5 ms·

Yeah when I land on your web site and I get: Request on Hold - Suspicous Activity Detected. I'm turned off instantly. I'm on a static IP on a respectable IS

by unxdfa 4y ago

Yeah when I land on your web site and I get: Request on Hold - Suspicous Activity Detected. I'm turned off instantly. I'm on a static IP on a respectable ISP in the UK and I'm not waiting in a queue for 57 seconds and counting to look at the sales pitch. Edit: so I use that time wisely to shitpost about it on HN, then check TrustPilot and I see: "Unfortunately, based on your description (I need a ticket number or other customer information to find you in our system), you accidentally resembled an abuser." Not a good outward appearance. I'll stick with AWS and paying through the nose.

datadeft 4y ago
Yeah companies and their small minded "sysadmins" are very eager to use an IP address as the primary predictor of hostile intent, sometimes they add user-agent as well. Not sure why but this is the sort of behaviour why I cannot trust such companies with my business.
- cowfish 4y ago
  To put that in perspective, I am currently in a developing country and CloudFlare websites are making me click 'I am human' checkboxes dozens of times per day.
- adql 4y ago
  HN does the same
  - unxdfa 4y ago
    HN is basically glued to CloudFlare from a business perspective so do we expect anything else?
  - datadeft 4y ago
    Sorry but who cares what HN does? Is this a business? No. Should we follow any of the practices of HN? I do not think so. My personal website has a more scalable infrastructure than HN.
- ta8903 4y ago
  You don't know how bad it is. As a third worlder, I tried to sign up for Hetzner storage once, my account was immediately flagged as suspicious. That by itself isn't a big deal, much bigger web services do the same. But they sent me a link to some third party identity confirmation service, which made me do a dumb song and dance of holding an ID in front of my face in front of a webcam to verify myself and had both automated and human(?) stages. That by itself took a dozen tries to get through. But even after that, Hetzner still deemed my account as suspicious, I had to write a couple paragraphs of explanation to justify my existence. I assumed after this they should have no reason to not let me through. But 3 days later I got a mail saying the account was permanently banned from Hetzner.
  - datadeft 4y ago
    This is exactly why I do not want to use such companies. I do not want to be an accessory in this racist crap. Your IP does not define who you are. Hetzner could two things: - stop operating in countries they don't want business from - treat people equally What they are doing is: pathetic.
abujazar 4y ago
Maybe you're behind «Carrier-grade NAT», sharing your public IP with thousands of other customers?
- unxdfa 4y ago
  No I've got a paid static IP which I exclusively own on a business service line. There is no excuse for being a victim of an algorithm. And I never get this anywhere else!
  - arp242 4y ago
    My static IP was erroneously blocked from Wikipedia as some previous owner used it to run open proxies or the like. Never had any problems anywhere else. It happens.
    - unxdfa 4y ago
      "It happens" is a bad defence.
      - arp242 4y ago
        It's not a defence, it's just reality. Abuse is real. Using IP addresses to combat abuse is very broken – I too had carrier-grade NAT when I lived in a developing country in the past – but it does work. Abuse prevention is hard, but very much required. Abuse prevention with zero false positives is nearly impossible with the current state of technology. So yes, "it happens" because all of this is hard. You can pretend the problem doesn't exist, but that's denying reality.
  - tinus_hn 4y ago
    As you might understand that is exactly what everybody, both the guilty and the innocent, says.
    - unxdfa 4y ago
      In a court of law I am innocent until proven guilty. In technology circles I am guilty until proven innocent. That's the difference, the outcome of which is the technology provider can quite frankly fuck off.
aent 4y ago
I tried to register with them once and also hit one of those automated trip wires, so they made me send them my ID with a bunch of other stuff and then _refused to create an account for me_. The internet is full of stories like mine, so yeah, their abuse detection is total crap.

by unxdfa 4y ago

datadeft 4y ago

Yeah companies and their small minded "sysadmins" are very eager to use an IP address as the primary predictor of hostile intent, sometimes they add user-agent as well. Not sure why but this is the sort of behaviour why I cannot trust such companies with my business.

cowfish 4y ago
To put that in perspective, I am currently in a developing country and CloudFlare websites are making me click 'I am human' checkboxes dozens of times per day.
adql 4y ago
HN does the same
- unxdfa 4y ago
  HN is basically glued to CloudFlare from a business perspective so do we expect anything else?
- datadeft 4y ago
  Sorry but who cares what HN does? Is this a business? No. Should we follow any of the practices of HN? I do not think so. My personal website has a more scalable infrastructure than HN.
ta8903 4y ago
You don't know how bad it is. As a third worlder, I tried to sign up for Hetzner storage once, my account was immediately flagged as suspicious. That by itself isn't a big deal, much bigger web services do the same. But they sent me a link to some third party identity confirmation service, which made me do a dumb song and dance of holding an ID in front of my face in front of a webcam to verify myself and had both automated and human(?) stages. That by itself took a dozen tries to get through. But even after that, Hetzner still deemed my account as suspicious, I had to write a couple paragraphs of explanation to justify my existence. I assumed after this they should have no reason to not let me through. But 3 days later I got a mail saying the account was permanently banned from Hetzner.
- datadeft 4y ago
  This is exactly why I do not want to use such companies. I do not want to be an accessory in this racist crap. Your IP does not define who you are. Hetzner could two things: - stop operating in countries they don't want business from - treat people equally What they are doing is: pathetic.

abujazar 4y ago

Maybe you're behind «Carrier-grade NAT», sharing your public IP with thousands of other customers?

unxdfa 4y ago
No I've got a paid static IP which I exclusively own on a business service line. There is no excuse for being a victim of an algorithm. And I never get this anywhere else!
- arp242 4y ago
  My static IP was erroneously blocked from Wikipedia as some previous owner used it to run open proxies or the like. Never had any problems anywhere else. It happens.
  - unxdfa 4y ago
    "It happens" is a bad defence.
    - arp242 4y ago
      It's not a defence, it's just reality. Abuse is real. Using IP addresses to combat abuse is very broken – I too had carrier-grade NAT when I lived in a developing country in the past – but it does work. Abuse prevention is hard, but very much required. Abuse prevention with zero false positives is nearly impossible with the current state of technology. So yes, "it happens" because all of this is hard. You can pretend the problem doesn't exist, but that's denying reality.
- tinus_hn 4y ago
  As you might understand that is exactly what everybody, both the guilty and the innocent, says.
  - unxdfa 4y ago
    In a court of law I am innocent until proven guilty. In technology circles I am guilty until proven innocent. That's the difference, the outcome of which is the technology provider can quite frankly fuck off.

aent 4y ago

I tried to register with them once and also hit one of those automated trip wires, so they made me send them my ID with a bunch of other stuff and then _refused to create an account for me_. The internet is full of stories like mine, so yeah, their abuse detection is total crap.