At first, Evil Trout patently refused to use PayPal because he too has a moral dilemma with using their service. It stems from some episode where Something Awful tried to contribute money for Katrina and got stonewalled for no good reason.

After pointing out that I thought it was mildly very special that anyone would use a site called “Something Awful” to contribute to flood victims instead of, oh, I don’t know — RED ****ING CROSS — we eventually agreed that, realistically, there’s no choice. They’re the most widespread and popular service and they’re at least perceived as the most reliable.

Sure, we could go with some no-name service (that’s probably just as ****ty and expensive) and far fewer people would donate because they don’t have accounts and they’d be wary of signing up. We weren’t happy about the being forced into a corner, but sometimes you just have to play along until something better comes to light.

So, while we’re still looking for alternative donation methods (right now it looks like mobile payments are unrealistic, and renting a PO Box for money orders wouldn’t be worth it), I can only suggest putting your animus for PayPal aside if you’re serious about donating, or use a friend’s account and pay them back. We offered this article:

http://www.forumwarz.com/spoilers/wiki/How_To_Donate_If_You_Have_No_Credit_Card

As someone mentioned before, if you get a gift card, you’re much less vulnerable to credit card fraud or phishing or whatever else it is you’re concerned about.