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It's worth mentioning there's a very vibrant piracy community that abuses heroku's free tier for torrent to direct-download bots and myriad other purposes. Tho

It's worth mentioning there's a very vibrant piracy community that abuses heroku's free tier for torrent to direct-download bots and myriad other purposes. Thousands and thousands of fake accounts using the resources to their limits 24/7. It's likely also the reason Google's moved away from unlimited storage for educational institutions. I can understand why Salesforce has felt the need to restrict access.

stjohnswarts 4y ago
Couldn't they simply charge $1 a month and see how much of these meddlesome accounts get shut down? I bet it would be over 95% along with limited disk space.
- magundu 4y ago
  It might cause existing customers lower their plan to $1.
swyx 4y ago
i belatedly came to this realization that this is a common problem for all hosting (CDNs, because free bandwidth, and CI/CD, because free compute, and anything that offers free storage) companies. I call this the PCN problem - free tier hosting for anything means you eventually have to deal with Porn, Crypto, Nazis. everyone handrolls prevention measures, i once proposed an industry council where we swap tips, but everyone views it as competitive advantage for some reason so it didnt go anywhere.
- shrewduser 4y ago
  Porn and crypto sure, but what are nazi's using free hosting and bandwidth for?
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    Presumably, "nazi" here is a stand-in for any form of communication not protected by free speech laws and / or is actively forbidden by government censors (or perhaps merely undesirable by social standards). Hate speech, anti-government advocacy, promotion of violence and terrorism etc will use "free" tier accounts because they want as little capability of being tracked to in-real-life people as possible. They may or may not fully utilize the bandwidth, but they will absolutely take advantage of access to resources that don't require real identification, and that adds an extra burden of regulatory compliance on the company offering it (even if it is just hiring a few extra people to manage takedown orders, etc).
    - pjc50 4y ago
      Things like Kiwifarms which provide a risk of substantial reputational damage if you're seen to be supporting them. There's a campaign on Twitter to deplatform KF from Cloudflare after more SWATting incidents, for example.
      - brightball 4y ago
        Everyday I learn about a new dark corner of the internet.
        mynameishere 4y ago
        You're just now learning about Twitter?
    - jkaplowitz 4y ago
      No, "nazi" is pretty literal - Cloudflare hosted Stormfront and the Daily Stormer for a while, both of which are actually neo-Nazi. Wikipedia and Axios seem to think Cloudflare stopped hosting Stormfront in 2017, and I don't want to visit a neo-Nazi site even to determine how true this is, but stormfront.org's A records in DNS do still point to Cloudflare IPs. [Edit: someone found an article from later in 2017 where it seems like Cloudflare resumed hosting Stormfront just over a month after it had stopped hosting it.]
- alx__ 4y ago
  Only recently learned that crypto jerks will try to abuse free compute during the build step for hosting services
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - epolanski 4y ago
    They injected miners in websites and even free CI pipelines on GitHub and similar.
- collegeburner 4y ago
  missed the opportunity to call it NPC which lowkey fits better :)
base 4y ago
I think that's one of the reasons, but the main one is economical. For a long time they dealt with the free accounts, so in a way they have already a lot of protections in place, and if they wanted they could keep the existing free accounts and just not accept further signups for this account type.
rjh29 4y ago
> It's likely also the reason Google's moved away from unlimited storage for educational institutions. Absolutely, piracy forums have guides to fake being a student to get an unlimited account, then mirror huge (1TB+) gdrives full of pirated content to your own. This was (is?) happening on a huge scale.
- eastbound 4y ago
  What prevents adults from sharing movies from their GDrive, is the consciousness that Google might revoke this account, the backup account and all of your identity for life. Unfortunately, if you did this to youngsters, they’re too young to have read enough horror stories.
  - effingwewt 4y ago
    No, young kids use google for nothing other than search, and they are getting off that too. I'm more and more hearing 'search' or 'look up' instead of 'google' as a verb. My kid's circles of friends consider email to be like snail mail/phone calls- nothing but spam. I warned them about g-products for years while they were growing up, but I needn't have worried- they see g/fb/insta/snap et al for the garbage it is. Most of them use telegram or whatsap for communication. Kids im speaking of are 15/17 (both girls). My youngest(boy) at 12 is more worried about football. They use plex or whatever for sharing. They schooled me hard.
    - Kinrany 4y ago
      Do they still use WhatsApp despite it being owned by Facebook?
      - effingwewt 4y ago
        Yea, I warned them when the purchase went down, there was a migration to telegram and discord but they still use it as far as I know. I'm just glad it's the lesser of the available evils. I definitely have friends with kids in the same age range (and family members of the same age) who use insta-makeup IRL and have phones out taking pics all the time. Still email is something considered necessary to sign up for stuff, not something they closely associate with their identity, or something they'd be scared to lose. I was hearing on the radio the other day the average person will use something like 140+ email addresses in their lifetime. Found the article they were discussing here[1] Between jobs, schools, throwaways and over many years this seems feasible. [1] https://studyfinds.org/digital-footprint-social-media/#:~:text=Society%20%26%20Culture%20News-,Your%20'digital%20footprint'%20might%20shock%20you%3A%20Average%20person%20posts,social%20media%20in%20their%20lifetime&text=LONDON%20%E2%80%94%20The%20modern%20person%20leaves,addresses%20over%20their%20entire%20life https://studyfinds.org/digital-footprint-social-media/#:~:te....
EToS 4y ago
its a shame they didn't move to having a CC linked to the account, and keeping the free dyno tier
nullityrofl 4y ago
It's also one of the single most abused platforms for malware command control hosting. I've spent the better part of a decade chasing down state based actors and crimeware actors who have abused Heroku's free tier. Heroku's abuse efforts cannot be cheap.

