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MasterCard and Visa Start Banning VPN Providers
Nyder sends this quote from TorrentFreak:
"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. ... 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. 'It means that U.S. 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.'"
Oddly, this comes alongside news that MasterCard has backed down on its financial blockade against WikiLeaks.
So, it has come to this.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
With everything going on 'they' are not backing down one single bit. Not sure if they are smart/dumb or suicidal.
If you care about privacy, you're using bitcoin already. This'll just push more people that direction.
I provide my VPN to myself for free. ;)
When it's impossible to boycot the bad guy...
> 'It means that U.S. 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.'
That's rather bias. It also means that people are no longer able to circumvent geo locks on media content, avoiding the current media distribution models and laws. Some people are protecting their privacy, but I would guess the vast majority just want to watch Game of Thrones.
... aren't they warning us to stay away? Isn't it possible that they have been, or expect to be, ordered to turn over all transactions related to VPNs? In light of MC's new willingness to accept Wikileaks contribs, maybe that makes more sense?
Don't use US services.
This is why we need a payment system that does NOT rely on PayPal, Visa, or MasterCard.
And I guess this is why the US Govt. is trying to shut down bitcoin so hard....
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
As somebody who used to live and work in China, I find this to be rather unfortunate. VPNs are neither good nor bad by any inherent reasoning, but what this means is that people in regions that have oppressive regimes are going to find it harder to get access to the web unfiltered as it's going to be harder and harder to fund the services.
Ultimately, if the US government has had any input in this, it's going to bite them on the ass. Well, it will bite them on the ass, regardless of causation.
Hmm, maybe they should rename their services. "Remote internet ISP services" or "SSL internet connection", or some other obfuscated name. They can't ban everything associated with the internet.
Surely there are other forms of payment that are acceptable to this Swedish VPN provider? Vote with your feet.
Who knows if they're under pressure from the NSA or other bad actors...perhaps it's just related to CC fraud? In either case...see above.
Change the name of the services from VPN to something else, CPN (Cyber Private Networks) for example.
Keep accepting payments.
Wait for another email from "big brother" you cannot accept payments from CPN services.
Rename the service again.
Same way they don't commit tax dodging/evasion or bribe certain political influences, they merely do a "contribution".
"You know spies, bunch of bitchy little girls - Sam Axe"
What's the big deal? Pay by check! What's a week or two to save your rights?
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
1) Why does this not count as illegal collusion within an industry group? That they decided to announce it as a unified decision provides de facto proof that they conspired to deprive their customers of choice. If my itty bitty company made a similar joint announcement with one of our biggest competitors in the region, half a dozen state AGs would have us in court before the newsprint dried on the initial announcement.
2) I make use of these usurious parasites' services because it lets me conveniently move my money from place to place without worrying about the security of either cash or my real bank accounts, and I can essentially do all my spending with one tidy itemized monthly bill. If I can no longer use Visa to purchase the goods and services I want, I no longer have a reason to use Visa at all.
And a bonus thought, for good measure - For those talking about the NSA or Bitcoin - This involves regional protection of content, a favor to Hollywood, nothing more and nothing less. At least direct your vitriol in the right direction, folks.
This is what happens when industries lack effective competition. The only thing they understand is being sued to hell for discriminatory practice but act quickly before CISPA is snuck into an omnibus at the 11th hour.
They have no problem throwing their weight around because they can get away with it. Merchants don't have a choice - you have to accept bullshit from the major cards no matter what or else you lose business.
The very concept of credit cards is bullshit anyway. What people really need is an easy way to transmit funds rather than keeping account numbers secret and hoping against hope everyone will play nice and it won't be abused. The sooner VISA and Mastercard die off the better off we'll all be. We need something like paypal but with the convinence of a credit card and an infrastructure to allow new players global access to all buyers and sellers from day one.
The only thing that changes is how its implemented. Communist countries control the press, we control it via finances.
Amex and Discover are still available. Not sure how viable that is though.
some karma... and kinda lukewarm about it.
It just looks like the gloves came off with the whole Snowden affair. They now know they can get away with pretty much anything and the propaganda machine will keep up appearances well enough for the masses to accept it, and as a result the two-faced "protecting the freedom" with all its problems like VPNs can be finally finished.
Bitcoin, the first world digital currency exists. Bitcoin will be the best match for getting things bought and sold anywhere on the internet and in the real world while preserving our digital freedoms and digital privacy. Bitcoin is decentralized. No single government may control it. There are service fees like traditional banks, but the manner in which these fees are distributed is very different and fairly distributed. It has every reason to succeed over the traditional currency exchange scheme.
MASTERCARD and VISA want to help the current super powers take away our digital freedoms and digital privacy by refusing to do business with VPN providers.
Boycott Mastercard and Visa. Stop doing business with VISA and MASTERCARD.
