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PayPal terminated my account because I use a VPN
- DigitalSea 14y agoThis is somewhat a flawed argument on Paypal's part. If a user chooses to obscure their connection via a VPN for security purposes but has supplied the appropriate identification needs to Paypal, what is the problem here? Paypal like any other big corporation has lost touch with its customer base. Its been that way for a long time now, someone needs to come in and beat Paypal in its own territory. Payment providers like Square are still the small time, they're not in countries like Australia or New Zealand or any other first world country that needs some Paypal competition.
- MichaelGG 14y agoI'd imagine it's yet another level of fraud prevention. IP information can be quite useful. If a customer does something that limit's PayPal's ability to limit fraud, then PayPal cuts them. I agree this is hostile and not friendly. But nor is dealing with fraud. I dislike PayPal and avoid them as much as possible, but it's hardly an easy task and I'm not sure other people would do vastly better if they had to operate with the same parameters.
- DigitalSea 14y agoIt's kind of a steep move terminating his account. My Facebook account was almost hacked once because someone from an overseas IP tried logging in to my account. Facebook waited for me to login via my Australian IP address and alerted me to he fact and asked if it was me, I said no and I assume they blocked that IP. If security is such an issue, why couldn't Paypal ask the account owner if it was himself behind a VPN and to provide some identification documents? I remember a little while ago having to supply some identifications documents to Paypal (scan of my passport, scan of my assigned credit card with most of the numbers blacked out, etc). If an account owner is willing to provide that information and is say from a country like the United States, Australia or the UK, then Paypal should lower their suspicions. I can see where Paypal is coming from here. IP scanning is one of many criteria that determines if a user is potentially fraudulent (I've used Maxmind fraud protection before and it operates with similar criteria).
- coldtea 14y ago>This is somewhat a flawed argument on Paypal's part. If a user chooses to obscure their connection via a VPN for security purposes but has supplied the appropriate identification needs to Paypal, what is the problem here? Well, they don't want people to use VPNs/tunneling and such because they are being used time and again to mask the country of origin, IP etc. They can even block your account for logging in from another country that you're visiting (they've done that to me and ask for photo ids and such). It's not about "security" or lack thereof, it's about stopping certain kinds of fraud and keeping certain tabs. (Sure, a VPN may protect from other kinds of fraud, e.g MITM attacks and identity theft. But then again, most actual PayPal customers don't use VPNs, whereas lots of identity theft and fraud guys do).
- arunabha 14y ago>they're not in countries like Australia or New Zealand or any other first world country that needs some Paypal competition I guess that's reason why Paypal seems to endure beyond reason in spite of repeatedly showing the middle finger to customers. We in the US are relatively well off in terms of Paypal alternatives, but this is simply not true for a lot of other places. Plus Paypal has entered the status of being the 'default' for a vast majority of the non tech populace. The good thing is, hackers are often the canary in the coal mine in terms of signaling future preferences of the masses, so we can hope Paypal will either reform itself, or die.
- Hello71 14y agosigh PayPal is (still) not evil. It charges too much, and does some shitty things, like all companies. It's ridiculous to jump to conclusions based off a blog post that doesn't even post a copy (redacted if necessary) of the allegedly offending communication.
- kintamanimatt 14y agoPayPal is evil. They're not evil because of what they charge, they're evil because they treat their customers with utter disregard and contempt. It appears there's an internal lottery that all their customers play without their knowledge. If your numbers come up, the fuckup fairy will come visit your account and you will have little to no recourse.
- jayfuerstenberg 14y agoAgreed. If you have a website dedicated to chronicling just how badly you suck ( http://www.paypalsucks.com http://www.paypalsucks.com ) it probably means you're doing something very wrong.
- auctiontheory 14y agoOr it means you are a large company, or are in some way interesting. Google returns many hits for "Apple sucks," and "Amazon sucks," and "Linux sucks." Seriously, if you don't have pages devoted to how you suck, it means you haven't done anything noteworthy
- kintamanimatt 14y agoThere's a difference between doing something noteworthy and having some irate customers, and doing something noteworthy and almost routinely actively fucking over your customers. One's inevitable, the other's just unnecessary.
- fnordfnordfnord 14y agoYou're right that we shouldn't condemn [company, person] because somebody made a blog post after [company, person] did something that upset them. But, you've taken on a big job sticking up for PayPal. It doesn't take a Google-fu master to find copious examples of PP behaving inexcusably.
- dmk23 14y agoWhat did you expect? VPN is a favorite tool for all sorts of frauds. If your true IP is obscured by a VPN this is just a red flag for PayPal or any other payment processor. Especially if you happen to share the same IP as someone committing actual fraud - which is very much likely if you are using public proxies. Very few legitimate customers pay over VPN. Do not use VPNs if you do not want to be flagged or blocked. EDIT1: In response the comments, no I am not sarcastic at all. The number of legitimate VPN users (among general Internet population, not HN) is miniscule and does not justify the financial risks involved. If you are using VPN you are seen as hiding something and flagging/blocking you from sensitive transactions is an obvious response. EDIT2: I am talking about public VPNs that can be anonymously abused by anyone - where you'd be likely sharing IPs with criminals. By all indications that's what OP was using if he wanted to hide himself. If you use VPN from work or coffeeshop you'll be identified by some innocuous-looking residential / corporate IPs.
