[tor-talk] What should our 31c3 talk be?

[Soul Plane]

On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 8:05 PM, Roger Dingledine <arma at mit.edu> wrote:

> I wonder what would be the most useful topic for this year?
>

I've noticed some websites are blocking or treating Tor users differently,
not always overtly, and while it may not be the most useful topic if that's
a trend that's increasing it may be worthwhile to talk about it and what
your organization is doing or can do about it.

I tried to pay someone using a payment processor in Germany, and they kept
denying my transactions but it was clearly automated and when I asked them
about it they put the orders through manually and the same thing happened.
I tried every payment method (credit card, wire transfer, money transfer
services, paypal) through several different IP addresses using the Tor
Browser just to see what would happen. I think the payment processor was
cleverbridge. There was nothing saying "Hey you're a Tor user you can't use
this method", but any order originating from an IP address connected to Tor
was not accepted. And they just wouldn't say it was due to Tor even though
I explained to them that was probably what was happening since I'd already
been through this with PayPal after they suspended my account for using Tor
(PayPal had cited "proxy services" are against terms of use and I hadn't
accessed any proxy except Tor).