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Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

• jwildeboer 8y ago
  OP here. Dear mods, you have now twice changed the description, which I understand. But would it be too much to ask to have an indication that shows that someone who is NOT the OP has changed the description? The way it is currently worded are simply not my words and I have no way of showing that. Could potentially be bad for me.
  • paraditedc 8y ago
    You'd have a better chance shooting them an email. Contact is at the bottom.
• underyx 8y ago
  The user says he's connected to Slack from an Iranian IP address 6 months ago. That's likely the reason Slack was able to pinpoint him.
  • thecatspaw 8y ago
    So if you once log in during a holiday trip to iran your account gets blocked
    • andybak 8y ago
      Iran's been on my list of "wanna go" destinations for a while (Food and architecture mainly). Looks like I'd have to choose between that and having any connection with a US based company. Great.
      • underyx 8y ago
        I know it's inconvenient, but you could still work around this by using a burner phone during your trip, no?
        • andybak 8y ago
          Yeah but my laptop is more problematic. I'm responsible for a dozen client websites so I need to take my work environment on holiday with me in case of emergency. I guess I could take a Chromebook or something and rely on ssh but I really hate coding without my pet IDE and I've never got the hang of Vim.
      • deadbunny 8y ago
        Or just not log into slack when on holiday?
        • icebraining 8y ago
          If you have an app installed in your phone, it might sync without your knowledge.
          • deadbunny 8y ago
            Sure, so your option is "uninstall app" or "never visit country/region I've always wanted to". Tough choice. I'm not defending slack or practices like it (hell, I have a blank phone I use whenever I leave the country) but it's not quite the choice you're making it out to be.
            • icebraining 8y ago
              I'm just warning people that might not think of that.
            • andybak 8y ago
              > Sure, so your option is "uninstall app" The problem is "which app?". Short of a factory reset on both my phone, laptop and kindle it seems I would be in danger of tripping a switch somewhere.
              • quickthrower2 8y ago
                Ah well it’s probably smart to take a fresh phone through borders anyway.
      • grecy 8y ago
        Everyone I have ever met that has been to Iran absolutely raves about it. I've never met a single person that didn't extend their stay, and doesn't rate it as hands down the best country they have ever been to. It's very, very high on my list. But if you have an American or British passport you currently can't go without an escort. (I'm an Overlander, I drove AK-Argentina and am now driving right around Africa. I've met 200+ people that have been to Iran)
        • underyx 8y ago
          This sounds a bit interesting, extending trips doesn't sound like a common occurrence, but you say you met 200+ people that did just that?
          • brynjolf 8y ago
            Iran is one of the most heavy users of social accounts to influence the world, amongst Russia and China.
          • ryanlol 8y ago
            I think he's talking about overland travel, in which case extending trips would certainly be a common occurrence.
          • grecy 8y ago
            Oh, extending is super-common. Once you're in a country it's really easy to extend your visa, even if was hard to get in the first place. I extended in Angola when getting a visa there was hard, I extended it in Mali, Zimbabwe, just looked into it in Ethiopia, etc. Of course, as Overlanders we have our own vehicles are I'd say 50% of us are not time limited [1], so we just stay as long as we want in countries we like. [1] NOTE: Many of us - me included - are money limited, not time limited.
        • Down_n_Out 8y ago
          Iran is an amazing country and the people even more so, never ever met people more kind, giving (even when they don't have anything they give you all they've got), helpful, funny and down to earth. The fauna, flora and architecture alone is worth it, the people is just the icing on the cake.
      • daliusd 8y ago
        You will use internet through SSH tunnel or VPN anyway as otherwise internet is useless in Iran. I was there this September.
      • propogandist 8y ago
        If you visit Iran it will impact your ability to visit certain countries without a visa, like the UK. Also, from what I've gathered, visiting Israel may impact your ability to visit Iran.
• netsharc 8y ago
  I'm guessing Kremlin, D.C. sent them a list of names to embargo, and his name matched one of those names. The "No-Fly List" has matched senators and congressmen. On the other hand, I find it interesting that they just do name matching, considering how easy it seemingly is to get a fake ID e.g. to buy booze (admittedly my point of reference is American movies).
• threatofrain 8y ago
  In this modern age it seems it's not safe to list anything which might come back to haunt you, including ethnicity.
  • cf141q5325 8y ago
    Not just now, it never was a good idea to collect those information. You can look as far back as national census data with IBM and the holocaust.
  • purerandomness 8y ago
    Face recognition will solve that for you.
    • andybak 8y ago
      Good luck guessing ethnicity for Iran. There will be many who look less middle-eastern than your average "Californian with a tan". You'd have the same problem with most near-east or Mediterranean countries. Being at the crossroads for a few millennia will do that to a place.
      • some1else 8y ago
        This holds up if you imagine the profiling as done by humans. However, neural networks already surpass human ability in some computer vision tasks. The features the trained models come up with can go way past what we might consider visual likeness. The algorithmic method might eventually become 99.999% efficient at racial profiling with the help of something as ridiculous as fingerprinting eyebrow strand distribution & orientations. The right way forward is to fully consider the ethical implications when shaping these policies, regardless of technological ability.
        • pjc50 8y ago
          > 99.999% efficient at racial profiling Next on HN: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Race
      • 8y ago
• robotbikes 8y ago
  Wow. This seems rather unprecedented and unnecessary, based upon the lack of action in this regard by other companies I don't know why Slack would do this. If for instance this kind of arbitrary action took place on GitHub I could see it having a detrimental impact to free software projects. This is another good reason to choose Zulipchat and other self-hostable platforms instead of proprietary SaaS solutions.
  • cies 8y ago
    > This seems rather unprecedented EULAs already sometime shad rules to excluded people based on the country they were a national of. Those one could simply ignore. With SaaS this is a different story.
  • kkarakk 8y ago
    >This is another good reason to choose Zulipchat and other self-hostable platforms instead of proprietary SaaS solutions until someone targets your host and gets it shut down.
    • paraditedc 8y ago
      I don't understand what's wrong with this comment, but OP is right. We have seen cases where domain registries or hosting providers suspend accounts for violating their ToS, which is totally legal.
      • laumars 8y ago
        Because you don’t need a hosting provider to self host. You don’t even need a domain name either. But in all honesty, there are hundreds of registrars and thousands of hosting providers around the world. Not all of them fall under US jurisdiction. But if you’re really really paranoid of getting shut down, there’s also .onion sites or distributed systems like IPFS. You can not prevent people from communicating on the internet any more than you can prevent people from writing letters.
        • 8y ago
• gingerlime 8y ago
  A couple of our employees from Syria also got blocked today. They were using Slack from Syria though. EDIT: I don't understand why they ban/block the account rather than "simply" block access from IPs from the country. This seems really strange and overreaching.
  • jstanley 8y ago
    > They were using Slack from Syria though. This doesn't excuse anything. People in Syria are people too. This is similar to how people were calling for websites to block access to Europe over the copyright thing. The internet is a place where you don't even need to have a nationality. It is a place where we can all exist as pure thoughts. Why are we letting politics fuck it up?
