Anthropic is back with another mass account purge. The trigger? A Claude Max 20x "zero-dollar" loophole that surfaced over the weekend.
Users could pull up a German SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) debit entry and plug in a properly formatted IBAN. The system, apparently too eager to please, granted the $200-a-month Max 20x plan before even verifying that the money actually landed.
The bug was patched after a few hours. Subscriptions opened through the exploit got yanked, and the associated accounts started getting banned.
But the banhammer didn't just fall on free riders. The community is flooded with complaints from legitimate users — accounts that have been active for months, ones where people paid their own way, even free-tier users who never touched the exploit.
One company reports multiple employees getting banned on the same day. Some suspect sharing an IP address, device, or payment environment may have triggered a blanket risk-control response.
So far, Anthropic hasn't said how many accounts were axed, or whether they've accidentally caught innocent users in the net.