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PayPal Starts Banning VPN and SmartDNS Services
- mnx 11y agoThat seems like exactly the use case for bitcoin. It shouldn't have much impact on the people who actually strongly and immediately need a VPN - they were probably not using paypal anyway. But it's still a shame they are doing that, because it will make those services far less accessible to the normal people.
- vanzard 11y agoYes, perfect use case for Bitcoin! Many VPN providers (and big ones, not small alternative ones) already accept Bitcoin for this very reason: https://www.expressvpn.com/blog/expressvpn-now-accepts-bitcoin/ https://www.expressvpn.com/blog/expressvpn-now-accepts-bitco... https://www.astrill.com/pricing.php https://www.astrill.com/pricing.php https://doublehop.me/ https://doublehop.me/ Etc.
- wheatbin 11y agoI purchased a year subscription with PureVPN using bitcoin: http://purevpn.com http://purevpn.com
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- chimeracoder 11y agoWithin the last month, I've found that I can no longer access my bank's website over my VPN, and Netflix has started blocking access while use a VPN as well. I can somewhat understand the bank's motivation, but offering two-factor authentication would be a much better way of boosting security than blocking VPN traffic. As for Netflix, it's totally short-sighted. Netflix is literally unusable from my home connection without a VPN (thanks, Time Warner!). Now that they seem to be consistently blocking my ability to use the service, I'm planning on canceling.
- dave2000 11y agoHow can sites tell you are using a VPN?
- necrodome 11y agoA list of well-known IPs? The pool is not that large.
- y4mi 11y agocouldnt you just provision a server in a random datacenter and create your own for ~5 $ / month?
- dogma1138 11y agoIt will be on the same list, if you are filtering VPN's and other "anonymizers" you usually end up blocking all IP's that are not assigned to commercial/residential ISP's. IP blocks which belong to data center's, cloud providers, VPN providers etc. are quite well known and easily identifiable with a simple lookup. So you can easily find some no-name VPS provider or get a VPS on AWS/DigitalOcean/Azure/Racksapce but if the site is actively restricting access from VPN's/Proxies it won't help you much in most cases.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- fencepost 11y agoPossibly, but I suspect that the address pools for many of the major players (Amazon, Rackspace, DigitalOcean, etc.) are also known and not getting smaller. There might be options related to IPv6, but since Netflix has been supporting that for streaming since 2012 I suspect those are also covered.
- breakingcups 11y agoCurrently doing that through a big PAAS, we'll see how long it lasts.
- NamPNQ 11y agoWe can totaly buy VPN via bitcoin
- pavki 11y agoUnfortunately, the majority of people don't have Bitcoin acc.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ppyil 11y agoI see this as a responsibility of a vendor and not PayPal. An example is an online store which only accepts payments from the UK so when I was on holiday I was unable to use that site. I had to use a VPN to be able to buy the product and deliver to my house in the UK. I can understand a website blocking users from other locations or VPN users but for PayPal to do it seems unnecessary and a way to hurt genuine users.
- kintamanimatt 11y agoIt's an absolute egregious shame that PayPal, after more than a decade of problematic behavior, is still relevant.
- dimgl 11y agoMaybe because they're extremely useful and I've never had a problem with PayPal? Like, ever?
- aroch 11y agoIf you're solely a customer, you're unlikely to ever have any real problems with Paypal. For vendors though they are the devil.
- braythwayt 11y agoThis is the other side of the phenomenon that was Apple’s relationship with mobile carriers. They put the people buying ahead of the people selling. It’s the same with PayPal, really. They’re prioritizing the people buying stuff over the people selling stuff.
- mikeash 11y agoCredit cards too. It seems like buyers prefer protection a lot more than sellers do. Or maybe sellers just don't have any power to decide, and have to go where the buyers are.
