Given that the overwhelming majority of transactions on Brandt’s account were payments for servers running Tor nodes, EFF is deeply concerned that Brandt’s account was targeted for shut down specifically as a result of his activities supporting Tor.
We found no evidence of wrongdoing that would warrant shutting down his account, and we communicated our concerns to PayPal. Brandt shared months of PayPal transactions with the EFF legal team, and we reviewed his transactions in depth. They didn't attempt to inform me via email or phone-just the banner.”īrandt was unable to get the issue resolved directly through PayPal, and so he then reached out to EFF.įor years, EFF has been documenting instances of financial censorship, in which payment intermediaries and financial institutions shutter accounts and refuse to process payments for people and organizations that haven’t been charged with any crime. I went to my PayPal info page which displayed a large vertical banner announcing my permanent ban. Brandt reported to EFF: “I tried to make a payment to the hosting company for my server lease in Finland. Now Brandt’s PayPal account has been shut down, leaving many questions unanswered and showing how financial censorship can hurt the cause of internet freedom around the world.īrandt first discovered his PayPal account was restricted in March of 2021. His primary use of the payment system was to fund servers to run Tor nodes, routing internet traffic in order to safeguard privacy and avoid country-level censorship. Larry Brandt, a long-time supporter of internet freedom, used his nearly 20-year-old PayPal account to put his money where his mouth is.