If you ran a large and prosperous online payments company, you might feel threatened by Apple’s announcement that they’ will start their own mobile payments service, called Apple Pay. Not PayPal, though. Nope. Paypal isn’t scared. In fact, PayPal has started taunting Apple over security issues, mocking the company over the recent public dump of nude celebrity self-portraits that had been stolen and circulated online.

It is rather odd that two Internet companies are taking out ads in a newspaper, but makes sense when you think about it: nobody looks at online banner ads.

Here’s the full-page color ad, originally put online by PandoDaily:

Of course, Apple wants users to know that its systems weren’t breached during the global selfie crisis: baddies gained access to photos never meant for the public through social engineering, most likely guessing at answers to password reset questions such as the account holder’s birthday or the name of the elementary school they attended. (See, there’s a good reason for entertainers to lie about their ages.) Keeping accounts secure is important, but at the same time no online service wants to be so secure that it’s onerous for users to log in. Eventually, they’ll stop bothering.

PayPal surely won’t be the first competitor to mock Apple. Congress wants to learn more about how the attacks happened, and Apple CEO Tim Cook has promised that the company will put more safeguards in place to keep strangers from changing your password behind your back.

No online service will ever be immune to human greed or human stupidity. Baddies try to get PayPal customers’ data all of the time.

“We the people want our money safer than our selfies.” PayPal goes after Apple in a full page NYT ad [PandoDaily]

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