Random? I think the problem with Paypal was that they do not warn or provide reasons for freezing. GH's reasons are clear.
> Blocking a whole European company not conducting business with Iran because one of its employee tried to login while there is not respecting the embargo, it's just overreach.
Says who? There is a law, the law is unclear and IHMO a bad law. The law is overreach. Blaming GH for shitty US laws is akin to killing the messenger.
Says the US Department of the Treasury, as mentioned in the Twitter thread further down:
> 118. I have a client that is in Iran to visit a relative. Do I need to restrict the account?
> No. As long as you are satisfied that the client is not ordinarily resident in Iran, then the account does not need to be restricted.
from their "FAQs: Iran sanctions" page — https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/...
But I sure as hell can expect them to investigate before cutting service to a long-time customer.
Keep in mind that US Government agencies that administer sanctions laws (the Treasury, in this case) are the ones interpreting what these laws mean. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natu....
What I’m not sure at all is that github had the obligation to preventively block cases instead of the alternative to investigate high risk cases prior to block. As long as they had a sound Compliance process for determining sanction enforcement needs in a reasonable time it should be enough - though for sure more expensive than autoblock followed by non-specialized, non-time sensitive (for github!) customer service followup.
The same law you're stating.
https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/...
Which is par for the course for financial companies.
If GitHub freezes your account, this is obviously serious and can impact your business to a greater or lesser extent depending on what your business does. But the data is not lost, and you'll likely have a copy of at least some of it (the actual repos) and maybe all of it if you were being careful.
If Paypal freeze your account then any money in it is simply lost (and your loss is Paypal's gain!). There's no way you could keep a "backup" of that money even if you were being careful. It's completely incomparable.
While this is completely tangential to the current discussion, I feel compelled to inform you that that's not how it works. When Paypal freeze your account, your account is not deleted, you just can't do anything with it. The money on it obviously remains yours. You just have to convince them that your account should be unfrozen or wait the maximum duration you agreed to in Paypal ToS - 180 days - after which they have to hand it back to you.
> its employee tried to login while there
Those two statements are incompatible with each other.
And blocking on the first login attempt is overreach. The system doesn't know if you are tourist, visitor or resident. So wait two weeks at least.