- AnthonyMouse 11y ago> It seems like buyers prefer protection a lot more than sellers do. It's a consequence of the regulations on credit cards. The cardholder can reverse allegedly-fraudulent transactions. Paypal can't reasonably do something else while processing credit cards, so they don't. It's quite stupid because you end up with customers who aren't even looking for credit, they're willing to prepay and are willing to trust the seller, they just want to transfer funds digitally. But they can't because the seller/card processor doesn't trust the buyer not to reverse the transaction and the regulations don't allow the buyer to abandon that right up front.
- chris_wot 11y agoIt's not against the law to bypass geoblocking in Australia.
- walterbell 11y agoThe TPP was signed last week and will likely change the law.
- chris_wot 11y agoThe TPP doesn't extend to geoblocking.
- walterbell 11y agoCircumvention of technological protection measures?
- chris_wot 11y agoNope. That's not protecting the technology.
- walterbell 11y agoDo you know if geoblocking is explicitly excluded from the TPP definition of TPM, or if Australia has a side letter to that effect? From http://www.zdnet.com/article/tpp-ip-chapter-leak-reveals-us-global-copyright-plans/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/tpp-ip-chapter-leak-reveals-us-... "Another clause proposed by Australia, the US, Singapore, Peru and Mexico would also seek to prohibit circumvention of "technological measures" put in place by copyright holders over their works. The definition is broad and there are a number of exceptions still up for debate, but it could be seen to include the use of virtual private networks to access geoblocked content such as Netflix from outside the US. This comes despite the Australian negotiators seeking to raise the issue of geoblocking as a concern for Australian consumers as part of the negotiations."
- beambot 11y agoIt's easy to understand: PayPal is mitigating risky transactions. It makes sense, is perfectly legal, and frankly... I applaud their continued efforts to combat fraud and other bad actors. EDIT: Downvote all you want for disagreeing... but this (fraud and risk mitigation) is exactly why PayPal "won" the P2P payments space.
- adam12 11y agoWhy stop at the VPN provider? Punish the ISP and the device manufacturers. (sarcasm) This is a stupid move by PayPal.
- tptacek 11y agoI don't follow the logic of this rebuttal. The parent comment's argument implies that VPNs are disproportionately likely to harbor fraud, which isn't true of (say) phones in general.
- adam12 11y ago> likely to harbor fraud I have an issue with companies punishing other companies because their customers might be doing something that they don't agree with.
- tacos 11y agoSome customer bases are just shady. If you don't mitigate fraud, it's not fair to push it uphill to your service providers. They will stop providing service when you're more trouble than the money you generate. Business 101, this is not a tech issue.
- jonknee 11y agoLook at a merchant account agreement sometime, there are all sorts of businesses deemed too risky for conventional payment processors. It's not unique to PayPal and you would be almost instantly in bankruptcy if you didn't set restrictions on the types of businesses you process for. https://www.braintreepayments.com/legal/acceptable-use-policy https://www.braintreepayments.com/legal/acceptable-use-polic... Restricted activities include some obvious sketchy areas (check cashing) and some less obvious sketchy areas (human hair, fake hair or hair-extensions).
- KhalilK 11y agoComparatively, it would be as if they blocked companies which sold knives because they have a policy against murder.
- jpindar 11y agoThey do block sales of firearms and some knives.
- driverdan 11y agoGood. The more idiotic restrictions PayPal adds the more likely people will stop using it. I don't understand why the VPN service accepted PayPal to begin with.