    • danso 8y ago
      The Syrian ban comes from a U.S. federal sanction. Not arguing that the sanction is right, or that Slack is correctly implementing its adherence, but this is not a similar situation to people calling for a boycott to make a point.
      • gingerlime 8y ago
        Yes, I can imagine it's hard for Slack to ignore those sanctions, but it does appear overzealous to ban individual accounts after having logged-in from Syria/Iran, instead of implementing a country ban from accessing slack. The latter would be far simpler from a technical standpoint, and I would imagine just as compliant with the sanctions.
      • amaccuish 8y ago
        Ye it's probably worse. Companies are happy to go along with US law, but can't be bothered to follow the law of other jurisdictions...
    • dade_ 8y ago
      What about fines and jail time? https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/pages/syria.aspx https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/...
• AsyncAwait 8y ago
  Saudi Arabia is a large investor in Slack. Probably doesn't mean much here, but you never know.
  • dade_ 8y ago
    United States sanctions: https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/pages/iran.aspx https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/...
    • AsyncAwait 8y ago
      What do U.S. sanctions have to do with somebody who isn't in Iran? Is Twitter, Google, Microsoft behaving the same here? P.S. On a side note, if these sanctions are really about 'punishing the regime', blocking mediums for Iranians to speak on isn't a way to do it, but what do I know.
• avar 8y ago
  If you work for an American company, get a bug report from a user you know to be in Iran against an open source project you work on during company time and fix it as a result, can the company be considered to be engaging in commerce with Iran?
  • InGodsName 8y ago
    Direct exchange of value has to take place. In this case no, because fixing that bug in your project doesn't benefit him specifically.
    • tremon 8y ago
      But direct exchange goes two ways. Fixing a bug in your project does benefit the project specifically.
    • kaitai 8y ago
      But that's one reason dumping the account of a PhD student in Canada is puzzling -- there is no evidence of exchange of value. I suppose the argument is that the person in question visited Iran and presumably had to pay for food at some point and thus "did business with Iran" -- and that would cover the American vacationing in Cuba as well. And that's probably why they're not just banning IPs originating in the small set of sanctioned countries, and instead dropping users. But I don't like it.
  • kkarakk 8y ago
    Sourceforge actively DID block interaction with countries under sanction by the US. even though they're garbage malware distributers now it is a data point https://www.computerworld.com/article/2467444/open-source-tools/should-open-source-repositories-block-nations-under-u-s--sanctions-.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2467444/open-source-to...
    • skrebbel 8y ago
      They're not garbage malware distributors anymore.
• rdl 8y ago
  If they are just deleting accounts where someone logged in from a treasury-barred country’s IP, I wonder what happens if you BGP hijack a small amount of that address space, somehow get admins or high profile users to connect via this (run WiFi? Some kind of proxy?), and then observe the chaos.
  • wolf550e 8y ago
    (I was wrong)
    • detaro 8y ago
      He said having been to Iran and maybe having used app a few months ago might have triggered it.
  • samstave 8y ago
    Or if a data breach allows for account data to be stolen, then one can spoof access attempts from such IPs and seek to DOS the account access. If the removals are automated, then the most vulnerable accounts would be those of slack employees - or slack investors?
    • true_religion 8y ago
      I don't think it's an access attempt that matters but actual access. You need to login via the API, not simply try and fail to get access.
• duxup 8y ago
  "originating from" is an interesting phrase as far as the internet goes and people's mobility. Is that when the account was first used? Majority of use related to IP? Something to do with the email address?
  • duiker101 8y ago
    I would probably guess it's geolocation at time of registration.
    • icebraining 8y ago
      He says he created the account in Canada: https://twitter.com/a_h_a/status/1075691620081623041 https://twitter.com/a_h_a/status/1075691620081623041
• dade_ 8y ago
  Smart move. This shouldn't surprise anyone that makes a point of avoiding US prosecution and jail: https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/07/huawei-cfo-accused-of-fraud-faces-up-to-30-years-in-prison/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/07/huawei-cfo-accused-of-frau... https://www.bassberrygovcontrade.com/iran-sanction-violations/ https://www.bassberrygovcontrade.com/iran-sanction-violation...
  • jstanley 8y ago
    Banning people because of the country they were born in is not "smart", it's abhorrent. That the US, supposedly the leader of the free world, is threatening prosecution and jail to those who want to treat everyone in the world equally, is a ludicrous state of affairs.
    • castis 8y ago
      The US hasn't been the leader for a while now. I dont see it getting that title back for a long time.
      • MeltySmelty 8y ago
        We don't want to be the leader of anything. We're doing just fine, keep the trash out of this country. Europe will be re-entering the crusades while we're living the dream.
    • InGodsName 8y ago
      Country is made up of its citizens. If a country does smth, citizens are punished. This has been case throughout the history. Alexander took the losing kingdom's citizen as slaves and American bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, again the citizens of Japan who were living there.
      • jstanley 8y ago
        So when were the citizens of the US punished for their government bombing Japan? EDIT: Also, in a different comment in this thread, you claim to be Iranian. Why are you defending sanctions against the country that you are from?
• mimi89999 8y ago
  Why don't you use a free alternative as Matrix? If you self host, then you are the only one who controls who your users are.
  • amelius 8y ago
    The only advantage of SaaS really is system administration, which should be low-cost if the product is good.
  • icebraining 8y ago
    It's not always your choice, and getting an organization to switch may be quite hard. Although Slack seems to be trying to help by pulling a stunt like this.
    • u801e 8y ago
      If I were in charge of an organization that used Slack for communication, I would immediately search for and start using an alternative service which would be hosted on premises.
• giancarlostoro 8y ago
  From a technical standpoint what they're saying is if your IP matches any of these countries, we cannot allow you on our services. It's got nothing to do with ethnicity if a Puerto Rican guy from Orlando goes to Iran and gets banned, it's all about the IP not the person. Seems they might want to tone down their bans starting from the moment the policy came to be vs doing it from the dawn of Slack's time, not sure how the policy is written and I'm not a lawyer so maybe they went off from legal advise.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • notacoward 8y ago
    > if your IP matches any of these countries, we cannot allow you on our services That's misleading. It might be more accurate to say "if any IP you have ever used matches these countries..." but there seem to be other cases where even that doesn't explain the bans.
  • bostik 8y ago
    This would be perfect opportunity for some enterprising gray or blackhats to wreak havoc. We know people reuse passwords. I'm sure there are a lot of weak accounts known, or at least suspected. So... if you had a large number of compromised slack accounts, and a complete lack of morals, you could log in with each of them to Slack through Iranian/Syrian proxies. If Slack are indeed shutting down all accounts that have ever logged in from Iran or Syria, the above could be a brutal denial of service. Followed by a massive PR s##tstorm. Disclaimer: I don't advocate doing anything like that. I just point out that there might be a way to weaponise the backfire...
