Mastercard and Visa Start Banning VPN Providers
 

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Following the introduction of restrictions against file-sharing services, Mastercard and Visa have now started to take action against VPN providers. This week, Swedish payment provider Payson cut access to anonymizing services after being ordered to do so by the credit card companies. VPN provider iPredator is one of the affected customers and founder Peter Sunde says that they are considering legal action to get the service unblocked.

Payment providers are increasingly taking action against sites and services that are linked to copyright infringement.

There?s an unwritten rule that Mastercard and Visa don?t accept file-hosting sites that have an affiliate program and PayPal has thrown out nearly all cyberlockers in recent months.

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.

While the email remains vague about why this drastic decision was taken, in a telephone call Payson confirmed that it was complying with an urgent requirement from Visa and Mastercard to stop accepting payments for VPN services.

One of these customers is the iPredator VPN, launched by Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde and friends. Sunde tells TorrentFreak that he is baffled by the decision, which he believes may be an effort to prevent the public from covering their tracks online and preventing government spying.

?It means that US companies are forcing non-American companies not to allow people to protest their privacy and be anonymous, and thus the NSA can spy even more. It?s just INSANE,? Sunde says.

Sunde explains that iPredator will always have plenty of other payment options, but sees it as an outrage that Mastercard and Visa have apparently decided to ban a perfectly legal technology.

?For iPredator there are always other payment methods, like Bitcoin, but it?s insane to censor a totally legit system that is there to avoid censorship and surveillance,? Sunde says.

Despite these alternatives, Sunde is not going to stand idly by. He informs TorrentFreak that Ipredator considering taking legal action, citing the Wikileaks win against the credit card companies as a favorable precedent.

Ipredator is far from the only VPN provider that is affected by the policy change. Anonine, Mullvad, VPNTunnel, Privatvpn and several others are also using Payson?s services.

At this point it?s unclear why the two companies are taking a stand against anonymizing services. It seems likely that an industry or authority has been pushing for the policy change behind the scenes. However, with privacy high on the agenda with the PRISM scandal, the move comes at an odd time.

TorrentFreak has reached out to Mastercard and Visa but we have yet to hear back from the companies. We are not aware of any other payment service providers who have taken action against VPN providers, so the scope of the actions are unknown at this point.

Seems a little ironic to pay to pay for an anonymising service with a credit card.

The order seems rather broad anyway. That's a bit like banning all adult transactions so that CP sites die off.

VPN and File Lockers are just the beginning.

If you knowingly provide any type of service to pirates or to facilitate piracy expect to find it very difficult to process payments.

edit: USENET providers will face this issue soon enough.

Bitcoins FTW

I like there reason why do you think they are referring to you?

not really, anyone can go to a grocery store and buy a prepaid visa or mastercard with cash and use a pseudonym when signing up, completely anonymous that way :2 cents:

Probably because we've been the driving force behind forcing the hand of Paypal and others to take action against all the bad actors in this space.

TorrentFreak has referred to us (via a link) whenever raising these issues, especially when mentioning Paypal.

It just sounds like they're targeting his company, being Peter Sunde and all.

There are hundreds of thousands of people who rely on VPN's to connect to work.. My dad is a cop and has to use a VPN to connect to his stuff.. I wouldn't even say the primary use of VPN's was piracy.

Yea, but I don't think most companies who have employees using a VPN to connect to their network will use a VPN service. I think most will have bought the VPN client software so they can set it up on their own server and have 100% control.

Altough i'm in the business of selling porn subscriptions, i think this is a terrible thing...

I've always been using file lockers, torrents and VPN's for totally legal purposes:

file lockers: to transfer big files that i cannot send over email from and to software suppliers in my daytime job

torrents: to download Open source software distributions, and older versions that are no longer online...

VPN's: to make sure nobody is eavesdropping while i'm surfing on public hotspots, or to make sure my surfing habits aren't monitored by my isp, employer,...

I know it's a lot easyer to target thepiratebay, ipredator, wetransfer,... than it is to target uploaders of illegal material... But what's happening lately is just plain old nonsense... Just my two cents

The solution is simple, use Dropbox and not Rapidgator and you'll be fine.

Use corporate solutions offered by companies that have a proven track record in handling piracy responsibly and you won't have a problem.

If you put stuff on mega.co.nz and lose it then you've just got yourself to blame.

