Cablegate: PayPal uses AUP violations to freeze WikiLeaks account

by Steve Ragan - Dec 4 2010, 09:08

On Friday, PayPal stated that they have permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks to collect donations. The move to deny access was not the result of political pressure, a company spokesperson said. The action was taken on its own.

In August, Moneybookers, an internet payment firm ran by Bahrain-based Investcorp, closed a WikiLeaks account after the whistleblowing website was placed on a U.S. watch list and Australian black list.

The last time PayPal took action against WikiLeaks was in January, when a flood of donations triggered PayPal’s money-laundering alerts. When PayPal asked for more information, WikiLeaks failed to respond, prompting a temporary freeze. Access was restored a day later. Things are different now, as it is clear that access will not be returned.

In a statement, PayPal said that they have “…permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity.”

WikiLeaks has been notified of the actions taken, PayPal’s statement concluded.

PayPal is just the latest in a series of problems WikiLeaks has faced since releasing 250,000 classified diplomatic cables. Earlier this week, Amazon ousted them from their website hosting account citing Terms of Service Violations, and shortly after that, EveryDNS removed their DNS hosting access for the same reasons. This is in addition to other mounting problems, including jabs from both the political and legal front.

For more information, see this story.

While cutting off access to hosting and DNS services has caused the site problems, the severance of a funding source is another matter. However, if one wanted, it is still possible to donate to the organization. Currently, there are bank transfers and credit card payment options.

PayPal was the fastest and the easiest donation method for most people. Yet, just how punishing PayPal’s actions are is unknown.

We’ve reached out Sunshine Press and the Wau Holland Foundation, the actual owners of the frozen PayPal account, for more information. If there is something to add, we’ll update this story.

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