Disappointing purchase experience

[Xaman]

I bought Poweramp years ago on Play Store but recently I'm trying to reduce my reliance on Google products by removing as many Google apps as possible. I also try not to use Google Play Store and rely instead on FOSS apps from F-Droid.

However, there is no FOSS music player that can make use of LG's Quad DACs. A few notable ones from Play Store are Poweramp, Neutron and UAPP. I was very happy to find out that Poweramp sells a non-Play version. So, I decided to purchase another license.

Here comes my disappointment. I used my mail from criptext and was told by Payproglobal that they don't process purchases from temporary/disposable email accounts. I told them that criptext is a new email service provider that provides encryption. Then, they told me that they do not process encrypted emails. For real?! If they are able to read my emails, how are the emails encrypted? Any email encryption service only works when BOTH parties use the same encryption service, hence Payproglobal is able to read my emails. Then, they prompted me to use emails from Google, Yahoo or Microsoft to place a new order.

Why is Poweramp forcing me to use email services that I don't want to use? What is the big deal in not using emails from Google, Yahoo or Microsoft. It's not as if Poweramp is going to verify the app license through emails. They verify through the app itself so I really don't see the need to press customers to use email service providers that they specify.

Also, why is this forum forcing me to do reCaptcha every 10 seconds? It is very annoying when writing this message.

I just want to let new customers know about this issue so that they can be better informed and not go through the same unpleasant ordeal as me. I will be looking elsewhere for another music player and even if they cannot output sound as well as Poweramp, so long as they do not encroach into my privacy practices, I will still gladly use them. At the worst, I can still get a dedicated DAP for my music instead of relying on a music app that forces PAYING customers to conform to their standards for no good reason.

My Privacy > music app on a phone!

[maxmp]

Thanks for the feedback on PayPal (weird) behavior with the encrypted emails. Please note that you can purchase to any your working email, it’s not necessary the email you use on the phone. Purchase email is completely decoupled from the phone accounts for Poweramp v3.

I hate captchas too, they may be triggered too often for shared public ips, but it’s not used anywhere in the purchase process on website (unless Paypro added it recently).

[andrewilley]

Poweramp is not forcing you to use any specific email services. However whatever service you are using does seem to be an issue with Payproglobal, so that part you would have to take up with them I'm afraid.

PA itself doesn't even validate email addresses internally on your phone at all - so you could have no email client at all on your phone if you are really paranoid about someone compromising your device. As long as you can receive the purchase confirmation message somewhere (on a PC?) then typing the address into PA v3 is nothing more than a text field to identify the user.
 

I have never once come across a single captcha during normal signed-in use of these forums (and I use them a lot  ) but the software is not hosted by Poweramp on our own servers, it is operated by and hosted on Invision's servers in the USA. Certainly regular captchas is not something we have enabled in any settings I've seen. I wonder if your additional privacy regime is perhaps preventing Invision from recognising your IP correctly, or perhaps cookies are not saving properly on your chosen browser so it is having to re-authenticate you? Maybe Invision's support forums might be able to help in your specific case, as I've never come across your issue before. If they come up with anything, I'd be happy to try adjusting whatever settings they suggest for you.

I guess one of the compromises of increased privacy on IT devices these days is the balance between convenience/functionally on the one hand, and total protection by effectively air-gapping your device so it has no connection to any networks whatsoever. The further you push towards the latter, the more problems will arise with systems that are expecting your device to work in what they consider to be a normal manner.

Andre