
PayPal terminated my account because I use a VPN - pcvarmint
https://uwnthesis.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/paypal-terminated-my-account-because-use-of-a-vpn-is-against-their-terms-and-conditions/
======
dmk23
What 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
"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
_I 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.

------
endgame
HN 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
HN 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.

~~~
briandear
Hey jackass. I am an actual entrepreneur that told PayPal to f'off AFTER they
held several weeks of income hostage because I logged in from Shanghai. It's
not the "entrepreneurs" that are the problem, it's the fact that a company
like PayPal gets away with harming our businesses while catering to grandma's
trading beanie babies. Developers and entrepreneurs alike STILL use PayPal --
at least until they themselves get burned. Stories like these are important
because it should remind us to tell companies like PayPal where to go.

As far as "entitled" -- hell yes we're entitled. The developers here on HN
make the apps that use the services like PayPal -- they/we have a right to
demand that PayPal not suck. PayPal has a right to not listen, but we
certainly have the right to complain and take our business elsewhere and as a
community of spoiled, entitled, not-actual entrepreneurs we should ALL tell
PayPal to pound sand.

~~~
mkopinsky
Dude, chill. Downvote for language.

------
sigzero
[https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/Account-limits-and-
verif...](https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/Account-limits-and-
verification/Virtual-Private-Network-proxy-use/m-p/284318#M3783)

TLDR: It's against the legal agreement to access PayPal that way.

------
dangrossman
Connecting 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
From 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...](https://uwnthesis.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/paypal-terminated-
my-account-because-use-of-a-vpn-is-against-their-terms-and-
conditions/#comment-2406)

Looks like they were using a very public VPN that Paypal probably already had
pre-flagged for fraud.

~~~
jlgaddis
... and an incomplete understanding of how a VPN works.

------
kefs
FWIW, PayPal's CEO was on HN 6 months ago, promised substantial change, and
then promptly disappeared.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=davidmarcus>

------
DegreePower
I'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
Pretty 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.

------
DigitalSea
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?

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
I'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
It'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).

------
inovator
Paypal 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.

------
bluedino
Would 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
No, but they'd let you go through the drive-through ATM in a rental car.

~~~
fpgeek
Perhaps, but there are per-transaction and daily limits on ATM withdrawals.

------
bdcravens
It'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
Exactly. 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.

------
jamescun
Is 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?

------
Hello71
_sigh_

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
PayPal 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
Agreed.

If you have a website dedicated to chronicling just how badly you suck (
<http://www.paypalsucks.com> ) it probably means you're doing something very
wrong.

~~~
auctiontheory
Or 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
There'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.

------
johnward
I am never shocked when people posts these paypal accounts being banned. Stuff
like this happens all the time. What did you really expect?

------
oldgregg
Check out Bitcoin, currency for grownups.

~~~
drakeandrews
Until 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
Cash will be dead before you know it. So will ATMs and bank tellers.

~~~
drakeandrews
Would 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.

------
logn
I think the dwolla.com interface is nice and have good (but limited)
experiences with them.

------
lwat
The real WTF here is that people still use PayPal.

~~~
jayfuerstenberg
Stripe FTW

~~~
hoi
Useless outside of N.America

~~~
briandear
Braintree can handle it.

~~~
Ao7bei3s
Completely 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.