Learn to use Bitcoin instead of VISA and MASTERCARD.
"Ideas and Discoveries" magazine brings up the idea "The Internet will become the new world SUPERPOWER" and "operates more effectively than America or China". Since no single government may control Bitcoin, Bitcoin is a good match with the new INTERNET SUPERPOWER because both do well at preserving digital freedoms and digital privacy especially because both are decentralized.
This is a restriction of trade. If we can force people to buy tainted beef and GMO foods, surely we can beat this.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
for a second i thought this article was about HB1 Visa for immigration.
yeah, i was going to ask if VPNs accept American Express and Discover
haven't heard much about American Express lately. I saw the new commercial about the new Discover card.
Learn to use Bitcoin instead of VISA and MASTERCARD.
Sure. How do I buy bitcoins without using Visa or MasterCard (or Paypal)?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Major CC batch jobs can't keep up.
That question is only relevant until I'm able to earn part of my salary directly in bitcoins.
Does anyone else find this story very suspicious? I mean, VPN services are completely mainstream, widely used by business people. I bet that even MasterCard and Visa use them. And suddenly we're told there's a conspiracy to ban them. And the poster attributes this to the NSA wanting to spy on us. All based on completely anecdotal reports from one company that you've probably never heard of before.
I suspect the summary will turn out to be a complete misrepresentation, and the truth will be something far less evil and far less interesting than this post makes it out to be.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Before we start in on the FUD, perhaps there is a valid reason for this? I'm no expert, but here are my thoughts:
For example, I'm not aware of any way to tell the difference in a VPN (a desirable form of MITM) and an unwanted MITM. What if they're doing this as a side effect of detecting and thwarting silent packet-sniffing MITM attacks?
And do we know if they're blocking known VPN provider address ranges, or whether they're doing something protocol-specific that somehow fails if there's an IP tunnel involved? If it's the latter, maybe it's still possible to use the services if you run the client on the VPN machine and use X-forwarding or RDP or something.
Seriously, how big of a problem is this, that they need to be shutting down payment methods in an attempt to make you stop using them? I wasn't even aware that anybody did anything illegal with them. I didn't know until reading some of the comments that some people use them for getting around region encoding. Nevermind that region encoding ought to be illegal as it is. But still, if you sell a million hammers, and one guy uses a hammer to break a window, will Visa and MC stop processing payments for hammers?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."
2 cups and a string ?
with nsa spying fbi on hollywoods side you got it all angled ...its over ....
start to just NOT USE anymore and do any more keep a pc offline
Hello,
Does the ban extend to VPS providers like Linode and Lowendbox (et al), or cloud services like Amazon AWS or Google Cloud which could host a VPN? If not, perhaps provisioning a VPN server is one of these is an alternative.
Credit card companies and payment processors might be less willing to suspend operations with Amazon or Google.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Dexter is a good dog.
Usually you use Local Bit Coins or any of the methods listed on this new user's guide.
Your cheque is an order to the bank to pay $X to Y. If your government outlaws Y, the bank cannot honour your order.
At the moment, banks have a smallish list of countries and companies that have been outlawed, and so the bank cannot pay tme anything. These are organizations/countries claimed to be in of support of terrorism. If the government in question can argue VPNs enable terrorism, they can add VPN companies to the list.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
I personally do not use a VPN service anymore, but have a request for anyone that does. I also request you post results here, in this thread, to share any response you may receive.
Please call your current VPN provider and ask them how to go about paying them for their services without using PayPal, Visa, Mastercard or AmEx. Just see what advice they give to you in order for you to continue using their services (if any).
I am curious as to how the providers themselves are responding to their customers. They may have already come up with a viable alternative payment method that has been kept out of the media.
I thought foreign companies such as Paypal, Visa and Mastercard had to obey certain laws before being given access to EU customers/clients and that this right could be revoked at any time if they failed to comply? Then how come these miscreants are regularly discriminating against certain EU customers?
Heh, that local bitcoins site is great. "Meet me outside my apartment building and hand me cash, and sure enough you'll get some bitcoins, I promise, pinky swear".
Anyone with any better advice?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Sure. How do I buy bitcoins without using Visa or MasterCard (or Paypal)?
Use Discover.
Buy them with other Bitcoins, duh!
For those of us outside the USA who use US-based VPN providers to avoid data retention by our own countries, these VPN providers ensured our traffic was routed via the US and thus could be collected.
Thus, consequences of this are:
1. People in more oppressive states who were using VPNs are now more exposed (if the VPN was being paid for by credit card, even by someone outside that state)
2. If those VPNs were in the US, the NSA can no longer as readily monitor the communications of those people
Get cash and send a moneygram from about any grocery store or Walmart to bitinstant and strait to a bitcoin wallet. Send to https://www.bitinstant.com/
The problem is if you want to buy or sell bitcoins for normal currencies, you need to go through exchanges and many governments are planning to regulate those exchanges to collect income and sales taxes. If companies are going to use bitcoins for trade, governments will likely tell companies trading within their territory to apply taxes to those bitcoin transactions too.
