Visa And Mastercard Ban Anonymizing VPNs... Just As They Allow Wikileaks
from the arbitrary dept
This is random. Just as Mastercard and Visa are allowing payments to Wikileaks again after a two year hiatus, those same two companies have started banning VPN providers. If you don't recall, the credit card companies refused to process payments for Wikileaks, following significant pressure from US officials, even as they have no problem processing payments to hate groups like the KKK. After a long legal dispute, an Icelandic court ordered the credit card companies to start processing payments to Wikileaks again.Given all of that, it's quite bizarre that they're now cutting off various VPN/anonymizing services, as it should be quite obvious that there are tremendous perfectly legal and reasonable uses of such services. Personally, I have two VPN services, which I use when I travel, or am working from outside the office to make sure my data is encrypted and safe. It's really just good computing hygiene to use such a service. However, apparently, Mastercard and Visa would like everyone's data to be exposed.
At least one of the VPNs so impacted, iPredator, is apparently looking at its legal options. Given Wikileaks' victory on a nearly identical issue, you'd think that the credit card companies would know better -- but perhaps they think that the VPN providers won't bother with a costly legal battle.It now turns out that these policies have carried over to VPN providers and other anonymizing services. Before the weekend customers of the popular Swedish payment service provider Payson received an email stating that VPN services are no longer allowed to accept Visa and Mastercard payments due to a recent policy change.
"Payson has restrictions against anonymization (including VPN services). As a result Payson can unfortunately no longer give your customers the option to finance payments via their cards (VISA or MasterCard)," the email states, adding that they still accept bank transfers as deposits.
The new policy went into effect on Monday, leaving customers with a two-day window to find a solution.
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Filed Under: anonymity, encryption, payment processing, payments, vpns
Companies: ipredator, mastercard, visa, wikileaks
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Mastercard AND Visa?
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Re: Mastercard AND Visa?
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They probably will once it gets to the point where you don't need to take half a dozen different steps to use them.
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Re: Re: bitcoin boom
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Oh wait, they're worthless now.
No, wait, they're worth something again...
...aaaaaand....back to worthless.
Hold the phone! It's picking up...it's going...going...gone?...no, wait still going...and crashed again...
Oh what a fun currency.
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This article is hilarious coming from you, Mike.
If these services are so great, then why do you block people who use anonymizing services from posting on Techdirt?
Do as you say, not as you do, right?
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If you are actually spamming you're doing something wrong.
This might come as a shock to you, but people don't want to read post after post of "milk! milk! milk!".
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This comment brought to you by a convenient anonymizer service.
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AJ, if your comments are getting "blocked", it's likely because you insist on spamming, relentlessly.
And, any of your comments that do make it through are largely reported and hidden by the community. Why? Because of your childish and trollish behavior. It is absolutely sickening the disparaging levels your comments stoop.
You are not trusted here. At all.
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I have had one guy on my website for a few years that just does not get the message that he is not welcome on my website, and I finally had to block all proxies, VPNs, and anonumity services to keep him out.
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1) AJ continues to spam the same post, which is nothing more than a link to what's basically a stalker's diary AJ has focused on Mike, which trips the automatic spam filter(and rightly so),
and/or
2) AJ posts his usual rot, and the community, which has gotten tired of humoring him, report it as spam/trollish so quick it appears(to his paranoid mind) to be 'automatically blocked'. The fact that he's still able to post, and his post is all of one click from being able to be read is apparently beyond him, so he assumes he's being 'blocked', and whines appropriately.
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In other words, either his comments are so full of crap that they're automatically filtered as spam, or they're so full of crap that other readers don't wish to read them. So of course, he'll blame that on some fictional VPN filter rather than the fact that he is indeed posting crap.
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- Posts as AC;
- Spams a link (and last I saw, it was a "shortened" link...tinyurl I believe);
- Usually posts from a proxy/tor (according to himself, at least);
- His text doesn't match up very well to "human" speech (milk, milk, milk...nuff said).
These are all spam red flags. Alone, by themselves, they aren't a big deal, and the filter will probably let them through. Combined...well...that's a spam filter perfect storm.
It is only natural that he'll be caught by the filter.
