PayPal Moves to Cut Off VPN & Smart DNS Services
February 7, 2016
If you are a user of a VPN or Smart DNS service, you will soon have one fewer payment option. PayPal is cutting off all VPN and Smart DNS services from their payment network. If your provider has not been blocked yet, it is likely it will be shortly. Recently UnoTelly made the issue public by releasing the statement that PayPal sent to them:
“Under the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for items that infringe or violate any copyright, trademark, right of publicity or privacy, or any other proprietary right under the laws of any jurisdiction,”
PayPal’s email reads. “This includes transactions for any device or technological measure that descrambles a scrambled work, decrypts an encrypted work or otherwise avoids, bypasses, removes, deactivates or impairs a technological measure without the authority of the copyright owner.” This is not the first time PayPal has cut off services that could be used for copyright infringement or bypassing lockouts. A few years ago PayPal blocked all file-sharing services from their network.
UnoTelly gave a statement to TorrentFreak and said, “We are disappointed at PayPal’s unilateral action and the way it acted without prior warning. We provide both DNS resolution and secure VPN services. Our services are network relays that connect people around the world.”
Cord Cutters News has heard from several VPN and Smart DNS services that their PayPal accounts have been disabled; however, a few still offer PayPal as an option. We have even heard that at least one has been blocked by Master Card from accessing their payments network.
This is just one more move in an effort to crack down on people living outside of the desired market for each service. Recently Netflix announced they would also be working to block proxy services.
Hopefully this move by content owners to block VPNs and Smart DNS services is also accompanied by a new effort to offer more options for their customers to legally pay for the content they want.
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