While governments may not control bitcoin directly, they do have control over entities trading using it within their territory.
Bitcoin may sound nice for tax evasion purposes but if governments make a big deal out of it, it may not last for very long.
How little you know. Ever want a little privacy about how and where you spend money? Like leaving a digital trail for everything you do? Someday you might, by then it will be too late,
How many people use their workplace computer during coffee/lunch breaks to make on-line purchases? And how many of these corporate intranets appear as VPNs to the outside world? That is; a gateway beyond which no IP or location data can be deduced. Are MasterCard and Visa willing to pass up such aa large chunk of business?
Not every VPN service is named TorrentFreak, iPredator or sets the IPv4 'evil' bit. Some smart people will set one up with a 'respectable' name and probably bypass the MasterCard/Visa ban.
Have gnu, will travel.
Therefore than can easily cowtow to whoever demanded this, be it the NSA or the MAFIAA.
Voting with your feet here does little, unless you get 100 friends to as well. And since we are all basement dwellers here, it is unlikely that we could muster up 10 friends between us all :-D
My pessimistic cynicism does not mean that you should not, however vote with your feet, I will as soon as I am able. I plan to walk to another country. I just do not know which one yet.
Silence is a state of mime.
Uhhm, you _can_ verify that. Just whip out your phone and make sure the coins were sent before you give cash or buy from someone well trusted.
www.coinbase.com
I did and Discovered that no one takes that shitty card.
The problem I have with these "Internet Superpower" concepts is that their proponents seem to forget (or ignore) that the internet runs on equipment located in the physical world and that people also exist in the physical world. As long as one exists in a physical location one is never truly free from the threat of physical harm.
While I would love to see Bitcoin (or something like it) succeed, it has a major failing: It is not universally accepted in the physical world and as long as a government can reach out and touch a person or their equipment it may never achieve that acceptance. Bitcoin (at the moment) is simply bartering with an extra step involved. It's wonderful that iPredator and maybe even the local pizza parlor accept Bitcoin, but I bet that the power company and the tax man don't. If these service providers can't reliably convert Bitcoin into local currency the whole system will fall apart very quickly.
A roommate is on there, and it works like a charm for him, he earns a wee bit of money selling bitcoins. He's thinking about how to protect himself against robberies, but I guess it's the same with any sort of dealing that involves value. So far there weren't any problems beyond the occassional buyer flaking out.
I withdrew $500 in cash from my bank, went to Walmart and had a Moneygram sent to Bitinstant. Within an hour it was in my Mt Gox account, minus all the fixed and transaction fees (a somewhat hefty $25). Certainly inconvenient but the process is pretty straightforward once you understand how it works. YMMV.
Of course this doesn't consider what's involved in getting USD out of Mt. Gox which is ideally just the inverse. But I planned on spending the bitcoins so it wasn't a consideration.
It just looks like the gloves came off with the whole Snowden affair. They now know they can get away with pretty much anything
To be more of an optimist- keep in mind that "They" is a lot of people. Some of them are helping trample human rights. Many of them however just need to be shown an effective way to fight back against the organized criminal snoops. I know this will sound very tinfoil hattish, but hey, it's the snow crash season I think, so, I'll just spam about how I think my current 53-page manifesto that just got served to Google(Fiber) via the FCC(and Kansas Attorney General, and with schneier@schneier.com wishing my cause "Good Luck.")...
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3929983&cid=44170993
I've used the fact that GoogleFiber was my first ISP choice involving IPv6 to press a new novel interpretation of NetworkNeutrality. It seems to be going somewhere. ComIntercept(FCC->Google):
"The enclosed informal complaint, dated September 1, 2012, has been filed with the Commission by Douglas McClendon against Google pursuant to section 1.41 of Comissions's Rules, 47 C.F.R. // 1.41. Also attached is Mr. McClendon's October 24, 2012 complaint forwarded to the FCC by the Kansas Office of the Attorney General. Mr. McClendon asserts that Google's policy prohibiting use of its fixed broadband internet service (Google Fiber connection) to host any type of server violates the Open Internet Order, FCC 10-201, and the Commission's rules at 47 C.F.R. // 8.1-11.
We are forwarding a copy of the informal complaint so that you may satisfy or answer the informal complaint based on a thorough review of all relevant records and other information. You should respond in writing specifically and comprehensively to all material allegations raised in the informal complaint, being sure not to include the specifics of any confidential settlement discussions. ...