- joesmo 11y agoIf you use their service, you're subject to their rules. It doesn't matter that in enforcing their arbitrary rules they're killing your business or even stealing your assets. Big companies like Paypal and Amazon can do whatever they want, even break the law, with no repercussions. They can close your account for legit reasons, bullshit reasons, or no reason at all. As a business, relying on such companies is one of the biggest risks you take. Use Paypal? Risk losing access to your funds. Use Amazon? Risk losing access to your computing resources, shopping platform, etc. You have no recourse if you anger the big gods of the Internet. Best not to depend on them at all or the smaller gods that also depend on them. Paypal's not taking payment from VPNs? Use Bitcoin and cancel that Netflix account. Why pay ten bucks a month to Netflix so they can pressure Paypal into shutting down legitimate businesses when you can pay it to a legitimate business (VPN) and watch whatever you want? Sure, torrenting is probably illegal, but one method shuts down small businesses and is immoral while the other one hurts no one ("losses" from piracy are not real). You may not agree with this conclusion, but there is no doubt that this is the direction of thought companies like Paypal, Netflix, and Amazon are steering their consumers in--on purpose.
- mcs_ 11y agoIf it is legal, the problem is not PayPal. Is it?
- notacoward 11y agoI wonder what would happen if those services returned the favor and started blocking PayPal, which surely deserves it.
- reviseddamage 11y agoI'm surprised they hadn't done that earlier. While I don't how they can prove that the traffic primarily through those VPNs were infringing on copyrighted material, it is easier to prove that traffic through a VPN is attacking Paypal accounts for user or transaction fraud.
- StanAngeloff 11y agoShame, sooner or later the VPN service I've been using for the past 6 years will get one of these notices as well [1]. I've been using them to get a dedicated IP and also tunnel all my public wi-fi traffic. It's legitimate use, however I can see how over the past years their website has evolved from business-oriented to be more towards geo-blocking circumvention and targeting the average Joe. [1] They have other payment options, too, but all are worse than PayPal.
- dreamdu5t 11y agoAnother reason to torrent instead of pay Netflix. Another reason to use Bitcoin instead of PayPal.
- dbg31415 11y agoFuck them. And fuck Netflix. And fuck Craigslist. Anyone who is against privacy needs to just crawl back to the 90s and die.
- JohnTHaller 11y agoIf PayPal wants to mitigate risky transactions, give us a good mechanism to report fraudulent ones. I reverse dozens of donations to my open source project every month that are obviously fraudulent (testing a stolen credit card to see if it works). I have no way to report it to Mastercard/VISA or the cardholder. I have to reverse it or I get hit with a $20 chargeback fee on that fraudulent $1 donation. And when I reverse it, PayPal keeps their fee, so that has to come out of our funds.
- qb45 11y agoFYI, there is no mention of "risk" in the submitted article, it's purely about copyright policing. You appear to be responding to misinformation posted by some commenters here.
- Chirael 11y agoYou might have to institute a minimum donation amount, and link to a page explaining why. And I honestly don't think it will matter much if the minimum donation has to be $3 instead of $1 due to fraudulent charges & fees
- eps 11y agoBetter yet - disable credit card donations and stick to just PayPal accounts. A set of people who are willing to donate, have a credit card, but not a PP account is vanishingly small.
- belorn 11y agoThe day would be rather bleak if paypal had monopoly on who can donate to whom. I would on principle never donate to such project, and hope that they would at least consider opening up an alternative method like bank transfer or bitcoins.
- mverwijs 11y ago[Citation needed]
- deleted 11y ago
- izacus 11y agoHuh, I don't get it, why are US corporations so eager to take on them the tasks that should be done by law enforcement? What does PayPal gain by playing police and taking on liability for checking the content of transations? What kind of other petty crime are they going to start policing and can they be held liable if they fail to?
- pjc50 11y agoI suspect a certain amount of behind-the-scenes leaning on them.
- lern_too_spel 11y agoI would guess that the policy was originally written for shady piracy merchants that are at higher risk for fraudulent payments. Now that it's in place, it's easy for a copyright holder to come knocking who wants to license their content in Australia but can't because the Australians are already watching their content on Netflix, who only had the UK rights. It's too late for them to rewrite the policy just to pick up a few hundred dollars in VPN buyers' transaction fees without angering deep-pocketed opposition.