• zeroflow 8y ago
  As bad as it may sound, but from what I can read in the tweets, he did violate the sanctions by using slack while being in iran. Well, that is called breaking the law and I fully understand why slack terminated his account when he broke the law and violated their terms of service. For example, other services or tools (like cisco anyconnect) clearly state, that you are not allowed to use them when in embargoed contries.
  • jwildeboer 8y ago
    He lives and works in Canada. I cannot see how this is violating canadian laws.
    • dpark 8y ago
      It sounds like he accessed Slack from an Iranian IP at some point in the past. Though I’m not sure that’s actually breaking the law.
    • ilikehurdles 8y ago
      Maybe the issue is that slack is an American entity subject to U.S. law, regardless of where the organization or employee is based.
  • dpark 8y ago
    I’m not sure that’s how export controls work. If I ship a weapon to Iran, I’m the guilty one, not the recipient. If Slack allows connections from embargoed nations, that’s on them, not the individuals who might happen to connect from an embargoed nation. Slack is responsible for their own export, and if a user accesses Slack from an embargoed nation, it indicates that Slack is enforcing the embargo improperly. More importantly, blocking that user doesn’t fix their export issue.
• cauldron 8y ago
  Does Chrome need to ban Iranian users to?
• perfmode 8y ago
  I wonder if anyone from my company (a unicorn) has been shut down.
• mimi89999 8y ago
  I believe that the only party that suffers from those sanctions are actually the populations living in those dictatorships who don't have a say about who is their leader. Who does actually benefit from them and who do they really harm?
  • jstanley 8y ago
    There are other parties that suffer from the sanctions. For example, the guy in the Tweet, who doesn't even live in Iran and is merely ethnically Iranian. Not to mention anyone in the US (or, just ethnically North American?) who takes the ethical stance of ignoring the sanction and gets punished for it.
    • _ak 8y ago
      I think it's also worth noting that Iranians have no possibility of renouncing their Iranian citizenship. So even if they wanted to cut any possible connection to Iran, they will never be able to get rid off their citizenship.
  • kakwa_ 8y ago
    I frankly never quite understood the extremely high stance against Iran. Iran has not really stage any offensive wars since 1856 (and most of the XIXe century wars were in fact to recover/maintain control over the Persian Empire which was slowly eaten by the Russian and the UK). Since 1940, Iran was constantly meddled with by foreign powers, first being invaded during the WW2 by the Allies and the Soviets, with the Soviet reluctantly leaving the country after 1945. Then the democratically elected Mosaddegh was deposed by the MI6 and the CIA because of "precious Oil". A "Pro-Western" dictatorial government was was put in place. This regime was of course brutal but also at odds with the population and its traditions, leading to a revolution in 1979. In the midst of this revolution, Irak, another "Western backed" dictatorship tried to profit from the chaos to invade the country which lead to costly a 8 years war leaving ~1 Million people dead. This war is probably the last high intensity conventional war between 2 roughly equals and relatively developed countries to date. And then in the 2000, it has seen two countries at its borders being invaded by historically hostile powers. And then these countries collapsed into chaos (And I'm even forgetting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 80ies). And lately, after lengthily and complex negotiations, an international accord was signed, just to be thrown out of the window 1 year later by the US, the US then bullying other signatories into not abiding by said accord. No wonders Iran government stance can be a bit tense at time and that they want the Bomb to be at peace.
• samuelyoussif 8y ago
  This link might give you a perspective https://twitter.com/stewart/status/391346582764789760 https://twitter.com/stewart/status/391346582764789760
  • icebraining 8y ago
    So you're assuming it's due to ethnic prejudice, based on nothing but the ethnicity of Slack's CEO?
    • samuelyoussif 8y ago
      The jewish propaganda machine is really after Iranian people wherever they are. A man proud of his Jewish heritage, may be connected to his peoples ideology. A proof, of course not, a correlation, maybe!
• InGodsName 8y ago
  Few days ago i was in UAE and saw fishing boats carrying gadgets like iPad, iPhones and Macs into Iran. Obviously, looking from outside you can't tell that this rotten boat is carrying expensive gadgets. I saw this because my friend owns a wharehouse and he had to put some of his stuff into same boat. Funny thing is Tinder is available in Iran and i used it there when i was at home for vacation.
• startupdiscuss 8y ago
  I think Slack is sending a clear and strong message: use a VPN!
  • u801e 8y ago
    Or use open source alternatives instead.
    • jpeeler 8y ago
      This! Open source helps protect users' freedoms. However, I am sympathetic when you're talking about software that needs to be run server side. Because in that case, you almost always have to deploy and manage the infrastructure yourself (or know somebody to do it that you trust), which is just too much for most people. With chat specifically, you might be able to avoid self-hosting by using something that supports federation. Personally I'm rooting for Matrix to establish itself here.
  • ilikehurdles 8y ago
    Or don’t rely on U.S. providers for any kind of international internet communication.
  • PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    I think it's "absolutely do not patronize Slack".
• DonHopkins 8y ago
  Now if Twitter would only ban people working for Russia, even when they live in the White House.
  • jessaustin 8y ago
    Are you disappointed that someday we're going to stop killing children in Syria? (Note: we haven't actually stopped yet.)
• jeswin 8y ago
  As an outsider, I am really surprised by how deep-rooted America's hostility is towards Iran. Shi'ite Iran certainly has human rights issues, but as far as terrorism is concerned the majority of them are orchestrated by Sunni groups. 9/11 hijackers, Al Queda, Islamic State, Paris attackers - are all Sunni.
  • jki275 8y ago
    Most Americans have as their only understanding a picture of Iran in their minds of the overthrow of the shah and IEDs in the past 14 years of war. Very few Americans would even understand that Iran isn't like the rest of the ME and has a very different history. Americans in general aren't well educated about the ME and the ethnic and religious differences there -- even the past 17 years of war there haven't tipped the education system to give them better knowledge about it.
    • walrus01 8y ago
      Most americans would be surprised that the situation for womens' rights, while not ideal, is significantly better in Iran than in the nation of our "good friends" Saudi Arabia. By very nearly any metric: Number of women with professional educated jobs, number of women with bachelors degrees or masters degrees from large, recognized universities, number of women who drive their own vehicles independently around their home cities without male accompaniment, etc.
      • jki275 8y ago
        It was that way in Afghanistan in the 70s as well. Yeah -- agree, most Americans simply aren't able to identify the differences between the ME countries. SA is a marriage of convenience, nobody likes them even though we have a somewhat tenuous alliance.
  • ethbro 8y ago
    Iran is an easy enemy for the US government to offer to its citizens. Because of the fairly harsh anti-US rhetoric circulated by the Iranian government to its citizens since the revolution (itself because of our previous support of the Shah and current support of Israel) for purposes of maintaining power, it's easy to say "Look, Iran hates America." The Shia / Sunni distinction is largely lost on the average American. And just as a personal note, almost every Iranian I've met in the US has been an awesome person. They've got a fascinating history and culture.
