On Wed, 28 May 2008, Barry Shein wrote:
On May 28, 2008 at 21:43 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Peter Beckman) wrote:
On Wed, 28 May 2008, Dorn Hetzel wrote:
I would think that simply requiring some appropriate amount of
irrevocable
funds (wire transfer, etc) for a deposit that will be forfeited in the
case
of usage in violation of AUP/contract/etc would be both sufficient and
not
excessive for allowing port 25 access, etc.
Until you find out that the source of those supposedly irrevocable
funds
was stolen or fraudulent, and you have some sort of court subpoena to
give
it back.
I don't believe there is a way for you to outwit the scammer/spammer
by
making them pay more of their or someone elses money. If you have
what
they need, they'll find a way to trick you into giving it to them.
Are you still trying to prove that Amazon, Dell, The World, etc can't
possibly work?
Amazon and Dell ship physical goods. Amazon Web Services sells services,
as do I. Services are commonly enabled and activated immediately after
payment or verification of a valid credit card, as is often expected by
the customer immediately after payment. Shipment of physical goods will
almost always take at least 24 hours, often longer, enabling more thorough
checks of credit, however they might do it.
And even with the extra time to review the transaction and attempt to
detect fraud, I'm confident Amazon and Dell lose millions per year due to
fraud. The reality is that the millions they lose to fraud doesn't affect
us because a Blu-Ray player purchased with a stolen credit card doesn't
send spam or initiate DOS attacks.
At least not yet; those Blu-Ray players do have an ethernet port.
By your reasoning why don't the spammers just empty out Amazon's (et
al) warehouses and retire! Oh right, they'd have to sell it all over
the internet which'd mean taking credit cards...
Now you're just being rediculous. Or sarcastic. :-)
I am a big, big fan of assessing charges for AUP abuse and making some
realistic attempt to try to make sure it's collectible, and otherwise
make some attempt to know who you're doing business with.
Charging whom? The spammer who pays your extra AUP abuse charges with
stolen paypal accounts, credit cards, and legit bank accounts funded by
money stolen from paypal accounts and transferred from stolen credit
cards?
If you are taking card-not-present credit card transactions over the
Internet or phone, and not shipping physical goods but providing services,
in my experience the merchant gets screwed, no matter how much money you
might have charged for the privilege of using port 25 or violating AUPs.
That money you collected and believed was yours and was in your bank
account can be taken out just as easily 6 months later, after the lazy
card holder finally reviews his credit card bill, sees unrecognized
charges and says "This is fraudulent!" And there you are, without your
money.
Getting someone to fax their ID in takes extra time and resources, and
means it might be hours before you get your account "approved," and for
some service providers, part of the value of the service is the immediacy
in which a customer can gain new service.
Beckman
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Beckman Internet Guy
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.angryox.com/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