A full tarball of my VPS will fit on mega.co.nz, and not on dropbox ;-)

@Adultking: i know we will never agree on this, and i do respect your fight agains filelockers (seeing copyrighted material being spread around for free pisses me off to). I just say it would be more justified to attack the uploaders instead of companies like ipredator....

ipredator is marketed to pirates by pirates. Actually they are more than pirates the service is owned by convicted criminals who say they will not co-operate with law enforcement.

If you want to play with the likes of Visa, Mastercard and Paypal then expect to have to follow the law.

I have no sympathy if your files won't fit on the free 2GB drop box space, you can buy as much storage as you want on Dropbox, Google Drive etc.

If you use Mega.co.nz, Rapidgator, Hotfile, Deposit Files or any of the other criminal operations for file storage then you should expect to carry a very real risk of losing your data.

There are plenty of safe, secure, legal services available - sure you may have to pay - but paying is the price differential of a compliant service provider and a non compliant one.

Visa and Mastercard are in the midst of a crackdown on a whole range of product/service types, if you assume this is a one off then you're naive.

Take for example USENET providers, although we aren't quite there yet, they will have to eventually get rid of all of the illegal content newsgroups and the piracy newsgroups to be able to transact in the real world or they will be forced into the realm of BitCoin just like the non compliant file lockers, VPN and other services will be.

A good way to look at this issue is this.

It's perfectly legal for hardware stores to sell tools, unless the intention of the hardware store is to sell tools that allow a burglar to go out equipped.

There are legal, licensed suppliers of firearms in many countries, however it is illegal for them to sell a firearm where they knowingly do so in order for someone to commit a crime.

There's nothing new to see here except that finally Visa and Mastercard are being made to catch up on various issues that have not been paid the proper attention. Illegal File Lockers, non compliant VPN services, non compliant USENET providers can all expect this shift to catch up with them.

The simple message is "comply with the law" or find yourself without the ability to accept Paypal or process credit cards.

Correct, but a VPN service that markets itself as unwilling to co-operate with law enforcement cannot expect to be considered as anything other than for illegal use.

I am actually working very hard on having one large European host stripped of their payment processing because they do not co-operate on having piracy sites shut down. How do you like them apples ?

Services that have compliance programs and follow best practices have nothing to fear. Those who seek to make profit from illegal or unlawful activity will probably end up having problems.

Really, i'm not looking for a fight, but it seems to me like you're the judge, jury and executioner... And you hold everybody against the law of your own country, no? Not all countrys have the same legislation, not all copyright holders claims are equally valid and well founded either....

I think it is a form of censorship to try to close a VPN service provider because most of the scammers use a VPN... I personally like a VPN that clearly state they will not keep logs.
In Belgium, they started the "great belgian firewall" to combat CP... Nobody knows which sites are on there, but apparently they currently use the firewall to blacklist gambling sites, filehosts,..... Maybe next year they'll start blocking the website of one of the right-wing political parties.... The fight against VPN providers is different, but in many points exactly the same as putting up a firewall: it's plain old cencorship.
Instead of putting up a firewall, they'd better spend a lot more money in tracking down producers and consumers of CP, and cut their nuts off in public...

I think the uploader of illegal data should be attacked, and if a filelocker, torrent site or VPN does something illegal, the owner should be tried in a court in his or her country of residence, according to the laws of that country... :2 cents: If they are acquited by a judge, i think we are not in the position to harass them any longer... If they are sentences, they are already being punished....

Mastercard and Visa, along with Paypal are free to include or exclude any business type from doing business through their systems.

Mastercard and Visa do not allow a whole range of business types to process through them and such decisions are often regional. For example try to process for hardcore porn in the Mastercard and Visa APAC region - they deem the risk too high and most acquirers just won't allow it.

Mastercard and Visa are completely free to exclude any type of industry they see as high risk - or extreme high risk - from using their systems.

i use strongvpn myself, not for anonymous use, but cause i cant view the american sites when im in canada. (video streaming - hulu, etc)

I use US VPN so that I can surf from US perspective. Nothing to do with piracy, this is just crazy.

the amount of people around here defending freeloaders and criminals is disturbing

i say FUCK freeloaders and criminals! its time to castrate all the worthless bottom feeding motherfuckers

next up ad networks that willfully conspire with tubes to monetize illegal content

Another AdultKing success?