• jordank 8y ago
  My wife’s Slack account was closed yesterday. She created the account while traveling in Cuba (legally) years ago and hasn’t been back to Cuba or any other sanctioned country since. She is a cofounder of an org that uses Slack heavily and has now lost access to all her messages and files from the past couple years of work. There appears to be no appeal process here.
  • sneak 8y ago
    The appeal process is filing a lawsuit against Slack, provided the person wronged didn’t already agree to give up that right when accepting Slack’s TOS.
    • icebraining 8y ago
      Even if it wasn't given up, what would the lawsuit complain be, and what would one gain from it if it succeeds? Isn't Slack legally entitled to shut down any accounts at any time?
      • gaius 8y ago
        GDPR holds that you own your data and are entitled to be provided a download of it. Not sure what the Canadian equivalent is, if any.
        • saryant 8y ago
          Even if the GDPR applied in this situation, Slack is trying to obey US sanctions. I’d wager a guess GDPR can’t force a company to violate those laws.
          • taejo 8y ago
            GDPR has the force of law in its area of jurisdiction. If Slack can't comply with it, then they'd better not do business in that jurisdiction. That's how the law works; there isn't some hierarchy of one country's laws overriding others'.
• stunt 8y ago
  As far as I remember Slack does not ask/hold any information about your nationality. I wonder if he created his account when he was visiting one of the listed countries and for some reason, Slack is just using that information to block accounts.
• Iv 8y ago
  If Slack has a presence in France, they can be sued for this. And I think in any country with anti-discrimination laws which I thought included many US states?
  • gaius 8y ago
    You should be able to use GDPR to force them to give you your data, probably not to reinstate services.
  • user5994461 8y ago
    Highlight doubt that. France and Europe have similar sanctions. We had an alumni from my university who opened a company and sold some stuff to a client in a middle east country. Hardware parts, not software. One shipment got stopped at the border for a random control, before the police showed up at the office and arrested everyone. Turns out there are sanctions. Couldn't sell there.
    • lostmyoldone 8y ago
      The main issue seems to be that they are not only blocking people actually in embargoed countries, and furthermore not only nationals of that country, but everyone who has ever used the service from an IP geolocated - or otherwise - associated with embargoed countries. If former nationals are more likely to have visited an embargoed country, it could conceivably fall under discrimination laws. But it is probably even more problematic if using a service from an country specific IP actually should triggers the embargo from a legal point of view? Then we have a problem, because suddenly you won't be able to use your phone, even turn it on at all while traveling an embargoed country if this starts to be applied broadly. Furthermore, it would imply that things like a single BGP route hijack could kill all of a company's accounts on any US service, without recourse. If this would be the case, using any service from a country interpreting embargoes this way becomes an impossibly risky proposition. Which was probably not the intent of the embargo.
      • user5994461 8y ago
        Agreed. It's very obvious that Slack has zero experience dealing with regulations. They totally went overboard with deleting any account that ever connected from a restricted location. There is no conflict with discrimination though. Sanctions takes precedence over pretty much everything else. Don't expect your phone and applications to be usable when you travel to Iran/Syria, many services won't work. There was a news not long ago about Google Cloud blocking network access from Iran.
• malloryerik 8y ago
  This kind of thing can kill Slack or other networks because if you have a team of 100 people and just one can't use the platform, you'll switch. The network effect seems likely to work in reverse in this case. Beyond that I find it outrageously unethical.
  • Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    > Beyond that I find it outrageously unethical. What, complying with national and international sanctions and erring on the side of caution? Losing part of your customer base is preferable over getting fined to the tune of hundreds of millions of USD.
    • malloryerik 8y ago
      If the sanctions demand this, then the sanctions are outrageously unethical. If the sanctions don't explicitly demand it and banning ethnic Iranians is just "erring on the side of caution" then yes, sorry, but Slack is being outrageously unethical. Even if the sanctions do demand it, to me this is a reason to seriously consider either moving Slack to another jurisdiction like Canada, the EU, Switzerland, etc., or proudly face the fine. What's the alternative? Just hide your Iranian/Persian colleagues and friends under the digital rafters? It's plain wrong, and I refuse to be on that side of history. If Slack needs to risk a massive fine then that's their duty, so yes, face the fine, take it to the Supreme Court. To be honest, doing anything else is unpatriotic as well as unethical.
      • thinkloop 8y ago
        > consider either moving Slack to another jurisdiction like Canada, the EU, Switzerland I wouldn't put Canada in the same company as the EU or especially Switzerland, Canada is generally very happy to play ball on these matters.
      • manigandham 8y ago
        > then that's their duty, so yes, face the fine, take it to the Supreme Court No, it's definitely not. What's with the hyperbole? Do you consider every single person and company in the US unpatriotic and unethical then because these sanctions exist? We need less corporate involvement in politics. If you don't like the laws then you are free and welcome to participate in the government to change them but expecting a private company to go to the Supreme Court (!) over sanctions is just ridiculous.
• robteix 8y ago
  Aside from the obvious wrong of blocking people based on their origin, what's up with these companies closing accounts with no warning and no recourse? I know they're private companies and they _can_ do it, but just because you can doesn't mean you should. Why not give the user even a few days notice so they can communicate with support to try and clear things up? Taking the OP's story at face value, Slack should easily be able to verify with him that he lives in Canada. Instead, they simply block it and bye. I find this extremely hostile.
  • jwildeboer 8y ago
    At least give them access to a downloadable archive of all their content and maybe inform other users that interacted with this user about alternative methods of contact.
  • SentientNo4 8y ago
    Simple: it costs them money and resources to go through the process you described, whereas it costs them almost nothing to directly close the account and send an automated message.
    • Juliate 8y ago
      I wouldn't call "reputation" nothing or less valuable than money.
      • user5994461 8y ago
        I've only ever seen one company actually have a "reputation" metrics mentioned in the employee onboarding or customer support and outages.
        • starbeast 8y ago
          The value of that intangible asset is called 'goodwill' and the market gives it a value. Worldcom had to slash around $80 billion dollars in lost 'goodwill'.
• glup 8y ago
  Is this because of export controls on encryption? Or something else?
  • jstanley 8y ago
    No, it's because of export controls on everything.
  • klmr 8y ago
    It’s not export control, it’s a US trade embargo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iran
• shaan7 8y ago
  There is Mattermost https://mattermost.com/ https://mattermost.com/
• lordnacho 8y ago
  1) Is there a way to sync your Slack with a Mattermost or similar? It's nice to have both public and private in case one dies. 2) The US has a reputation for being quite aggressive with certain things. Can't be surprised if some firms take steps that seem overkill. Not that it makes it better, but rocks and hard places.
  • cevn 8y ago
    There is an unofficial solution called matterbridge but it's not great. I would just recommend taking regular backups of your slack data, you can export it to Mattermost.
• yholio 8y ago
  Welcome to the brave new world of the "cloud": you data, business, money, most intimate secrets and livelihood is at the whims of a foreign corporation that will stop at nothing if it means 2 cents more on their bottom line, or gets them on the good side of a government entity. You have no rights, you have no intrinsic human valuu and you have no means to fight for yourself.