- auganov 11y agoPayPal looses money on fraud (charge-back fraud mostly I assume). They had to pioneer fraud prediction/detection tech to even survive, let alone be profitable. Actually after Peter Thiel left PayPal, he founded Palantir, which is strongly inspired by their fraud tech. Just more general. Sure - in an ideal world the law enforcement would just catch all the bad guys and manage to get the money back. But when that doesn't happen a business has to account for it.
- Outdoorsman 11y ago>Sure - in an ideal world the law enforcement would just catch all the bad guys and manage to get the money back. But when that doesn't happen a business has to account for it.< IMO, the resources aren't there...and it's not complicated... Cyber crime, fraud, identity theft...the manpower is simply not there to keep up with it all...sometimes you're lucky if someone has the time to complete a ticket, or report... It's very possible conditions could get much, much worse before/if they improve... IMHO, at a business level all sorts of decisions are being made that aren't going to be popular with the public...
- awakeasleep 11y agoHere's hoping this doesn't get buried, but this story isn't telling us anything, and PayPal still allows DNS and VPN services. UNLESS they're advertised as tools for piracy/circumventing the law. The services that got banned here were being too cheeky. They weren't advertising a VPN, they were advertising the facilitation of lawbreaking behavior.
- petemc_ 11y agoIf you advertise a high value item like an iphone on gumtree, almost immediately you will get several buyers offering to buy it right away using paypal. If you're unfortunate enough to accept, they receive item and then reverse payment.
- awqrre 11y agoFor local classified ads like craigslist, it is better to do a cash transaction in a public location.
- ohbleek 11y agoGood. They're just making the case for bitcoin.
- theptip 11y agoSounds like they want something like https://angel.co/romithq; https://angel.co/romithq; PayPal for "untouchables" in the current payment ecosystem.
- machbio 11y agoPaypal is an absolutely worthless organization; the recent tie-up with the Uber and other companies to directly use their app for payment has resulted in money being used directly from my bank account over the credit cards that I have added, there is no way to set default payment method. I really do not how a big company like that can operate on such shameless policies, too big to fail has hurt people more than anything else.
- mirimir 11y agoThis will be painful for many people seeking privacy and security. But still, they would be better off if forced to use more private payment methods. For now, Bitcoin is commonly accepted, and not all that hard to use. And in many places, online payments can be funded through cash deposits at convenience stores etc. Such payment methods also reduce fraud exposure for providers.
- bunkydoo 11y agoKinda ironic with that whole "new money" superbowl commercial. I'm not sure money is truly money if you can't dictate how you send and receive it
- phiephoo 11y agoPayPal isn't competitive on fees, never mind its other issues. Dwolla is a whole lot cheaper, although USA only. It was designed to bypass card fees. VPNs should accept cash by mail, too, or at least money orders.
- BillyParadise 11y agoIf the subject of this policy is a service for people outside the US who want to pretend they're in the US ( to get Netflix etc), then your point is rather pointless.
- phiephoo 11y agoThe last point was cash by mail, which I presume works. FWIW, keep an eye open, https://www.dwolla.com/global https://www.dwolla.com/global General complaints about PayPal are landing all over this thread, and Dwolla answers many quite nicely; you're welcome. As for the article, I would say: a pox on both houses. I endorse neither EULA violators nor PayPal as an Internet police force doing online civil forfeiture. The way to handle Netflix/PayPal is by international treaty regulation for nondiscrimination and uniform product quality. Netflix/PayPal is likely in violation. Overseas users are in luck: treaty actions will only work OUTSIDE the USA. Kickstart a trade lawsuit. Any lawyer will work on contingency against deep pockets. Kickstarter only need fund initial research.
- beedogs 11y agoOh hey, look who the US government leaned on again.
- novaleaf 11y agolast time I tried using PayPal, it failed my transaction with a non-useful error message. I disabled my VPN to PrivateInternetAccess and then it went through. Pretty annoying that they don't inform users of this guaranteed failure prior to attempting, but whatever, i already learned not to use PayPal unless required.