Blocking my account for using a VPN

[ricointheuk]

Hi 🙂

Although this has been answered in: https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/Account-limits-and-verification/Virtual-Private-Network-proxy-us...

I would like to add this has happened to me also.  More and more people like myself use VPN services to protect our privacy and therefore makes PayPal less appealing as a payment system if every time I use the my VPN I am forced to enter my entire card number and then forced to reset my password and then forced to change my secret questions.

I was using my normal UK internet providers IP and the shop payment processor blocked my IP and would not send me to PayPal for payment(No idea why - http://www.ogone.com was the processor).  I then switched to my VPN with a UK exit to finish the payment which was then allowed by the shop processor but then blocked by PayPal.

After phoning PayPal I am informed that my only choice is to choose a new password and security questions and then change them back again to what I what and already have 😞  So in the end I just paid direct with my credit card without PayPal.  I am not sure who you are really trying to stop with millions of CC/PayPal accounts details being breached/phised all the time and bad guys will just use their / rent a botnet to access/pay for things, not VPN. 

Frustrated at the original payment processor and PayPal. Don't get me wrong, I don't think there is any easy answer but making PayPal frustrating to use just because of a VPN especially with their popularity with the recent revelations of NSA/GCHQ etc spying is definitely not the answer for what is supposed to be a time saving convenience service.

r

[qz]

The linked Archived PayPal Community post you show seems inaccurate. The Adminstrator's reply links only to the broad page showing PayPal Legal Agreements (https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/ua/legalhub-full?country.x=US&locale.x=en_US) and does not specify where in any of the listed documents proxy use is against PayPal's terms.

I thoroughly read through PayPal's entire User Agreement, Privacy Policy, Acceptable Use Policy, Electronic Communications Delivery Policy, Infringement Report Policy, Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Statementand Policy Updates. Only one mention of "proxies" or "proxy" was in any of these documents.

The reference is in the User Agreement (version from Feb 25th, 2014). This is from Section 9: Restricted Activities, sub-section 9.1, item (q):

Section 9.1 Title: "9.1 Restricted Activities. In connection with your use of our website, your Account, the PayPal Services, or in the course of your interactions with PayPal, other Users, or third parties, you will not:"

"q. Take any action that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure; facilitate any viruses, Trojan horses, worms or other computer programming routines that may damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or Information; use an anonymizing proxy; use any robot, spider, other automatic device, or manual process to monitor or copy our website without our prior written permission; or use any device, software or routine to bypass our robot exclusion headers, or interfere or attempt to interfere with our website or the PayPal Services;"

This only bans anonymyzing proxies, not all proxies. Further more, VPNs are not proxies - the technology is completely different. Even if this statement banned all uses of proxies (which it does not) it would not imply any ban on VPNs within PayPal's User Agreement.

So, it would not appear that use of VPNs or non-anonymizing proxies for accessing PayPal for legitimate purposes is in any way against the terms and conditions. Perhaps the legal agreements have changed since the Administrator's post in 2011?

Howver, I suspect that the VPNs and/or proxies might be triggering fraud monitoring/fraud detection tools. That might be where the additional security issues come in?

[ricointheuk]

Hi qz 🙂

Interesting, thank you. 

r

[ARKB]

I would comment, but if I did I think they would ban me for speaking the truth! Tyranny (of the majority) rules 😄 Gotta love it!

[Motoman368]

I read the PayPal policy on using proxy servers to access them after I too could not get in to my MyeBay pages. by temporarily pausing my VPN for 15 minutes I can now get immediate access to my pages.

[digging4roots]

Is there anything we can do? I just repeated your steps and reviewed all the legal documents since this is June 11, 2017 and you wrote your reply 2014.

I found exactly what you found -- there is no reason we shouldn't be able to use a non-anonymizing VPN for making a payment to a business. I fail to see how my being on a VPN and making a payment with a fully verified bank account and credit card should be disallowed.

I find it exceedingly tiresome to have to turn off and then back on my VPN just to complete the transactions. But more importantly, I find it risky. I have my personal information "captured" 3 times in 2 years, which is the primary reason I invested in a VPN service. One of those instances traced back to a PayPal transactional payment to the American Quilt Guild. Which means logging into PayPal without VPN can also be risky. As of late, i have been looking for alternative safe online payment methods because PayPal's non-VPN restriction.

If there is concern someone else could be using my account information, then a 2nd tier verification could be added -- such as a cell phone or sms or email verification. In any case, there needs to be some way we can protect ourselves whie still using online services such as PayPal.