  • DanAndersen 8y ago
    >at the whims of a foreign corporation that will stop at nothing if it means 2 cents more on their bottom line, or gets them on the good side of a government entity. Or if it gets them out of a flash-in-the-pan PR issue fomented by the latest political outrage mob, or a couple 'woke points' to score with their ideological allies. The tech community had its chance to stand firm and demand openness and liberty of use when it comes to accessing communication services provided by mega-corps. They instead let themselves be seduced by "it's a private company they can do whatever they want go build your own platform" when it was being wielded against less sympathetic targets.
  • ryanmercer 8y ago
    >Welcome to the brave new world of the "cloud": If you don't hold it, you don't own it. HN types seem to not get this, at all, they think companies should indefinitely preserve all their data and make it available on demand, no matter what, in-perpetuity. The MailChimp thread yesterday now this one and the gods help you if you suggest people backup their data regularly instead of relying upon a 3rd party to always have it available for them. If you don't hold it, you don't own it.
    • ryandrake 8y ago
      Remember yesterday’s thread from the guy who lost his MailChimp account suddenly? Nobody learns, and we’re going to keep reading these articles over and over while “cloud” is still a thing.
• mmjaa 8y ago
  Its quite simple: don't use Slack. Its a walled garden and there will always be incidents like this for as long as people don't appreciate that these companies don't have any commitment to you, for as long as you are just using their services for free. Use IRC. Its not nearly as walled off.
• revskill 8y ago
  This kind of treating user accounts and data like a Recycle Bin should be abandoned. If you , Slack , could do whatever u like with the things you don't create, you're a trash, too.
• philip1209 8y ago
  Throwing out an idea for one reason this could happen: Perhaps Slack received a legal order that only specified names (such as some kind of watchlist), and they had no choice but to comply.
• dustinmoris 8y ago
  Wow the Twitter thread and the experiences which are mentioned here sound so extreme and crazy that I am seriously confused to what believe. - Is this all made up to prove some point? - Is this just how the US ticks right now? - Is Slack just completely gone mad? - Is this what companies believes is acceptable nowadays? - Is this the future of the web? The fact that I am not sure what to believe and that I wouldn't be surprised if this is all true or equally all made up is what really scares me. Ten years ago I would have had a lot more confidence and faith in the world that this must be either a big mistake or something fishy, but today I feel like anything goes and in a week's time nobody will care again :(
  • api 8y ago
    This is what centralized silos are like, have always been like, and will always be like. Unfortunately centralized silos also allow unprecedented convenience and ease of use. Nobody's figured out yet how to duplicate that in a decentralized or federated system.
  • pjc50 8y ago
    It's the dystopia of the film Brazil: someone makes a typo in a database, someone else's life is dramatically inconvenienced, and it's impossible for them to access any means of redress. > Is this just how the US ticks right now? Yes.
    • rvense 8y ago
      Maybe Slack just proved that you actually don't have to pick between malice and incompetence.
      • walterbell 8y ago
        Malcompetence?
      • eponeponepon 8y ago
        "Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice".
• mcnesium 8y ago
  This is why we all should not be using these kinds of services, at least in a production setting. We should run our own services based on open source software, federate them, share and improve them, and never depend on any third party.
• matt_the_bass 8y ago
  FYI US export controls generally apply to nationals of an embargoed country even when they are outside of that country. Is the person in question an Iranian national or does slack have reason to believe? Then they are required to not provide their export controlled product, service or knowledge. The us government does not offer a “graceful” stoppage of service allowance. Yes this is annoying but probably not slacks fault.
  • jstanley 8y ago
    This is still Slack's fault as well. It's unethical to enforce unethical rules, even if the government tells you to.
    • matt_the_bass 8y ago
      I think it is Slacks fault for not being in compliance with export laws originally. Their non-compliance is fact. Whether or not you consider that law to be ethical is opinion. I was not stating an opinion, merely stating fact. I was not trying to start a discussion of politics. I appologize if I was misunderstood.
• jwildeboer 8y ago
  So it seems that Slack is going through their log files and closing down accounts that have used IP addresses that are considered to be in embargoed countries. I base that assumption on various comments here and on Twitter. If true, it is definitely the worst way to do. It doesn't take into account any circumstantial evidence that could explain the use of such an IP address (vacation, VPN, BGP or a mistake in the geolocation data used) and Slack doesn't seem to offer any way to appeal or even inform other users about what happened to their contacts. Slack should offer a configurable notification that could contain other contact methods to the banned user. Slack could also give those users at least sth like 48 hours to inform their contacts about what is going to happen. And it could offer banned users a downloadable archive of all content created to make sure no data is lost. But the way Slack is doing it right now means that you can't trust them and one should really think about relying on their services in the future. I am still on IRC and XMPP (Jabber) for good reasons ;)
  • mirimir 8y ago
    Yeah, and from jordank's comment about his wife, they're using logs from years ago. That is impressively stupid.
  • basilgohar 8y ago
    This is very disturbing for ways that some folks might not realize. One of the servers I've leased was assigned an IP address range whose reverse DNS (i.e., PTR records) ended in .ir. I only discovered this because I was trying to use Google's CLI tools and got blocked, with the shocking message that access from embargoed countries was not allowed. I was utterly confused given that my server, myself, and anything to do with my hosting was all contained completely within the US. After studying the message and finally figuring out after some time the problem, I reported it to my host and they promptly submitted a correction to that, and the issue was resolved. But had I somehow used this host to access Slack, I would find my own account deleted, if what is being deduced here is correct. Deleting or disabling accounts is completely the wrong approach. The absolutely maximum that could be done is BLOCKING ACCESS (i.e., actually embargoing) from these restricted IPs. Disabling or deleting accounts is stupid and shows that Slack has a profound MISUNDERSTANDING of how the Internet works, i.e., it's not perfect. This is exactly akin to using an IP address for identification. IP addresses, and hostnames, are not identification of people and cannot nor should be used for these kinds of heavy-handed, punitive punishments.
• samstave 8y ago
  Serious question: Would this have anything to do with selecting Goldman Sachs as the handler for their IPO?
  • gaius 8y ago
    What are you implying?
    • samstave 8y ago
      Goldman Sachs has been the central player in major financial scandals in the past, proven documented, well known. I don't think they do anything completely cleanly, so I question the thinking for Silicon Valley Unicorns using them to head their IPOs Greece the 2008 crisis buyouts 1MDB Look at the 1MDB scandal, where we are only now seeing charges coming against GS - The 1MDB and Greece scandals are very similar in the sense that GS had information regarding both situations which they knew was criminal, but chose to profit from it as opposed to prevent it. Knowing that their profiting would outweigh the consequences. They are the antithesis of "in good faith" actors - and as such, I personally question the integrity of the companies and company founders who put their IPOs in GS' hands. Look at FB... we know where their integrity lies. I am reminded of the "How I built This" episode on Slack, and how it grew and the values of its founder -- which I now take with a grain of salt given that they are going with GS.
