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Posted by ayi 21 hours ago

Ask HN: Anthropic banned me from using Claude Code and I don't know what to do

After using Claude Code at work for months I wanted to use it on my own projects too. Most probably because my vpn was on I got banned after 1 hour of usage. I got my 120$ back. 1 month later I signed up with vpn off. But this time probably because I used the same credit cart (and that's the only card I can use) they banned me again.

Even after I contacted support I got a generic "we have determined that we cannot reinstate your account at this time due to a violation of our Usage Policy" answer.

I'm not using it for anything unusal. "Summarize that markdown file", "how can i refactor payment module" kind of questions mostly. I couldn't even move to real coding because 1 hour was only enough for investigation.

My last chance is HN to get some visibility on my case. My Boris sees it or some other Anthropic employee.

Do you guys have any tips on getting my account back?

70 points | 83 commentspage 2
dhoe 20 hours ago|
Don't have a solution but just to add that I'm the same boat, and I've seen a few others. Something trips their anomaly detection and they don't care about it because it's presumably a low false positive rate.

For what it's worth I can just pay for tokens through other providers proxying their API. Still sucks because you end up paying much more.

pyeri 20 hours ago||
Might not be a very popular advice or even what you're looking for, but I think Anthropic banning you (or any user for that matter) is a blessing in disguise. The sheer amount of compute resources consumed by their high reasoning "pondering..." and "bloviating..." tokens isn't sustainable at scale. Eventually, they must ban everyone but those with deep and infinite pockets in order for this model to be sustainable and turn revenues.

Computers and LLMs are great at automation of low-level human cognitive tasks like memory, decisions and loops, etc. but struggle enormously with high cognitive tasks like reasoning, deep logic, nuance, etc. Not that it can't be done (Claude platform is proof that it can) - but the cost and scaling advantage in this realm belongs to the human brain, not the LLM.

Bishonen88 19 hours ago||
This is as unhelpful as it gets. The genie is out of the bottle - people can create unimaginable things with claude within hours. What would take months/years can be done in a day or a week.

Being banned on those platforms is a real setback for many users. One might argue that openai etc. are valid alternatives, but when they dropped fable (and perhaps reinstate?), not being able to use it simply means others can do more/better.

59nadir 19 hours ago|||
> What would take months/years can be done in a day or a week.

Hahahaha, this reads like pure unadulterated marketing. I sincerely hope you're getting paid for these things at least, it would be sad for you to be this way without even getting anything in return.

Bishonen88 18 hours ago||
yes, I'm getting paid handsomely for delivering software faster than every before, using llm's. If you mistake that for marketing, then so be it.
LtWorf 17 hours ago||
I hope you write in your contracts that you have 0 liability.
Freedumbs 17 hours ago|||
I don't know if it's unhelpful if you consider broader time scales. In 2027 or 2028, Anthropic and OpenAI might decide to stop subsidizing LLM usage and charge enough to profit. Would you pay $100 for a bug fix? They're already headed in this direction. Fable was 10x cost of Opus 4.6. They can't keep burning cash forever and we're reaching the peak of what can be justifiably spent on training cycles. Speaking of training, did OpenAI just give up?
basisword 19 hours ago|||
This is idiotic. It’s like telling someone they should be grateful the electric company has banned them because artificial lighting will mess with their body clock.
tosti 19 hours ago||
Nah, more like banning tobacco because it's addictive and bad for your health.
subscribed 14 hours ago||
This is about as misguided as the previous one. It's just nonsensical.

It's more like there were only two notable powertool brands and several small ones, and someone got banned for life from the arguably the leading one.

abalashov 19 hours ago|||
Haters are going to hate and downvote, but I think this is the right spirit.
clows 19 hours ago||
> Might not be a very popular advice or even what you're looking for [...]

why comment then?

karlkloss 20 hours ago||
Thy're probably using their own AI to find violations. Go figure.
thunkymonkey 20 hours ago||
Almost certainly. They banned me the instant I logged in successfully, possibly because the email contains "claude.ai@". My appeals via email were ignored. 9 months later I received this, but my account is still banned when trying to log in:

Earlier this week, your account was disabled by an automated system for being in violation of our Terms of Service or Acceptable Use Policy. Upon further investigation, we believe this was an error and your account has been reinstated. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

sillysaurusx 20 hours ago||
They do. It’s how I was banned for researching barbiturates.
brudgers 8 hours ago||
that's the only card I can use

That gives me a "there's probably more to this story" feeling. Though I understand that there are people without multiple credit cards, getting a second credit card and/or debit card is not difficult under ordinary circumstances.

Most probably because my vpn was on I got banned

This reinforces my "there's probably more to this story."

qazxcvbnmlp 7 hours ago|
Whenever I read posts like this I get the missing missing reasons vibes.

https://issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing...

phyzix5761 19 hours ago||
Reminds me of Google banning first time small business owners with no explanation and basically forcing them to shut down their businesses over night because without Google they couldn't find any customers. Happens way more often than people realize. Usually, the cause is something dumb like not having a link to a privacy policy clearly shown on the main page of their website but Google never explains this.
nottorp 19 hours ago||
Is this the new “google banned me for no reason”?

Googles customer relations were “AI” before LLMs.

wuhhh 20 hours ago||
Strange, I managed to sign up with an email alias and pretty much always have my proton vpn turned on, never had any issues with Claude code or web - maybe I’m about to? :D

Been thinking of switching to a multi model harness anyway.

ddxv 19 hours ago||
Deepseek models seem as good and are like 20x cheaper for me.
yenihesap 20 hours ago||
Just use one of the alternatives, there are so many. I recommend DeepSeek, GLM/Z-AI or Qwen. They are cheaper and offer competitive performance to Anthropic.
throwaway63467 19 hours ago|
Probably they think you’re using a personal account for your company, they don’t want that as they heavily (?) subsidize personal usage.
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