Have you been able to do this yourself?
I haven't done this.
Which prepaid card allows you to sign up without ID?

I buy cards for my weed guy all the time. Just pick them up at 711. I don't think he even needs an ID. It's just $25 on a Visa card that he can use anywhere.

:thumbsup

Adult now makes up a tiny fraction of worldwide card transactions. Keep bothering the card associations too much and they may rather just do without than deal with. Good plan. Keep going. Sure it will end well.

Porn has no lobbying power and never will. Mainstream entertainment. They have the right to be annoying and bitchy. Porn doesn't.

I've bought pre-paid Visa cards at my local convenience store. No ID required. Simple as buying gum. The ones I bought were Vanilla Visa brand https://www.vanillavisa.com/product.html

all the ones I've tried allow it, mastercard or visa, there are different brands and they offer both

any grocery store has them, you can buy them in $25, $50, or $100 denominations or there are also ones you can load whatever amount you want on them and reload them too if you want

And lots of people who live in countries with repressive regimes also use VPNs. We use them to test who is getting what from our servers. We only have the US and Canada covered, so if we want to see if they surfer from the UK is getting that GBP offer VPN is the easiest way.

I've also been using one more just in general after PRISM confirmation.

Guys...AdultKing isn not to blame if he shows Visa and MC evidence that a bit torrent or file sharing site is a pirate site. That is their own fault for monetizing other people's hard work.

To listen to some people complain at AdultKing is a fucking joke. He isn't the one you should bitch at.
The fucking thieves who are making their living off of stolen work are the ones you should be angry at.

If they get their bit torrent or file sharing sites shut down it isn't AdultKing's fault. They did it to themselves.
All AK is doing is reporting what they are doing to Visa and MC.

Every fucking one of you who thinks that making money off of other people's stolen content is just fine, should have your asses kicked.

Just about every grocery store, gas station, 7-11, etc around here let you buy prepaid visa without ID.

You may have been using them for legal reasons but most scammers are not. Instead of trying to fight the scammers which is impossible to do the card processors are taking the easier and cheaper way out. This is the smartest thing they can do.

Oh yeah.... FTW alright... until you want to cash them out. :upsidedow

I looked into it in Australia a couple of years back and all gift/prepaid cards required registration (including ID) to activate the card. Then again, I'm not sure that asking for my driver's licence # was actually for verification, or just to put on file.

VPNs are horseshit anyway.

They don't provide full location privacy and are prone to traffic correlation attacks. Sure, they are useful for protecting yourself from the local spies at the coffee shop WiFi, but not much more than that.

Any VPN company that you pay directly and/or send traffic to from your IP directly has enough intel to identify you. Prepaid Visa cards from the 7/11 won't save you from this.

Tor, and systems like it, are the way forward. The relays are ran by volunteers, it's free, and onion-routed. It requires 3 nodes to collude to identify you (vs. VPN providers that are only ONE node usually.)

Combine Tor with Bitcoin and you have an unstoppable force for internet and financial privacy. :thumbsup

Tor is cool and funded by US government.

what if you combine Tor with a vpn?

:thumbsup :1orglaugh

If someone wants to find out what you do online no system will stop them.

The Australian Federal Police have successfully identified people using Tor to access Silk Road and prosecutions leading to conviction have arisen from such identifications.

Do you really think that the various police agencies don't have access to dozens of law enforcement run nodes ?

Furthermore, you still have the transport layer. You still connect to the Tor network using the transport layer provided by your ISP. So it's an easy thing to determine if you are connecting to known Tor nodes or not. Once such a determination is made then a more substantive effort can be made to track what you are doing through other means.

It's open source and has been reviewed by a ton of universities and cryptologists.

It's also probably the only project to be both funded by the EFF and the US Navy. lol

there needs to be more options :2 cents:

That would work out ok.

If you are using Tor inside of the VPN tunnel the benefit would be that you could hide that you were using Tor from your local ISP (or any other local spies.)

If you chained a VPN (assuming OpenVPN/TCP etc) at the end of your Tor connection you would benefit by having the remote website not be able to tell that you were using Tor. Of course, they would see that you were using a VPN if it is a publically known one.

It all depends on your threat model I suppose.

Litecoin?

More horseshit. There are ways. They are just not convenient for most people.