Your written response to the informal complaint must be filed with the Commission contact listed below by U.S. mail and e-mail by July 29, 2013. On that same day, you must mail and e-mail your response to Douglas McClendon.
The parties shall retain all records that may be relevant to the informal complaint until final Commission disposition of the informal complaint or of any formal complaint that may arise from this matter. See 47 C.F.R. //1.812-17. (seriously, can't I and Google just depend on the NSA's backups of our records? :)
Failure of any person to answer any lawful Commission inquiry is considered a misdemeanor punishable by a fine... ... ...
http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/mcclendon_notice_of_informal_complaint.pdf
http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/mcclendon_oct24_2012_complaint.pdf
This represents Google getting 'served' this week, my form 2000F 'informal' 53 page complaint that suggests that NetNeutrality provides protections against ISP blocking to my home servers as well as to Skype's. Google has been compelled by the government to respond to me on July 29th. GoogleFiber's 'evil' terms of service prohibit hosting any kind of server without prior written permission against your residential connection. And zero transparency for any alternate server-allowed plan rates, or what kinds of reasons they might use to disallow a requested written permission (which is laughable as the FCC 10-201 NetNeutrality document goes out of it's way to laud Tim Berner Lee's invention of the web atop tcp/ip, specifically, without having to have gotten any permission from any government or network provider)
I forwarded the documents to schneier@schneier.com and requested any insight he might have into the matter. I got an email response (theoretically perhaps spoofed) that read "Thanks.\n\nGood Luck."
"I would guess" you're making shit up. You're willing to throw out anonymity and privacy because some people might be circumventing copyright somehow? You're pathetic. (Or you're a government astroturfer. But I repeat myself.)
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
In 1771 right before your ancestors went to go confront Joseph Curwen, they did just that. They had a town meeting, exchanged bitcoins, and then went to go confront the sorcerer. Why isn't that good enough for you?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
You mean money launderers like this, government agencies who provided drug dealers with weapons, and a US government that supported "terrorist" networks such as the contras?
Somehow I don't think that Visa and MasterCard are going to be stopping the big guys.
I would love to. Now how do I actually get the damn things?
I'm a fairly technical person, but I've spent hours dicking around on various trading exchanges and buying sites, but there are just *no* clear directions. Most of them tell me to go to a Walmart to get some tokens or a code or some shit. WTF? I thought this was supposed to be a purely online currency.
Until we have "I PayPal you X dollars/Euros/whatever, you give me Y bitcoins" this newfangled shit just ain't gonna catch on.
Too bad the closest exchange on LocalBitcoins is 79.8 miles away from where I live, way too far for my bike.
https://www.bitinstant.com/
Just send a moneygram - you can create a wallet anywhere, download the software and create it on your own device or tons of on-line wallet places to make it for you if you trust them. Store a backup of you wallet on your hotmail\google online account so it's always backed up.
Go to bottle shop. Exchange money for beer. Go to service provider. Exchange beer for services.
Less hassle, been used for low grade tax evasion for years and completely avoids silly pyramid schemes.
Remember the new fangled stuff called the "internet" Even Bill gates was convinced it wouldn't catch on. Remember the fit Netscape through when Billy finally decided to bundle Internet Explorer into Windows? I remember having to set up all the internet\dns\gateway tcp\ip information on my own using my own software package I bought and signed up with a dinky internet service using a dialup modem long before AOL started flooding everybody's mailboxes with CDs. The revolution catches up.
Remember the fit the post office is still dealing with once e-mail caught on?
Music industry drastically changed when napster then \ peer to peer file sharing started?
Now people will realize they don't need banks any more. Or visa \ mastercard when you can transmit currency to and from anywhere. The new rush has started with companies innovating to make credit cards obsolete. Half of the world (think 3rd world) don't have access to a bank \ credit. Crypto currencies suddenly puts anybody with an internet connection into their own banking system. Power to the people by the people.
Get ready for the new revolution.
I just use my bank's online money transfer system. I didn't have to go anywhere or physically buy anything.
That question is only relevant until I'm able to earn part of my salary directly in bitcoins.
Then it is already relevant to some people. I employ a graphic artist that lives in Karachi, Pakistan. Paypal doesn't work in Pakistan. I used to pay her with a quarterly wire transfer, but that ate up about 5% of her salary in fees. So now I pay her in bitcoins, and the transaction fees are less than 1%.
I have ran online businesses for many years and hate the fact I must accept the cards to make a living. I have successfully transitioned many customers to paying with Western Union or Bank Transfer. Starting to use Bitcoin as well but really we need alternatives that the masses can use.
Then only outlaws will have encryption.
Of course, OUTLAWING it would incur a MASSIVE backlash from the population (insert legal challenge here).
By denying encryption FINANCIALLY, you achieve the same thing with SIGNIFICANTLY less opportunity for a legal challenge.