• twunde 8y ago
  This is almost certainly the result of adding a new compliance product feed (which may have false positives). I remember having to implement one for an acquired ecommerce site. The feed by it's nature was prone to false positives (it matched on name). However, there was an internal appeals process with the ability to override whereas if this is new to slack they are probably overwhelmed
• benparsons 8y ago
  Self-hosted, decentralised solutions such as Matrix (https://matrix.org https://matrix.org) are available, and allow you to keep control of your own access and data.
  • NoGravitas 8y ago
    I keep hearing people complain about Matrix's interface (Riot), but the little I've used Slack, it looks exactly the same except for the color scheme.
    • benparsons 8y ago
      Riot is currently undergoing a lot of UX work, the results look really promising. Take a look in January for an update. Disclaimer: I work on Matrix (should have made that clear in the parent comment too)
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• mirimir 8y ago
  So is this really an accurate title? It seems most likely that Slack has geolocated IP addresses from account access logs, and closed accounts with hits from sanctioned countries. Perhaps going back years. That in itself seems over the top. But it doesn't constitute ethnic profiling. But if someone has a counterexample, that would be OK too.
  • kypro 8y ago
    Yeah, they're clearly not checking the ethnicities of everyone using their service, but this still seems rather harsh, and with no appeals process too?
    • mirimir 8y ago
      The lack of an appeals process seems like the norm, sadly enough. Maybe, if there's enough of a backlash, they'll restore accounts for people who don't currently access from sanctioned countries.
    • DanAndersen 8y ago
      This is the danger when our lives become increasingly dependent on digital middlemen who are not regulated as utilities, where legislation has not caught up, who can proudly declare themselves "just a private company you have no say" and use nebulous ToS violations to shut people down. When people violate actual law, we know which specific sentence in the written law was violated. We have a chance to defend ourselves. We have (supposedly) impartial judges and juries to help determine the truth. Tech companies are building parallel institutions for judgment and execution, but building it for themselves and they have no plans to let their users have any say or transparency. It's a digital version of "rule of men" rather than "rule of law" -- "you're condemned because I, the King, say so." This will continue until external powers (regulation) force the quasi-digital-fiefdoms to open up. Hemming and hawing about "gee, this is kinda harsh" won't have an effect on them.
  • jwildeboer 8y ago
    OP here. I would partly agree. But at the time I posted the link, I only had examples from Iranian people that are living in other countries using Slack and getting banned. Now that I have heard more stories about people from Syria and even one US person, I wouldn't post it again with that description. I'll leave it to the mods to change the description accordingly, if they feel inclined to do so. UPDATE: The mods have changed the description to "Is Slack shutting down accounts of those ethnically associated with Iran?"
• momentito 8y ago
  Disclosure: ChatGrape.com CEO We are based in the EU and can offer an embargo-free and on-prem capable environment.
• mfer 8y ago
  Can someone point to a change in US sanctions that would have caused this now? Can someone explain an interpretation of US sanctions that causes situations like this? This could be US sanctions or it could be a companies poor reading of them.
• nykolasz 8y ago
  I would expect a lot more from Slack.
• withhighprod 8y ago
  It’ll be interesting when US sanction China
• 49para 8y ago
  First they came for the alt-right, then they came for the intellectual dark web, ...
• bborud 8y ago
  I think this highlights the precarious situation most people find themselves in today when it comes to communication channels and data that is being stored in the cloud. We tend to assume that we have rights and that wrongs will eventually be righted. But in practical reality this isn't necessarily true. Speaking of which, are there any open source alternatives to Slack which anyone could recommend?
  • DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
    Zulip chat is open source, free, can be self hosted and there is no limit on the number of chat messages. Zulip even has a usable mobile client and a healthy user community. Their support is excellent. Also Zulip has proper threading of messages to avoid notification fatigue. Much better workflow even it's otherwise almost identical in terms of features. There is also matrix (riot.im) which is fully decentralized though the UX still needs a lot of work last time I checked.
    • bborud 8y ago
      After some searching I discovered https://mattermost.com/ https://mattermost.com/. Anyone have experience with this?
• z3t4 8y ago
  This is probably just one of many PR attempts from Slack. All closed accounts are probably owned by their PR team, or they prefer buzz over users. What about Google, Facebook and Twitter, are they closing down Iranian accounts too !?
• thrw9090 8y ago
  If anyone did notice the hashtag on his twitter. Iranian permanent residency applicants in Canada are being thoroughly scrutinized before granting them permanent residency in Canada and hence the hashtag. AFAIK, citizens from a couple of nationalities undergo this vetting process by Canadian immigration before being granted permanent residency in Canada. This is probably a call to get attention for the campaign.
• maze-le 8y ago
  Great time and reason to migrate to a self-hosted mattermost solution. Time and time again these incidents show that centralized services cannot be trusted with company service infrastructure.
• elmo2you 8y ago
  1. The export control regulations apply to companies and individuals who do business with any of the sanctioned countries. 2. Discrimination based on ethnicity, religion or political views is forbidden by law. In the absence of proof that this user had business with Iran (or any of the other sanctioned countries) through Slack's platform, the export control regulations do not apply. If the user has business with Iran outside of Slack's platform, Slack can not invoke the export control regulations to justify their action. Ergo, the only thing left here is that Slack broke the law that forbids discrimination based on ethnicity. If the USA fails to punish Slack for it's illegal behavior, and Slack successfully avoids prosecution elsewhere, other country have the right to block access to Slack completely, from within their own borders. Personally, I think US citizens should be more concerned with what their government does, especially to and with other parts of the world. For eventually, the will feel the consequences of those actions on their own skin.
  • jellicle 8y ago
    > Ergo, the only thing left here is that Slack broke the law that forbids discrimination based on ethnicity. That's not how it works. Even if Slack is mistaken in their belief that export regulations apply, their action is still taken in that belief, which is not legally-discriminatory.
    • elmo2you 8y ago
      The moment Slack decided to apply a law to justify their action, it became responsible for understanding and correctly apply said law. Their beliefs are irrelevant. If they misunderstood, they are still in violation of the law against discrimination. It is their action that counts here, not their beliefs. Would you say that robbing a bank is okay, if the robber believes that it's okay?
  • gruez 8y ago
    >2. Discrimination based on ethnicity, religion or political views is forbidden by law. >Ergo, the only thing left here is that Slack broke the law that forbids discrimination based on ethnicity. There's no evidence that's the case. Most likely it's done based on IP geolocation. A white (for lack of a better term) Canadian who was using slack in Iran would probably be banned as well. >In the absence of proof that this user had business with Iran (or any of the other sanctioned countries) through Slack's platform, the export control regulations do not apply. Banning based on IP geolocation is not perfect by any means, but what's the alternative here? That you ask suspected Iranian users to check a box saying "I'm not an Iranian, pinky swear!"?
• aplummer 8y ago
  This guy is straight up lying, with no intention of correctly his false claim this is racial targeting. Even after confirming with a white person banned for using slack while visiting Iran, he continued to claim in the thread it is racial. Reality: he was banned for using slack with an Iranian IP. Whether or not that’s export control overreach / unethical / bad business not my point, it’s clearly very different to ethnic targeting.
