Anthropic banned a paying user for "suspicious signals" — no warning, no human appeal

Anthropic banned me for "suspicious signals"

A long-time Claude Max subscriber at $200/month got banned overnight with a template email citing "suspicious signals" — no clause, no example, no human appeal path. A colleague in the Philippines was banned right after paying $100 for Max. GitHub issues show similar cases in Brazil, Singapore, and Malaysia, some hitting multiple linked accounts within hours of upgrading. The author argues Anthropic's enforcement feels like 2010s Google account bans: automated, opaque, and disproportionately painful for individuals who depend on the product. Enterprise customers get account managers; Max users get a no-reply address and a reference ID. The author filed an appeal but no longer trusts a single frontier lab with their entire workflow, and plans to diversify across other providers and open-weight models.

Why it matters: Multiple paid users across countries report sudden bans after payment — not an isolated glitch. HKR all hit, but this is a user complaint, not an official statement, so capped at 78 due to information asymmetry.