As Paul once said "He who can destroy a thing, controls that thing."
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
You can also have bitinstant deposit right into your own wallet. It doesn't have to go to an exchange at all. Hold tight and watch the value go up like crazy. Or convert some of it into LiteCoin at some of the other exchanges (Mt Gox will be trading in Litecoins some time this month). The awesome thing about litecoins? They are still less than $3.00 each. When they get listed on MtGox - watch their value go up ten- fold.
Did you miss out on the Bitcoin train? Litecoin is the "Silver" to Bitcoin gold. You can buy Litecoins at the BTC-e exchange among many other places that haven't got as popular as Mt Gox yet.
Well, technically, banks do the same when you deposit money. And given their recent record of honesty, reliability and stability, I don't really see THAT much of a difference to be honest.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Mock liberals howl that anyone who criticises the psychopathic war-monger, Obama, is a 'racist'. The whole false 'left-right' paradigm that defines so-called Western democracy is revealed in all its glory by the Crimes against Humanity Team Obama inflicts on the world daily, with the full support of the Republicans in the US.
In non-western democracies like Egypt, people power can still oust leaders who prove themselves to be nothing but zionist stooges. No such protests are possible in nations like the USA or UK. In the West, NSA spying is dedicated to identifying grass-root activism long before it can grow into anything that threatens the power of the current elites.
Did you not all notice that Obama broke every international law when he ordered the presidential plane from Bolivia to be pulled out of the sky, held hostage, and searched? Obama no longer even cares to maintain the slightest façade of moral legal behaviour. "Idi Amin" Obama cares only about the fruits obtained when one has massive amounts of power to abuse.
Of course, the depraved Obama is just a puppet, and the puppet that replaces him will be just as bad, and worse again, as sheeple get used to the rate at which abuses against Humanity are progressed by those that really rule the West. This 'banning' of VPN (which the usual filthy shills here will say is no such thing) is just another small part of the process. In reality, every major VPN company already gives the NSA (and/or equivalent national spy organisations) full access to the traffic of their users. Only end point encryption under the control of the user foils the universal spying programs.
But this really isn't about banning VPN. The people behind the NSA couldn't give a damn about that- VPN is the ideal source of false security for people whose activities are likely to be of greater interest. No, this is about COMPLIANCE TRAINING for the sheeple, just like the brutish security theatre of the TSA. 1984 style police-state systems mustn't just exist, but dominate the thoughts of every Human. People must be made to fell the boot descending endlessly upon their heads.
"Idi Amin" Obama comes from a culture where your status is measured by your 'caste' and how many people are seen as lower than you in every respect. This isn't a concept we've had in the West for a long time now, but it is a concept that still applies in most of Africa. It is different from the crude race-based slavery that the USA abused for most of its history. "Idi Amin" Obama literally sees 'ordinary' people as inferior by design/make-up/fate/tribe and that this fact MUST be constantly highlighted by the treatment dished out to ordinary people. Racism is too small a word to encapsulate thousands of years of depraved tribal thinking. Aggresive Africa tribes would treat passive African tribes like cattle- LITERALLY like cattle, even down to the point of eating some of them. The cannibals of Africa were NOT the primitive people, but were actually the dominant tribes of their region. Powerful Africans ate their 'inferiors' as a sign of status. When the Belgians carried out a Holocaust in the Congo far worse than any by the Nazis, Belgium used the cannibal elite tribes as their enforcers.
However, like I said, things will continue to get worse even when "Idi Amin" Obama finishes his second term. Obama himself was a fortunate accident, unpredictably seizing victory from Tony Blair's insane lieutenant, Hillary Clinton. Next time, America gets an all out 'white' war monger, whose psychological perversity will serve the elites just as well (although they are really going to miss their surprise champion, Obama).
Who knows if they're under pressure from the NSA or other bad actors...perhaps it's just related to CC fraud? In either case...see above.
No need to be under pressure. If they believe that VPNs are being used largely to pirate content, and they believe more money would be spent on people buying content rather than a on a VPN, then they'll happily block the VPN and happily collect their percentage of revenue from "content providers."
Of course, they're probably under pressure too, so having favors owed to them by the government and MAFIAA are extra bonuses. It's the government's responsibility to prevent this sort of thing by regulating this monopoly and not allowing them to do this, and only block something that has been deemed illegal through due process (e.g. an injunction signed by a judge telling them not give the illegal entity any money), but we all know that monopoly laws and due process are pretty much ignored when not convenient.
Ah yes, undercutting local labor markets with third world labor PLUS bitcoins!
Liberty is at hand folks!!!!
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
And if I don't live in any one of those locations in that limited selection?
The reason VPN's are being targetting is Piracy, nothing else.
Notice they mention "VPN Providers", eg the people who make money off of bypassing region locking schemes.
misdirection
Many people outside US has used VPN services to US primary to be able to stream Netflix and iTunes.
