---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: potlatch@protonmail.com Am 3/13/21 um 4:33 AM schrieb potlatch:

To put a little meat on the bone of this situation, I did not receive an email from PayPal--I was informed that I was banned when I tried to make a payment for VPS hosting. During the week before this ban, I had sent funds to both Flokinet for an exit relay in Finland and to ITLDC.com for VPS hosting in Poland--both exit relays. I used the PayPal support email to ask for the reason I was banned and to ask for re-instatement. I have heard nothing back.

I had surmised that someone was monitoring payments to off-shore hosting companies and maybe they assumed I was supporting a news agency--I don't know really. If that is the case, why haven't the hosting sites been banned as well?

The message in my PayPal account referred to a violation of the user agreement. Here is the full text of the message:

-We're unable to continue offering our services -Thank you for using PayPal as your payment partner.

-Unfortunately, we are unable to continue offering our services -to you at this time due to the nature of your business and/or -activity in your account and the risk it poses to PayPal. This -decision can't be overturned.

-If you owe refunds to any of your buyers, you can use the money -in your PayPal account to refund them.

-Money in your PayPal account will be held for 180 days. After -180 days, we'll email you information on how to withdraw your -money.

The only transactions on this account over the past 3-months were VPS lease payments off-shore. I looked up the user agreement to determine where I had violated the rules and found only a single reference to operating servers:

-Service Requiring Pre-Approval: -Providing file sharing services or access to newsgroups; or -selling alcoholic beverages, non-cigarette tobacco products, --e-cigarettes or prescription drugs/devices.

I have a zoom meeting with two attorneys from EFF.org on March 18. Stay tuned....and maybe ban PayPal.

--potlatch

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Am 3/11/21 um 12:42 AM schrieb potlatch:

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Today I received a message from PayPal that paying for Tor relay server leases was a direct violation of my usage agreement. I have been paying off-shore VPS hosts for my Tor server leases with PayPal for at least ten years. Very interesting that they act now. They specifically state the ban was for: Providing file sharing services or access to newsgroups; or selling alcoholic beverages, non-cigarette tobacco products, e-cigarettes or prescription drugs/devices. They further state that the ban is permanent and not reversible. I liked using PayPal because it was a safe way to pay and didn't expose my credit card information. Before PayPal I used a prepaid card which I will probably go back too. --Potlatch

https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays