PayPal blocks donations to The Grayzone that mention Iran

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/01/09/paypal-blocks-donations-iran/

by oska • 7 years ago

66 79 7 years ago

thegrayzone.com

justinzollars3• 7 years ago

The United States seized funds my supervisor sent to his friend who mentioned the word "ISIS" in a Venmo transaction.

Be careful of your transaction messages.

loeg5• 7 years ago

And maybe avoid banking services that are less culpable to their customers than even traditional banks? Paypal, venmo, etc are aggressively customer hostile even compared to the traditional banking sector.

Jamwinner3• 7 years ago

Yup. People look at me weird once in a while, but cash always works. No fees. Censorship resistant, close to anonymous, and accepted everywhere, network or not. I can do without yet another app selling my data.

lucb1e3• 7 years ago

It's almost as if we should be using end to end encryption so we can just speak our minds and make jokes without self censorship.

wallace_f2• 7 years ago

“To comply with government regulations, PayPal is required to review certain transactions.”

For mentioning the word Iran. Terrifying.

I guess the best to hope for is that the Institute for Justice or the ACLU pick this up and sue for their free speech rights. But even then, the only consequence would be taxpayers burdened to pay up.

loeg5• 7 years ago

They were doing this long before last week.

2019: https://www.newsweek.com/venmo-flags-payments-persia-allows-...

2016: https://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/venmo-reportedly-blocking-...

2014: http://valleywag.gawker.com/venmo-racial-profiling-account-f...

wallace_f2• 7 years ago

I am aware. Even going back in history, I find most are surprised to know even Abraham Lincoln really went after journalists and the press.

Anyways, I don't know why I was downvoted. Hopefully not because people disagree with that hope.

judge2020• 7 years ago

I don't see how you could make the case that PayPal donation messages are different than FB posts or tweets, in that the platform has every right to remove whatever content they want. I also doubt the financial industry regulations are caught up and can weigh in on this issue.

briandear• 7 years ago

Free speech doesn’t apply to private entities.

detaro• 7 years ago

These filters exist due to legal requirements (and paypal has gotten into legal trouble for not filtering Iran-related transactions well enough in the past), so it's not quite that simple

r32a_• 7 years ago

Use Bitcoin, problem solved

DarkWiiPlayer3• 7 years ago

For as much flaws as bitcoin has, this kind of bullshit is the biggest reason why I hope it will ultimately become a more viable form of payment.

sschueller• 7 years ago

I would even use Dogecoin if it came down to it. :)

lucb1e3• 7 years ago

Do try to use a cryptocurrency that does not depend on a pollutive proof of work.

justwalt• 7 years ago

What do you mean by “pollutive proof of work?” Are you talking about its environmental impact?

lawn2• 7 years ago

Or even better, use Monero so your donations become untraceable.

Jamwinner3• 7 years ago

Or, you know, cash.

sdan• 7 years ago

So Paypal is the Cloudflare for money?

lucb1e3• 7 years ago

4-5 years ago, didn't they block Wikileaks on a whim?

As for the specific issues you're raising about identity and fees, I'm having none of those issues, but then I also avoid PP whenever possible so I use it maybe once every other month.

justinzollars3• 7 years ago

Verify who you are is mandated by the USA PATRIOT ACT.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer

loeg5• 7 years ago

Paypal has been exactly this awful for at least a decade, if not its entire existence.

kick4• 7 years ago

How to take payments without a chance of political censorship in 2019, stolen from The Ancient Wizards of Technology's Past:

View the following.

https://about.usps.com/forms/ps1093.pdf

Follow the instructions to get a PO Box. To avoid mail containing harmful or annoying items, I recommend a small one.

Put the mailing address of your PO Box on your website, and tell people sending cash to it to address it to "YOURSITE," possibly appending "Donation Fund" if applicable.

Be careful to remind the reader that they need not put their real (or any) name on it, and that they can get stamps anonymously and location-randomized with ease if desired.

This also works amazingly if you want to charge for hardware or hosting, especially hardware or hosting that's privacy-focused.

Congratulations! Your readers/customers can send you money from almost anywhere without identifying themselves, and you can rest easy knowing that any dollars meant for you will reach you.

chii• 7 years ago

and also it's very easy for someone to steal said donation from the mail - may be even enroute!

kick4• 7 years ago

If sent through the USPS, that's incredibly unlikely.

doesnt_know• 7 years ago

rest easy knowing that any dollars meant for you will reach you

I feel like your faith in the postal services that cash may go through is misplaced.

kick4• 7 years ago

Mail fraud (FedEx/UPS aren't mail) gets you a felony, and as long as you send through USPS you should be more than fine.

harikb• 7 years ago

Ha! I just lost a hundred dollars just last week this way. Funny story - my aunt has a habit of mailing family holiday cards with $$cash$$. I am subscribed to “informed delivery digest” from US Postal service. I even saw the image of the letter I am (was) going to get. That was the last I heard of it!

kick4• 7 years ago

https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Mail-Theft https://ehome.uspis.gov/fcsexternal/default.aspx

Lots of people are employed by the Fed to handle these exact cases! I'd recommend getting it investigated, if nothing else, it'll help them keep justifying their jobs.

lagilogi• 7 years ago

Mail theft is a federal crime. I would pursue this with them only if for the simple fact that if you don't, the next thing that gets stolen maybe your shiny new electronics being shipped.

masonic• 7 years ago

For non-businessThe PO checks addressee name against authorized boxholder name(s) and rejects mismatches.

yibg• 7 years ago

Seems like just a dumb keyword match. At least make it more context sensitive or have a human review it first.

loeg5• 7 years ago

FWIW, you would see reports of this kind of thing long before the recent violence. People would mention "persian rug" and get their accounts locked or transactions reversed. Super lazy embargo enforcement.

DarkWiiPlayer3• 7 years ago

Super lazy embargo enforcement.

In a way I can understand that; if you just want to do your job and some politician decides now that "iranians = bad" and makes you responsible for restricting your transactions with them, you wouldn't be very motivated either.

They probably just considered the costs and concluded that it'd be cheaper in the short term to block a few unrelated transactions than to implement a huge system to accurately filter out only the right transactions.

This is no defense, but we already knew that big companies like paypal don't care to be "the good guys"

DarkWiiPlayer3• 7 years ago

Whether it's in the from of government regulations or the free market deciding to prefer another service, society shouldn't be allowing this sort of behavior from large companies, but the sad truth is, many people don't care and most likely just rationalize it as "it doesn't affect me" or "It's just a few dollars".

LiamPa2• 7 years ago

Iran is on the FATF black list and features a lot in the OFAC sanctions lists, any transaction mentioning Iran is going to be blocked.

duskwuff4• 7 years ago

No idea why this is downvoted; it's the plain truth. The same thing goes for other sanctioned countries: (Cuba, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria), as well as for transactions mentioning sanctioned individuals or organizations.

benwad• 7 years ago

Is Cuba still sanctioned? I thought the main embargo was lifted a few years ago.

solarkraft• 7 years ago

Interesting that that really seems to mean that you can't mention those countries in transaction messages. It seems insanely silly, but since it's US regulation I'm not at all surprised.

LiamPa2• 7 years ago

You can mention them but your transaction will be blocked until it is reviewed. The review process will depend on the FI in question with some not as efficient as others...

The fines for breaking US sanctions are just to big to ignore so risk appetites tend to err on the side of caution.

chvid• 7 years ago

Just another reminder how powerful the US is and how extreme sanctions they have put on Iran.

mrb3• 7 years ago

This sort of financial censorship is a textbook example of a problem perfectly solved by Bitcoin-class cryptocurrencies. A censorship-resistant digital currency may not be useful to you personally, but it's painfully obvious there are heaps of people who legitimately need them in our modern world for use cases that would never cross your mind.

zaarn6• 7 years ago

Bitcoin isn't censorship resistant when you want to pay out into real money. The exchanges can block it, especially if you're on one of the various "do not trade" lists.

mrb3• 7 years ago

You don't get it. The full benefits of Bitcoin are realized when you stay in the system. Receive BTC. Spend BTC. Avoid converting to fiat ("real money") when possible. As adoption increases[1] year-over-year it becomes increasingly feasible to do that, to stay in the system.

[1] https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactions.ht...

ryanlol5• 7 years ago

Huh? The world is full of exchangers that require no KYC whatsoever.

The Russian guy who pays my rent with SEPA transfers has never asked for my name.

martin_a• 7 years ago

Totally not. Cryptocurrencies are even worse than real money when your government can just shut down or filter/watch the internet and whatnot.

shadowprofile77• 7 years ago

you comment as if bitcoin and other currencies aren't used DAILY for transactions (that get cashed out regularly by the way) by people who got their coin in shady ways and want to get their cash without interference. There are all sorts of fairly simple ways to circumvent the supposed obstacles you mention and they're especially useful for controversial donation-type scenarios like the above. As long as the crypto being sent has been anonymized along the way, anyone in any fully registered exchange in any given country could easily cash it out without there being any connection to the crypto having come from a donation to some X site that's politically controversial.. This is basic stuff. Despite inherent flaws, it works for these types of things and definitely more so than paypal or other large companies which regularly freeze transactions for all sorts of bullshit moral, political, social and etc reasons that don't even require illegal activity.

Crypto may be sort of crappy for major money laundering (drug cartels and mafias already get plenty of help on that from happy managers at huge "respectable" banks, see case of HSBC and Mexican cartels as an example) but crypto could definitely work for small transactions that aren't illegal but very likely to be blacklisted by companies like paypal.

I mean, if I were running a wikileaks, porno or similar type site, crypto is exactly what would be a useful fail-safe. It may be imperfect and I know the HN crowd has an emotionally laughable collective disdain for it but let's use some common sense no? Instead of just criticizing groundlessly.

Glosster• 7 years ago

Maybe a solution would be for people to use cryptocurrency for donations.

rvz• 7 years ago

Well done PayPal. You have just legitimised the use case for using cryptocurrencies as a way of sending money without being censored.

What a spectacular own goal here.

tuxt• 7 years ago

So stop using PayPal?

SimonB_• 7 years ago

A solution for this kind of payment filtering is using a cryptocurrency like Nano. Unlike PayPal, it has no fees, and the transfer takes less time too. There are many other advantages that I won't go into.

Krasnol• 7 years ago

Am I missing something or where is the screenshot of a mail saying anything about Iran?

brendanfalk2• 7 years ago

The US government is so strict on all transactions due to Anti Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing laws. This donation clearly meant well, but it’s totally understandable that PayPal blocked it given everything that has just happened in Iran.

Yes, this clearly pushes people towards crypto, but PayPal is doing what the Government is mandating and is merely protecting itself.

mytailorisrich• 7 years ago

I believe that the Western sanctions against Iran mean that it is currently illegal for individuals to transfer money from USA et al to Iran.

If so, it is quite obvious that Paypal and other financial institutions would take steps to prevent this from happening with their knowledge.

duskwuff4• 7 years ago

Current events in Iran aren't a factor -- this is a sanctions issue and always has been. If you tried to make a Paypal donation mentioning Iran a month ago, that would have gotten blocked too.

brendanfalk2• 7 years ago

Agree. Iran has been sanctioned for a long time, But PayPal would almost certainly would be overly cautious given recent events and maybe more edge cases are getting denied than a few months ago.

Anyway, either way we clearly agree here

cwyers• 7 years ago

For everyone in this thread mentioning Bitcoin/crypto: in no way does using cryptocurrency exempt you from US sanctions. Given the way most crypto exchanges are run, I wouldn't even think that it offers much protection against getting caught.

ShorsHammer• 7 years ago

Open source, decentralised exchange, no registration required, all keys stored locally: https://bisq.network/

StanislavPetrov3• 7 years ago

Its not an issue of US Sanctions. Grayzone is a US publication owned and operated by Americans in the United States. Its a matter of circumnavigating Paypal's interference in their receiving donations. Nobody has suggested that any of this money came from Iran (where Paypal doesn't even operate). Use crypto would potentially be an effective way to donate to Grayzone without requiring Paypal's approval.

ryanlol5• 7 years ago

Given the way most crypto exchanges are run, I wouldn't even think that it offers much protection against getting caught.

Ever heard of localbitcoins.com? Most exchangers require no KYC whatsoever.

PayPal blocks donations to The Grayzone that mention Iran

Related Stories