- nkassis 14y ago"Do not use VPNs if you do not want to be flagged or blocked." I hope that was sarcastic. I do understand that legitimate VPN users are probably a small percentage of Paypal total user base and that a large portion of frauders use VPN (I don't know what percentage of VPN users who paypal are trying to commit fraud, could be the majority, I don't know) But using VPN should cause you to get flagged. It has a very legitimate use. A lot of people use them when on the go to protect themselves while on wifi. I use a VPN all the time when I'm not at home (well aside from working at home which I do over vpn). I don't see why I should expose myself to avoid being flagged.
- rhizome 14y agoI don't see why I should expose myself to avoid being flagged. Don't you explain this yourself? If few PP users use VPN and a large portion of fraudsters use VPN, I think we can chalk this one up to cold math despite the is/ought problem.
- untog 14y agoI don't see why I should expose myself to avoid being flagged. Because it isn't worth PayPal's time to cater to you. Seriously, go and use a different provider. I know that sounds incredibly flippant, but it's the reality- PayPal will stop blocking VPNs when it is financially prudent for them to do so. Of all companies, would you expect anything different from PayPal?
- jamescun 14y agoIs it possible that they are using a VPN service (as opposed to self hosted) and other users of said VPN service have committed fraud and they just drew a bad card in the IP pool pot luck?
- lwat 14y agoThe real WTF here is that people still use PayPal.
- cynix 14y agoFor some users, there are no viable alternatives.
- jayfuerstenberg 14y agoStripe FTW
- hoi 14y agoUseless outside of N.America
- briandear 14y agoBraintree can handle it.
- Ao7bei3s 14y agoCompletely useless: 1. None of the ~ two dozen websites I've bought from in the past year supports it (and those are already technical shops). And most importantly, Amazon doesn't support it. 2. None of the people I've wanted to send money to have it 3. Never heard of it; why would I trust it? (well, ok, they have some well-known clients, so that gives them some level of trustworthiness) I am aware it's a chicken/egg problem, but as a user, I don't care.
- endgame 14y agoHN is running like clockwork, I see. Soon, we'll have another post about how the Apple App Store policies screwed someone else over, complete with the usual hand-wringing and justifications from believers. Why do people still use PayPal? This stuff is not news.
- jarcoal 14y agoHN is running like clockwork, but it's because everyone has become an entitled developer and not an actual entrepreneur that analyzes a business decision rationally. Use PayPal or don't. Just don't expect them to let you use it anyway you want.
- StavrosK 14y ago> everyone has become an entitled developer and not an actual entrepreneur that analyzes a business decision rationally Wow, this sentence must win some "highest offense:words ratio" award. It insults so many people in so few words!
- jarcoal 14y agoHah, I don't mean to offend anyone, sorry. I've just been getting increasingly annoyed with the content on HN. We have Slashdot/reddit for developer bitching, why do we need it here?
- StavrosK 14y agoYou mean HN is just for entrepreneur bitching? I'm a developer who runs a product, where can I bitch?
- jarcoal 14y agoYeah, I'm in the same spot as you. I don't think we need mindless bitching anywhere. I think the site would benefit if more people showed up wearing their business hat and left their developer hat somewhere else. I could be mistaken, but I thought that was the point of this forum in the first place.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- bluedino 14y agoWould your bank let you walk in and withdraw $10,000 from your own account with a ski mask or panty hose over your head? Even if you knew your account number and password? Probably not.
- fennecfoxen 14y agoNo, but they'd let you go through the drive-through ATM in a rental car.
- fpgeek 14y agoPerhaps, but there are per-transaction and daily limits on ATM withdrawals.
- drakeandrews 14y agoIt's been a while since I was in the states, but last I saw most of the drive through ATMs had cameras pointed at where the user should be.
- auctiontheory 14y agoWhy conjecture when you can easily run the experiment?
- drakeandrews 14y agoBecause the experiment ends with explaining to a few fine officers of the law that no, you weren't trying to rob the bank, you were just doing an experiment. Or plain not being let into the bank. Most banks (in the UK at least) will not let people covering their faces into the bank.
- qu4z-2 14y agoWould your bank close your account if you tried to withdraw $10,000 from it in a ski mask though?
- inovator 14y agoPaypal is crap! It's a wakeup call for you to move on to another payment service. They froze my account 4 months ago with over $1k in it. Reason? Because I had a donation button on my site, and my site wasn't a registered non-profit organization. Well no shit, it's a hobby/fan site and I need a way to pay for my servers and such. Not to mention, I did pay taxes on those so call "donation". Sorry for the rant but just move on; you can't win against their stellar dispute department.
- dangrossman 14y agoConnecting to a payment service through an anonymizing VPN service (or your own VPN running on some server in a data center) is like walking into a bank in a ski mask. You look like the criminals, and you're likely sharing IP space with them. If you were just VPN'ing to your home or office network, I doubt that would ever arouse any suspicion. Telling: Type "PayPal VPN" into Google and what you get are VPN services advertising how they help you sign up for PayPal when you're normally forbidden, with FAQ pages like "why is my PayPal account now terminated".