It is more likely that RIAA/MPAA requested this than NSA/CIA.
Disappointing troll; the NSA bit made it too obvious.
because quite clearly this is a Gold Dragon with level 42 in Wizardry we are dealing with and not just some sorcerer.
I know a company gets to make their own rules, but isn't there some banking regulations that might prevent this sort of nonsense? Arbitrarily cutting off service to what is essentially a 100% legal service.. No less legal than an ISP.
More importantly, how can I pay with my bitcoins without using Visa or MasterCard? Can I check into hotels with them? Can I buy stuff online that I can't buy with national systems (like iDeal in the Netherlands or a Lastschriftzahlung in Germany)? Can I pay for food with them when I am not in Europe?
Bitcoins are a nice idea, but they have a long way to go. Not only does it have problems with normal every-day payments, lengthy waiting times for transactions and the requirement of Internet connectivity in order to be actually trustworthy, bitcoin also is not anonymous yet. It relies on a difficult to grasp and/or verify majorities. Distributing authority is a reasonable idea, but the bitcoin implementation of it seems to be difficult to verify, due to the ever-changing required computational effort.
However, the biggest hurdles for bitcoin remain convenience and availability.
Take the finance out of the equation.
Boo fucking hoo.
Bitcoins leave a digital trail wherever they go because it distributes the transaction chains over P2P . I'm quite certain it's with the government's capability to visualize the flow of bitcoins if they so felt, figure out who is hoarding them and so forth. I suppose certain countermeasures could be used to confuse the picture somewhat e.g. shattering bitcoins, sending them flying through a web of "laundering" services and reconstituting them, using multiple wallets but at the end of the day there is still a trail leading from person X to person Y. I doubt many people would go to those lengths and if they did they're probably singling themselves out by such activity.
Liberty Reserve had a similar system of transferring funds and unsurprisingly it was used in the main by criminals looking to launder money between countries. So good luck with your "local bitcoin" merchants since they're likely the exact same money launderers and just about as trustworthy.
The answer of course is no for obvious reasons. And those obvious reasons also apply when discussing exchanging currencies in banks vs some guy you arrange to meet in a parking lot or wherever.
PayPal can make BILLIONS upon BILLIONS now on this.
Just pay them by sending cash in an envelope. Plain and simple, anonymous (which Bitcoins are not) and no banks needed. Opening all letters by hand is far to labour-intensive so they won't do that, and the US will find it much harder to spy on other nation's snail mail anyway.
Sure. How do I buy bitcoins without using Visa or MasterCard (or Paypal)?
Send money via wire transfer from your bank account to exchange and just buy them.
Dunno about USA but people from EU can do this cheaply using SEPA payments from their bank.
You dont see how that is any different? The only way this isnt any different is if you dont use a FDIC bank . . . then I cant feel too bad for you
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
No single government may control it [bitcoin]
Of course they can't; they'll be forced to accept it for tax, right?
(Hint: if you're forced to convert it into real currency to pay tax on all the transactions you performed with bitcoin, then there's no point in having it as you'll soon run out of real money)
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Heh, that local bitcoins site is great. "Meet me outside my apartment building and hand me cash, and sure enough you'll get some bitcoins, I promise, pinky swear".
Anyone with any better advice?
Yes, https://www.bitcoinary.com/ Transfers between bank accounts with escrow.
Following the link in TFA the email from Payson translates imperfectly but readably (via Google translate) to:
Payson when recently updated its policy on payments. 1 associated with this
examined your nemsida ocn then noticed that you verKsamnet unfortunately not
meets the requirements of Payson.
Payson when restrictions are against anonymization (including VPN services)
That when as a result decided to Payson unfortunately no longer can give your Customers
ability to fund the payment via their card (VISA or MasterCard).
Changes Will be done 2013-07-01 ocn then no longer possible for you to take
against this type of tranSactIOnS through Payson's integrated payment solution.
The restriction does not affect the rest of your insättningsmetedeL Payson ocn
possibility inieggad the Account implement tranSactIOnS Will not NOR to
affected by the change.
We apologize if this causes problems for you ocn are available to help you solve
This conflict with the policy wherever possible.
Sincerely,
Payson
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Could it be that VPN customers just had high charge-back level?
In any case, you can't pay for anonymity with a credit card. It's a contradiction of terms.
The problem I have is the wildly fluctuating exchange rate. Sellers don't update their prices as fast as it changes. If I want to pay for a VPN service in BitCoins (I currently use PayPal) then I would like to know that the cost isn't going to triple in a month.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So, whoever holds the patent for e-Hawala, i.e.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala
but "on a computer" has just hit pay-dirt.