• bad_user 8y ago
  This happened to our cofounder as well. His Slack account was blocked today, with that same message. The crazy thing is that he's Irish and living in the EU, with no actual ties with the countries being mentioned. He does travel for business purposes outside of Europe, but again, not in the listed countries.
  • natch 8y ago
    Ireland, Iran, common mixup. /s
    • ryanmercer 8y ago
      We have people confuse it in my office actually, new hires will just assume Ireland is 'IR' not 'IE' and enter stuff into the system as country of origin 'IR' which throws off all sorts of red flags in our system, similarly when they see 'KR' as country of origin they freak out thinking it's North Korea not South Korea.
    • mdjasper 8y ago
      if account.countries.include(/ir.*an/) account.delete()
• colanderman 8y ago
  What a great reason to switch to an open-source, self-hosted solution. Fortunately there exist several: http://sdelements.github.io/lets-chat/ http://sdelements.github.io/lets-chat/ https://rocket.chat/ https://rocket.chat/ https://mattermost.com/ https://mattermost.com/ https://zulipchat.com/ https://zulipchat.com/
  • igolden 8y ago
    mattermost is awesome, and super easy to get up and running. +1 for them
  • eigenspace 8y ago
    Has anyone here used any of these? I'd love to hear your thoughts vs Slack.
    • e_proxus 8y ago
      From my experience with Rocket Chat I'd argue it's about a 30% implementation of Slack when it comes to features and polish. My favorite gripe with it is that quickly typing half a username and auto completing will select the first (or some random) user that's doesn't have anything to do with what you typed. It's a real pain if you're a fast typist.
    • joncrane 8y ago
      Mattermost is the only one I've used and it's both easy to administer and works great.
    • clarry 8y ago
      I use mattermost at work. It's terrible. Coworkers don't seem particularly impressed with it either. Can't compare it to Slack though, since I never used it.
• hashemian 8y ago
  Me and some of my colleagues are also Iranians living abroad, and this morning our account was deleted! We were already thinking to move to a self-hosted solution (rocket.chat likely), and this is a good reason to prioritize it.
• natch 8y ago
  He’s kind of an odd one. I think this might be about his citizenship, not his ethnicity. And his behavior: https://twitter.com/a_h_a/status/1059225338650144774?s=12 https://twitter.com/a_h_a/status/1059225338650144774?s=12 The notion that the US conducts military operations “only” to exploit oil is a popular one but it’s not very nuanced thinking, and dances close to extremism. I haven’t spent the time to read what else this guy espouses but I suspect the ethnicity card is being played to hype up some drama when there are other issues at play.
• lazerwalker 8y ago
  The vast majority of Slack accounts are tied to a paying employer[^1], and yet most of the responses we've seen are individuals (justifiably!) upset they've been barred access from their work tool. I'm curious to see how companies respond to Slack disrupting the productivity of their salaried employees. ^1: Well, hmm, I wonder what % of active instances are on a free tier, but that's a separate unrelated question
• RadioSC 8y ago
  We have the same problem in Ukraine. Today many Ukrainian account was blocked with the reason "originating from Crimea region of Ukraine". But they are not from this regions ...
• perfmode 8y ago
  How can we coordinate to stop this from continuing?
• craigsmansion 8y ago
  It's mildly satisfying to play the world's tiniest open-source violin[1] again, but nothing will change, HN outrage notwithstanding. Unaffected orgs will just keep on using slack, as will many affected orgs, and Free alternatives and irc will be mocked and laughed at by next week for being inconvenient and old in comparison to yet another proprietary solution, or even slack itself. If you rely on communication, and you don't control your communication, you can't rely on that communication. There'll be a reminder in 2025. 1. https://xkcd.com/743/ https://xkcd.com/743/ (and it really should be a Free Software violin now. If you ever wondered about the difference outside of licenses: this is it.)
• SamWhited 8y ago
  I've been mad at the Go community in particular for continuing to promote Slack for ages, and this is exactly the hypothetical situation I always use to explain why (although there are other reasons too; Slack is a perfect embodiment of everything wrong with this industry, but that needs a fuller writeup). At a previous job we had to start doing this exact same thing when we were considering going public; this is the point at which I started considering leaving. Using a proprietary protocol that doesn't allow any form of federation is an unacceptable way to build a global community. Please consider using an IRC based service for group chat or an XMPP based service where 1:1, history, rapid reconnects, and other more complex chat features are required (yes, if you're a dev you have to use XML which is annoying, but overall it's a well designed protocol, so get over it). This lets you host your own, and (in the case of XMPP at least) if one person wants to use a U.S. based service and another is in Iran they can just sign up for a Belgian account (or wherever). We can't afford to let he internet splinter off into siloed tiers based on nationality.
  • AndyMcConachie 8y ago
    This is a software space that could really use more devs. IRC is fine but many people can't use it because it's too technical. We need more user friendly XMPP clients with features that non-technical people want. I hate Skype but damn if the non-techies I work with don't love it. I tried to download and run Jitsi a couple months ago for a project and it's voice quality was terrible. Skype just works. I sometimes have weird quirky bugs with Adium, and it's getting harder to justify telling my team to use it. Get hacking folks. This space needs better tools.
    • ChrisClark 8y ago
      I've heard Matrix might be a good IRC replacement. But it also still looks rough to me. I only tried it once, but didn't continue as I didn't need it for anything.
      • SamWhited 8y ago
        Matrix the protocol is pretty awful, and I'm not a huge fan of the "official" clients, but YMMV. The real problem with it though is that unlike IRC and XMPP the protocol itself isn't developed in a sustainable way by a standards foundation with a reasonable funding model. The protocol itself doesn't really matter that much though as long as we pick one that will be maintained and won't just go bankrupt (so IRC or XMPP depending on what you want to build) and then build nice services that support it. Remember, Slack is a service and a protocol, XMPP/IRC are just protocols. You still need good services like conversations.im or Freenode built on top of them for it to be usable. Unfortunately, we don't have many good services like Slack that have commercial backing but use an open protocol.
• Ensorceled 8y ago
  Sanctions are a very blunt instrument; sanctions will always harm people we like, indeed often the very people we want to help with the sanctions. You can disagree with the idea of sanctions based upon this, but this is how sanctions work. Companies need to comply with sanctions and the repercussions of not complying can be severe. I'm not sure WHY Slack chose this method to respond to the sanctions, nor why they've chosen to do this at time. Slack may have received a shoulder tap from a US agency that forced their hand or their legal department got cold feet. Until we know for sure, this seems like a overly cautious approach but not some kind of nefarious scheme.
  • gdy 8y ago
    "the very people we want to help with the sanctions" That was funny.