- starnixgod 14y agoFrom the comments: ...I have uber security… and blocks against eavesdropping and MITM, and SSL and AES 256 encryption via an EFF sponsor, who runs a VPN… https://uwnthesis.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/paypal-terminated-my-account-because-use-of-a-vpn-is-against-their-terms-and-conditions/#comment-2406 https://uwnthesis.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/paypal-terminated... Looks like they were using a very public VPN that Paypal probably already had pre-flagged for fraud.
- jlgaddis 14y ago... and an incomplete understanding of how a VPN works.
- oldgregg 14y agoCheck out Bitcoin, currency for grownups.
- johndevor 14y agoYup, can't wait to not see these articles on PayPal any more. Granted, we'll probably see another type of article start to appear with frequency (e.g. I lost my wallet).
- drakeandrews 14y agoUntil I can walk into my local bank branch (or any of the hundreds of currency conversion stalls that dot London) and ask for a couple hundred satoshis, or deposit bitcoins direct into my bank account, bitcoin isn't ready to be a legitimate alternative currency, let alone an alternative to payment processors such as Paypal.
- shousper 14y agoCash will be dead before you know it. So will ATMs and bank tellers.
- drakeandrews 14y agoWould you care to explain why? Cash is really useful, lots of little places don't take cards and couldn't if they wanted to. As much as I despise it, the vagueries of "I owe you four fifty for lunch but all I have is a ten, so take the ten and that'll cover pizza next week." are a nice part of my social interaction with my friends. Electronic transfers (either bank account to bank account or paypal etc.) are useful for stuff >£20 but I can't see myself splitting lunch and going through the (understandably) rigorous security checks my bank enforces to pay a couple of pounds (says the guy who once wrote a cheque for a copy of the i[1] (I'd been given a cheque book by my bank and cheques are novel to me, not having been old enough for them to be anything other than that thing grandparents send you that you can swap for money)). Bank tellers are useful in that they are a human being with whom I can discuss things about my account with face-to-face, which is useful when something's gone belly-up with their systems and you need a real person who can see you're also a real person and hit the damn thing a few times until it works. Finally, I'm still going to need a proper bank account for things like credit, overdrafts, standing orders of rent and such to people who haven't moved over to bitcoin yet, not to mention paying my taxes and taking my earnings from companies that pay in pounds sterling, US dollars, euros or other traditional currencies. It only makes sense that instead of holding a mass of bitcoins, that my bank (nominally HSBC for myself) holds a much larger mass and allows me to make payments in BTC much like I would in any of the hundreds I already can. If I wanted to hold BTC myself, then I could open an account in BTC much like I could open a EUR or USD account now. [1] The i is a 20 pence newspaper by the makers of the Independent. Prior to moving to London where if you're not paying attention you can amass fifteen copies of the Evening Standard whilst walking across the river, I tended to buy a copy of the i every day going into college because it was something I could read entirely whilst eating breakfast and tended to avoid the fluff I noticed in larger papers on slow news days.
- DegreePower 14y agoI'm extremely skeptical. Nowhere in PayPal's terms of use does it mention restricting use of a VPN. The only similar restriction I can find is against using an anonymizing proxy which seems like a reasonable restriction. However I'll take the author at his word for a moment. Judging from the content on the author's blog, I think it's fair to assume he lives in Europe (where PayPal is regulated as a bank). Where does his VPN reside? It's certainly possible that it resides in a region that is regulated differently. One could look at this situation similarly to how YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, BBC, etc, block by region; not because they want to but because they have to. In the case of the mentioned sites, because of licensing terms, and in PayPal's case, because of financial regulations.
- bdcravens 14y agoPretty sure they interpret a VPN as an anonymizing proxy. Just because you paid for it or it's through your business, it still shows PayPal a different IP address than your true location. Intent isn't the issue, as they both look alike.
- sigzero 14y agohttps://www.paypal-community.com/t5/Account-limits-and-verification/Virtual-Private-Network-proxy-use/m-p/284318#M3783 https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/Account-limits-and-verif... TLDR: It's against the legal agreement to access PayPal that way.
- kefs 14y agoFWIW, PayPal's CEO was on HN 6 months ago, promised substantial change, and then promptly disappeared. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=davidmarcus https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=davidmarcus
- johnward 14y agoI am never shocked when people posts these paypal accounts being banned. Stuff like this happens all the time. What did you really expect?
- logn 14y agoI think the dwolla.com interface is nice and have good (but limited) experiences with them.
- bdcravens 14y agoIt's like the gun control argument. A microscopic percentage of everyone who has ever purchased an assault weapon has ever committed a violent act. Regardless, the argument is that the potential harm makes banning necessary.
- briandear 14y agoExactly. PayPal would rather just ban the "thing" rather than try to actually do their jobs and solve the security issues. The IP address shouldn't matter -- it's the data that comes from the IP. They want to ban "guns" as a shorthand for actually trying to catch criminals.