What are the terms with paypal?

If the Terms of Service on a website change, what kind of notification will suffice to legally bind users to the new terms?

• This is a follow-up question to . Consider material changes are being made - for example, the company changes privacy policy and starts sharing email addresses with spammers, consumer deposits are made non refundable or certain add on services are terminated or charges increased. If the changes in terms are in point 50 of Chapter 26 of Terms of Services, should the notification explicitly call out changes being made or do courts expect consumers to figure out the changes on their own? We see some shady web companies doing the latter all the time.

• Answer:

  I discussed this issue in "Changing Online Terms of Use? Be Sure to Give Notice First!" at http://dana.sh/dMJ1Ht. I will not reproduce the entire post (which discusses a 2007 case from the U.S. Ninth Circuit).The short answer is that  courts will not expect users to discover the changes on their own. The following two paragraphs are taken from that post: In light of Douglas, there is a clear requirement for any  website owner that wants to change its terms of use: Provide notice that  the terms have been changed, and explain how they have been changed.   There may be multiple ways to provide that notice – for example, via  e-mail to all users, or via a pop-up or redirection when each user logs  in (the Ninth Circuit did not address how notice must be provided). The  important point is that the user must be notified, and must have an  opportunity to review the changed provisions, before they take effect. Disclaimer: This post does not constitute legal advice and does not establish an attorney-client relationship.