PayPal cuts WikiLeaks' money flow

BERLIN: The online payment service provider PayPal has cut off the account used by WikiLeaks to collect donations, serving another blow to the organisation just as it was struggling to keep its website accessible after an American company stopped directing traffic to it.

PayPal said in a blog posting that the move was prompted by a violation of its 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”.

PayPal is one of several ways WikiLeaks collects donations, and until now was probably the most secure and convenient way to support the organisation.

WikiLeaks had become an Internet vagabond on Friday, forced to move from one website to another as governments and hackers hounded the organisation, trying to deprive it of a direct line to the public. EveryDNS stopped directing traffic to wikileaks.org late on Thursday after it said cyber attacks threatened the rest of its network.

But while wikileaks.org remained unreachable on Saturday, the organization has found new homes. Its German website wikileaks.de was reachable Saturday, and so was its Swiss domain.

The Swiss address directs traffic to servers in France, where political pressure quickly mounted with Industry Minister Eric Besson on Friday saying it was unacceptable to host a site. — AP