stjohnswarts 4y ago

Couldn't they simply charge $1 a month and see how much of these meddlesome accounts get shut down? I bet it would be over 95% along with limited disk space.

magundu 4y ago
It might cause existing customers lower their plan to $1.

swyx 4y ago

i belatedly came to this realization that this is a common problem for all hosting (CDNs, because free bandwidth, and CI/CD, because free compute, and anything that offers free storage) companies. I call this the PCN problem - free tier hosting for anything means you eventually have to deal with Porn, Crypto, Nazis. everyone handrolls prevention measures, i once proposed an industry council where we swap tips, but everyone views it as competitive advantage for some reason so it didnt go anywhere.

shrewduser 4y ago
Porn and crypto sure, but what are nazi's using free hosting and bandwidth for?
- zdragnar 4y ago
  Presumably, "nazi" here is a stand-in for any form of communication not protected by free speech laws and / or is actively forbidden by government censors (or perhaps merely undesirable by social standards). Hate speech, anti-government advocacy, promotion of violence and terrorism etc will use "free" tier accounts because they want as little capability of being tracked to in-real-life people as possible. They may or may not fully utilize the bandwidth, but they will absolutely take advantage of access to resources that don't require real identification, and that adds an extra burden of regulatory compliance on the company offering it (even if it is just hiring a few extra people to manage takedown orders, etc).
  - pjc50 4y ago
    Things like Kiwifarms which provide a risk of substantial reputational damage if you're seen to be supporting them. There's a campaign on Twitter to deplatform KF from Cloudflare after more SWATting incidents, for example.
    - brightball 4y ago
      Everyday I learn about a new dark corner of the internet.
      - mynameishere 4y ago
        You're just now learning about Twitter?
  - jkaplowitz 4y ago
    No, "nazi" is pretty literal - Cloudflare hosted Stormfront and the Daily Stormer for a while, both of which are actually neo-Nazi. Wikipedia and Axios seem to think Cloudflare stopped hosting Stormfront in 2017, and I don't want to visit a neo-Nazi site even to determine how true this is, but stormfront.org's A records in DNS do still point to Cloudflare IPs. [Edit: someone found an article from later in 2017 where it seems like Cloudflare resumed hosting Stormfront just over a month after it had stopped hosting it.]
alx__ 4y ago
Only recently learned that crypto jerks will try to abuse free compute during the build step for hosting services
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- epolanski 4y ago
  They injected miners in websites and even free CI pipelines on GitHub and similar.
collegeburner 4y ago
missed the opportunity to call it NPC which lowkey fits better :)

base 4y ago

I think that's one of the reasons, but the main one is economical. For a long time they dealt with the free accounts, so in a way they have already a lot of protections in place, and if they wanted they could keep the existing free accounts and just not accept further signups for this account type.

rjh29 4y ago

> It's likely also the reason Google's moved away from unlimited storage for educational institutions. Absolutely, piracy forums have guides to fake being a student to get an unlimited account, then mirror huge (1TB+) gdrives full of pirated content to your own. This was (is?) happening on a huge scale.

eastbound 4y ago
What prevents adults from sharing movies from their GDrive, is the consciousness that Google might revoke this account, the backup account and all of your identity for life. Unfortunately, if you did this to youngsters, they’re too young to have read enough horror stories.
- effingwewt 4y ago
  No, young kids use google for nothing other than search, and they are getting off that too. I'm more and more hearing 'search' or 'look up' instead of 'google' as a verb. My kid's circles of friends consider email to be like snail mail/phone calls- nothing but spam. I warned them about g-products for years while they were growing up, but I needn't have worried- they see g/fb/insta/snap et al for the garbage it is. Most of them use telegram or whatsap for communication. Kids im speaking of are 15/17 (both girls). My youngest(boy) at 12 is more worried about football. They use plex or whatever for sharing. They schooled me hard.
  - Kinrany 4y ago
    Do they still use WhatsApp despite it being owned by Facebook?
    - effingwewt 4y ago
      Yea, I warned them when the purchase went down, there was a migration to telegram and discord but they still use it as far as I know. I'm just glad it's the lesser of the available evils. I definitely have friends with kids in the same age range (and family members of the same age) who use insta-makeup IRL and have phones out taking pics all the time. Still email is something considered necessary to sign up for stuff, not something they closely associate with their identity, or something they'd be scared to lose. I was hearing on the radio the other day the average person will use something like 140+ email addresses in their lifetime. Found the article they were discussing here[1] Between jobs, schools, throwaways and over many years this seems feasible. [1] https://studyfinds.org/digital-footprint-social-media/#:~:text=Society%20%26%20Culture%20News-,Your%20'digital%20footprint'%20might%20shock%20you%3A%20Average%20person%20posts,social%20media%20in%20their%20lifetime&text=LONDON%20%E2%80%94%20The%20modern%20person%20leaves,addresses%20over%20their%20entire%20life https://studyfinds.org/digital-footprint-social-media/#:~:te....

EToS 4y ago

its a shame they didn't move to having a CC linked to the account, and keeping the free dyno tier

nullityrofl 4y ago

It's also one of the single most abused platforms for malware command control hosting. I've spent the better part of a decade chasing down state based actors and crimeware actors who have abused Heroku's free tier. Heroku's abuse efforts cannot be cheap.