Namgge
I used wire transfers to MtGox.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Im sure all those upset people in local labor markets would be equally upset if they had to pay double for all the products they buy that are made by third world labor. Bunch of hypocrites.
Bitcoin, the first world digital currency exists.
So do paper checks (cheques for you Brits), envelopes, postage stamps, and physical addresses. Back when I had web sites, I paid my Canadian registrar and web host that way. And there's electronic banking as well.
This is just an inconvenience, not a catastrophe. That said, it's one more thing our corporo-governmental overlords have done lately to piss everyone off.
Free Martian Whores!
They can only regulate it if/when a countrys own fiat money becomes involved. The more people with bitcoins and the more goods/services accept bitcoins then there will be less and less need to ever transfer bitcoins into dollars, euros etc.
Here, let me re-adjust your tinfoil hat.
By selling goods or services.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
The fact that the western world earns so much more in terms of purchasing power than the third world is a massive problem. It's not just them undercutting us. We are simply paid way too fucking much. Go work/live in africa for a while and see just how poorly the locals over there get paid for doing a hard day's work just like you or I would do. What entitles us westerners to earn so much for much less risk, better working conditions, etc?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
<sarcasm>Yeah, the damn woman should just get back to the clothes factory and earn a pittance instead.</sarcasm>
Do you really have a problem with people in a poor country trying to earn a decent wage by selling services over the internet?
They got away with torturing people in Guantanamo. It is even used as a running joke "you will be sent to guantanamo, lol".
At this stage, Obama could get away shooting a school bus in France by simply saying "I don't care about foreign kids preventing a missile serving justice to a hideous pirate causing some grief to my wealthy friends in Hollywood." Of course France would moan a little, but nothing else significant would happen. You just don't mess with an army that alone has the budget of a large first world nation.
Is it legal for them to block a legit business?
This is your future when there is no more cash and you only have a card or your phone, they know what you buy, they decide what you can buy, and you can not resell it, this is a World that could only come from out of control business/corporations.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
If they can do this don't be naive and say something like "We will just use Bitcoin" because they have already made BC useless.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
It's time for Socialism. This Plutocracy bullshit hasn't worked.
How much longer can services we all rely on be controlled by a small group of rich idiots who get to skim profit off the top? Credit cards should be a public utility.
In WW2 . This is a tantrum or dummy spit.
With this embargo, I hope suitcases of hard cash leave the country, and deposited in person.
What about all these shops in Chinatown who do direct bank to bank transfers. I can see a trip to China or Koreatown will
stop this move flat. In the end, Visa and Mastercard will forgo their god given 'cut'.
As for paying for an AMERICAN VPN, forget it.
Assassinate corporate leaders and this shit will stop.
It is purely online. The problem you are having is with your fiat money.
Free VPN with web hosting..,you pay for the web hosting and get VPN for free.
Tor is free btw. What are they, stuck in the 90's?
Financial Predictions from the past are starting to begin. Think about where we are headed. Good luck Kids. The value of experiences and age has let you down. To begin to remedy this upcoming situation will take more than what you have in Washington D C. today. The ideas of the new Lions and Tigress's NEED a lot of work. The old has become LAMBS and YES person's.
Leadership MUST be Just and Fair to the Majority. Not specialized to the Minority Leader or Legislature. ENERGY, BRAINS AND WILL POWER. Find that again, and your children will be free and happy.
GOD BLESS, and good luck.
Because we've paid for it in blood with the creation of unions and the labor movement. We also pay taxes from our earnings to support a much better infrastructure, social safety net and (full circle) pay for our industrial security complex war machine.
You are looking at this the wrong way...why don't the third world workers deserve to be paid more?
Fucking Americans. You all think that brown people exist for no reason except as target practice for drones. I have news for you, you snivelling little shit. Soon your economy will be a steaming pile of horse shit and those same brown people you enjoy bombing will be providing you with everything you can think of buying. You fat fucks are so busy whining about "labour market protection failures" that you haven't realized that you can't locally produce anything other than military hardware with fat government support contracts.
America is a dead country standing. I hope you enjoy saluting the flag of a fallen empire. Your time is over and the majority of your population will be left high and dry because you were too busy fondling yourselves while singing Star Spangled Banner to realize that your real threat wasn't terrorists or outsourcing, it was your own fat apathy fed to you by your parasitic ruling classes.
I have a better idea. We ultimately need money to buy food. I know we all do other stuff with money, but essentially this is where it all is most important, and the very reason that we have a 'universal currency' is to not have to depend on trading food for food, for other food (if you grow a lot of tomatoes, and need potatoes, but the dude that grows potatoes doesn't need tomatoes, you may need to trade tomatoes for squash, and then trade squash for potatoes). Money was invented for the purchase of food (mostly).