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But I suppose I can't fault you; much like how you lay the blame upon Mike's shoulders, you refuse to think any of the blame for piracy, or IP concerns coming about all lay not upon the consumer, but upon the shoulders of the corporations, a problem they created that they refuse to fix.
But hey, feel free to blame Mike and everyone else for your constant stupidity and naivete'.
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Seeing you wildly flailing your little arms in the air is just funny. In my mind that is.
Now even if that is true and you are being censored, you are just proving one thing, nobody can stop you from being whatever you want to be even if all you want to be is an idiot.
You obviously can bypass the censorship as you try to prove it posting in every single thread.
You are determined aren't you?
Now imagine the other 7 billion pirates that don't agree with you, imagine what they would do to you and your kind LoL
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Grrr....
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nice try
It's not at all the same thing. Being ordered by a court to do something is now allowing anything.
Oh, and three weeks on, and all of my comments are held for moderation still. Techdirt censorship lives.
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Re: nice try
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Re: nice try
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But, because VPNs can be used to hide copyright infringement, the entertainment industry, in their eternal war against the internet, want to work hard to make VPNs, a vital tool on-line, harder to use.
They never give up and they'll continue to play whac-a-mole and insist on their out-dated business model until they are no longer relevant and then we can finally ignore them.
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Perhaps the source of their original ban now wants these payments to be made & [as we know] made visible to the authorities [which fits with the anonymizer ban]
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That is a lot of phone and cable bills to not pay by credit card.
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American Express gift cards, here I come.
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No thank you. Your point, however, is valid.
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Why iPredator is classified as file sharing, rather than proxy/anonymizer, is a mystery to me.
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Probably because iPredator is (losely) related to The Pirate Bay, and anything with TPB associated with it is obviously engaged in Grand Theft Digital.
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I thought the official charge was "Felony interference with an outdated business model"
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Interpol involvement?
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People ARE going to use anonymous VPNs, and if they can't use Visa or Mastercard they'll use some other payment method.
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I use PayPal almost exclusively for purchases.
(Yes I realize that those are not technically credit card service companies, but it does add a bit of a private firewall)
I wish more merchants took American Express and Discover.
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VPN's First target of NSA
Go ahead and use VPN's all you like, live in your delusion that it provides you added security, ignore reality! (at your own peril).
Of course, make sure your VPN is sponsored by a reputable company, like NSA, I am sure they run THOUSANDS of them, it's so much easier that way.
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Re: VPN's First target of NSA
So what are they going to do about it?
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So far, the only disadvantage to that is I have to pay my phone bill based on the cost of the calls I make.
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I myself have wondered if the government operates certain proxies and VPNs, but so far I haven't heard of them doing so.
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Besides, which alternative are you suggesting? Are you saying that people shouldn't bother with any security because the NSA might still be able to decrypt VPN traffic? Seriously?
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Any argument they could have made for Wikileaks
Fine
What possible excuse would they have for VPNs? Fucking seriously. What do VPNs have to do with anything that interests these companies?
What a couple of stooges.
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No it's not, it's sheer idiocy and anyone who defends such a move is an idiot.
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What VPN services do you use?
Thanks in advance!
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Re: What VPN services do you use?
Personally, I rarely use VPN (I guess I should but I'm lazy) and when I do, I use SecurityKISS which has a free VPN scheme with an allowance of 300 MB per day.
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Re: What VPN services do you use?
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My Concern
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Ipredator
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"Visa And Mastercard Ban Anonymizing VPNs..."
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Re: "Visa And Mastercard Ban Anonymizing VPNs..."
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"Due to a recent policy change"
This makes more sense than V and MC banning only 1 payment provider and leaving everyone else alone.
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TorrentFreak: RIAA Hits 25 Million Google Takedowns, Web Blocking Making Things Worse
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VPN
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Just to show you how old I am
This was a real debate when most websites did not offer a method of purchasing anything and most had rows flaming skulls as a part of their web design.
My guess is that these credit card companies will eventually give up fighting against VPN for similar reasons. It just takes these two duo-opolies a little while to come to grips with reality.
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Anonymous VISA
Anonymous VISA card
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Why use vpn service for more security
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Australia Visa Services
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VPN Services
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