at least.

If I may make a suggestion:  Put a brief description of where one might find one's user ID on the PayPal page.  As silly as this may seem to some folks that have memorized their own, or whatever, I can't be the only one who doesn't know his/her own ID number, and needs to look it up.

[Simon]

Hi Lloyd,

I did put a short passage about where to find it and a link into the donation page itself - but maybe it needs to be emphasized better, I'll look into it.

Thanks for your feedback,
Simon.

<edit>
I've changed the paragraph to make things more obvious, and also inserted a statement explaining about account key or number.

Please enter your details into the form below - make sure you enter your S@H account number (you can find it on this page as "Account number (Used in URLs)" - of course, donations from people who don't have one are also accepted gladly!
To prevent any confusion: we do not need your account KEY (which is private and should NEVER be shared with anyone), but your public account NUMBER.

HTH.
</edit>

[Lloyd]

Cool.  Looks like it will work, even for people like me.

Clearly, I was walking around in the same haze I sometimes accuse my users as being in. 

[Urs Echternacht]

Hi Simon,
why that: "Sie können diese PayPal-Zahlung nur per Banküberweisung abschließen."
Why is there no possibility to use the "Lastschriftverfahren"?

[Simon]

Urs,

I'm not sure. PayPal isn't very forthcoming with information, either - the payment options are all they allow.

As far as I know, it works in some places and not in others (Lastschrift), depending on what contracts PayPal has locally.

HTH,
Simon.

[Simon]

There's something else that's wacky with donations, though it only matters to me personally.

Every time a donation comes in, the daily page view counter resets to 0. I'm trying to investigate why that happens.
So you may see the page counter fluctuate a bit, just FYI.

Regards,
Simon.