• darkerside 8y ago
  https://twitter.com/a_h_a/status/1075691620081623041 https://twitter.com/a_h_a/status/1075691620081623041 This is almost certainly related to the user's travel to Iran, and not any form of racial profiling. Everybody please remain calm. It's emblematic of today's society that at the first mention of ethnicity, everybody grabs their anti-racism pitchforks. I agree racism is a problem, but let's treat it appropriately. We need to look at it more like drug addiction today (an invisible psychological problem that can be healed), and less like drug addiction 30 years ago (a moral failing that must be punished).
  • darkerside 8y ago
    Really? Unexplained downvotes? At least do me the courtesy of explaining why.
• novon 8y ago
  I’m sure there are thousands of Iranian Americans working on Slack that also visit their relatives back home at some point, including ones working at Slack HQ. How far can this logic go?
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• dgellow 8y ago
  An iranian friend, living and working in Berlin, also lost his accounts today. He received the same email and lost access to all his accounts, no prior notice. That's really infuriating.
• rrdharan 8y ago
  I wonder if this was one of the things that shook out as they started IPO prep. I imagine there's some checklist provided by the banks they're working with and this was on it?
• ya3r 8y ago
  First off, as many know, this is not a single incident. This has happened to many of us (including me) from "sanctioned" countries. (I am from Iran, but live in Germany) But this makes me think. Many of the services I use are from US companies. Most notable are: Gmail (Google Drive, Google Calendar, etc.), Github, Dropbox, Trello and Toggl. Should I be worried? Should I actually start switching away from these services before they close my accounts and remove all my data without notice?
  • gdy 8y ago
    Yes
  • ants_a 8y ago
    Toggl is not US, it's from EU. But even as an European I feel uneasy when dealing with US companies, because the political landscape there seems to be quite unhinged.
• sathishmanohar 8y ago
  One more reason to do away with government regulated companies and move towards decentralized softwares
• Danielalonso91 8y ago
  I'm always impressed by the real discussions that take place here in the HN comments section. They're characterized by civility, respect, and intelligent perspectives; great community to be a part of, for sure.
• darioush 8y ago
  So for those of you who live in uninitiated bubbles, realize the same literal thing can happen to your bank accounts at any time.
• onetimemanytime 8y ago
  Internal communication: "Hi John, We need to ban users from Iran, NK, Cuba, Syria or else we'll be ruined by Treasury Department.* Not a conspiracy, IMO, just taking shortcuts to be "better safe than sorry." So what a few thousand users are incorrectly banned? We'll restore many of them one by one but at least we'll be fine with the US Gov. Plus, depends on what the government says "users" mean. If you used Slack in Iran...what's Slack to do?
• taude 8y ago
  Without spending a lot of time on this, I don't believe that Slack just used ethnicity to ban this account. Could the OP have been using VPNs or something that led Slack to believe his IPs were coming from IRAN? I don't see Slack doing anything differently, and all this "outrage" seems to be unfounded at this point. Edit: one thought, hopefully they can open a new Slack account with IPs originating in Canada and Slack can copy/move/reinstate the account.
  • taude 8y ago
    Not sure why the downvotes? It's pretty obvious there's a lot of jumping to conclusions in the first 10 comments (that's all I read) on that Twitter thread, basically implying that Slack is using ethnicity to close the account and not something more technical like an IP address that was tied to Iran at one point in time. It seems from reading other comments that this Slack team was created when he was in Iran from an Iranian IP. And they used originating IP when the team was created and not access to determine. We can debate the proper technical solution to base the rule when you apply it across your SaaS-based application at world-scale, but implying that Slack did this on race is pretty absurd at this point.
• ajsb85 8y ago
  Use Telegram :)
• geff82 8y ago
  By the way, I am currently investigating an issue were auto-upload of my holiday pictures in Iran to OneDrive is somehow not possible. All those pictures are location-tagged by my iPhone. Maybe it is just an coincidence with a bug, but it is strange. I am now in Germany (I am "pure" German), so in general it should work.
• asl19dev 8y ago
  OFAC's General License D-1 provides Slack with exemptions to offer their services even to users based in Iran: (a) Effective February 7, 2014, to the extent that such transactions are not exempt from the prohibitions of the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations, 31 C.F.R. Part 560 ("ITSR"), and subject to the restrictions set forth in paragraph (b), the following transactions are authorized: (1) Fee-based services. The exportation or reexportation, directly or indirectly, from the United States or by a U.S. person, wherever located, to Iran of fee-based services incident to the exchange of personal communications over the Intemet, such as instant messaging, chat and email, social networking, sharing of photos and movies, web browsing, and blogging. https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/iran_gld1.pdf https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/...
• cronix 8y ago
  Use a VPN? We Americans have to use them to get around dumb laws and help protect our privacy, too. There is almost always a digital solution to digital problems. Bypass them.
• gerbjet 8y ago
  This is really concerning. Slack is starting to worry us like FB has continued to do. The good news is there are alternative services that I see that can do most, if not all of what Slack does with better security, privacy, and performance. I’m getting fed up with paying for a bloated Electron app with nice colors and now improved with tracking of it’s users.
• soheil 8y ago
  That’s pretty much the point of sanctions, what did you think was going to happen, people of sanctioned countries getting a medal? The point is to put as much pressure on those countries as possible and there is no better way to pressure a country than to pressure its people to force a change. The question should be whether or not Iran should be sanctioned. But if you agree that it should then this is an example of a perfectly reasonable outcome.
• rostasteve 8y ago
  When a company gets large or important enough it realizes that it has to follow some inconvenient laws. In the US there's OFAC (https://www.treasury.gov/about/organizational-structure/offices/Pages/Office-of-Foreign-Assets-Control.aspx https://www.treasury.gov/about/organizational-structure/offi...) which lists individuals and entities that companies cannot do business with. Implementing these rules is a nightmare for companies so they use a 3rd party services which produce a huge number of false positives. Middle eastern names tend result in many false positives. My guess is that Slack is scrambling to clean house ahead of the IPO and they don't have a user friendly way of dealing with this. In fact most companies don't. This is the same crap that bites people who inadvertently end up on no-fly lists with no way to get off. Don't like this? Call your representative. Build a better way to implement OFAC and similar laws.
• awaywopassd 8y ago
  This why, at least, Techsavy people should avoid depending on centralized services for their work.
• debt 8y ago
  Root causes analysis here should be yield some interesting results.
• bobbybroadcast 8y ago
  This appears to be the state of play. User is accused of doing violating TOS and gets auto banned. No appeal, no recourse, no way of getting their info. Imagine kicked out of somewhere, like a hotel, based on an accusation and then not even being able to get your stuff. While property law allows us opportunity to have our possessions returned, requiring the other party to return it to us, in cases like these however, who owns the text messages, emails, photos? How can we retrieve them?
• arendtio 8y ago
  If you want to know what protocols are real alternatives, take a look at the second last column (IETF): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-UlA4-tslROBDS9IqHalWVztqZo7uxlCeKPQ-8uoFOU/ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-UlA4-tslROBDS9IqHal... (I didn't make that spreadsheet, but found it quite interesting when it was posted on HN a few weeks ago)
• senectus1 8y ago
  whelp, guess I'll never promote slack in my company.