Personally, I'd rather go back to the original problem again and try to work out a better barter method, however it's to late now (I think). But the real currency in life is food. When the shit hits the fan, I'll be glad that I live in the southern area of the United States, where there's plenty of sunshine and rain. Also the people have been dependent of the local economy for many many years, so changing to a total local economy won't be a big deal.
Also, ultimately when we're talking about the powers that be, we're really talking about folks that get to literally make the money. When we all start talking about using a different currency, that's the reason that the shit will hit the fan. And it'll all boil down to the local police forces following orders from the rich. As long as we all start presenting a decent human race to each other, things will go fine, and the powers that be will simply melt away. If the local police have hate in their hearts for the local people, then the local people are going to have a harder time.
Together we stand, divided we fall.
my .02
I should just point out no American would call him/herself USian.
The worlds becoming a global economy and I have no problems paying someone over seas. I have no hard feelings over it morally, they are people too and they deserve jobs. That is if they are properly compensated and working conditions for that person are fine. If you build a good working relationship with someone and they provide good services and people on both sides are happy then it shouldn't matter. Yes that money could go to someone from your country and they could very well distribute that money back into your economy but as the worlds economies become more and more tied to each other does that really matter so much?
What's the point anyways wall street can go and fuck up the local economy in the U.S. and not bat an eye even if everyone put their money back into the local economy.
I buy NOTHING over a net connection. I was born in a time that did not have this option and I don't need it. If I can't walk in to a store and pay cash (no, I refuse to be owned by a credit card) I don't need whatever it is they're selling.
There is ebay-style ranking system and an escrow, which provide safety. It is actually very safe way of buying bitcoins.
Localbitcoins.com also supports bank transfers and offers escrow, it is safe.
Uhhm, you _can_ verify that. Just whip out your phone and make sure the coins were sent before you give cash
Assuming that you'd like to lose your phone along with your wallet AND your virginity, then sure.
or buy from someone well trusted
Uh, I don't know anybody personally who deals in bitcoins. And neither do most people. Saying "find someone you trust" is a pretty bullshit answer.
I think I can run an VPN head end on EC2 and I still seem to be able to pay for that with Visa. But who knows, I look forward to hearing more details about how widespread this is and what is going on. It is really really sad if any government is activity making it harder to use computers in a secure way.
...more to the point, how does one buy Bitcoins *using* Visa or Mastercard or Paypal. Maybe I was reading in all the wrong places but I couldn't find an easy way at all, as almost all Bitcoin exchanges go by bank transfers or similar (and then all those vague other methods like Liqpay and PaySafeCard and whatever).
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)
I just traded 300USD worth in bitcoins about half an hour ago. I fail to see how Visa, MC or PP were involved.
Bank transfers work fine too.
It is purely online.
Your problem is that you don't have any BTC.
The Internet can be used with as little as a computer. But you still need to make a phonecall to request the service to your ISP.
' Bitcoin is decentralized. No single government may control it.'
That's what we said about the internet many years ago. As long as any country has veto powers on what can and can not be done online, or can access critical internet infrastructure at will this will not be true. People are so afraid of financial loss that they would rather secure a few cents than run the risk of enraging the Govt. so there will be no boycott, it will be business as usual because of a fallacy that we don't need privacy. This often repeated foolishness that you should open your homes to the police if you have nothing to hide has led to the belief that you should open your emails for scrutiny and by extension your financial records, make that your daily lives to the public if you have nothing to hide.
You buy bitcoins on the street for cash using a site like localcoins. Then you pay for the VPN using the bitcoins. There is no trace.
If you are supper paranoid, you use TOR to access the Internet through wifi hotspots while using a different MAC address on your wireless card and signup for the VPN service using a tormail account.
Despite the ledger of bitcoin transfers being apparent, there is no reference to those transactions to you individually. So it is private.
Nope, I don't. My bank is actually bound by regulations that deserve that name.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Localbitcoins.com has a reputation system like eBay. Also, why would you want to meet in a dark alley if you are buying a lot of bitcoins? If you're afraid, set up a meeting in a public place. I've used the site, it works great.
THE HAAAAND! THE INVISIBLE HAND! (Thanks, Slashdot, I'm familiar with the meaning of works being entirely in capital letters. Yes, it is like yelling. That would be my goal.)
The problem is, the guy who sold bitcoins to you is a CIA/NSA operative... pleasure doing business with you. :)
What entitles us westerners to earn so much for much less risk, better working conditions, etc?
It's not entitlement; it is the fruit of civilization. We in the US reap the _benefits_ of increased density and mechanization, things that most people in the Western civilized societies complain about ;-)
Calling it entitlement just makes it as cheap as any other complaint about people who apparently are able to choose their own parents. We each reap the costs and benefits of the society we are born in.
Obviously the PRISM PR fiasco was not enough, the US government seems to really want to hammer home the point
that doing business with US firms is major security risk.