3 ms·

Well what can you do? Trace their IP back to a VPN or web of proxies? Or more likely grandmas infected Windows XP computer? Then what? Start kicking doors down?

Well what can you do? Trace their IP back to a VPN or web of proxies? Or more likely grandmas infected Windows XP computer? Then what? Start kicking doors down? Going to get the FBI involved for a $20 purchase? Reminds me of Lebowski asking the cops about his Credence tape.

godelski 3y ago
> Going to get the FBI involved for a $20 purchase? Sure, why not? And if you're at the scale is Blizzard I'm sure it's a lot more than $20. We're collecting all kinds of information these days. Surveillance capitalism is a common term for it. Data is gold they say. So why not give that data to people that can use it to stop crime?
- golergka 3y ago
  Because they're in Russia or North Korea, and their bosses bosses are good friends of local police and secret services. What exactly can FBI do about them?
  - godelski 3y ago
    Well I guess to be fair it would be a matter of Homeland Security. Either way, there are agencies who's directives are about dealing with international fraud. Global commerce comes with global agreements. 1) There's certainly cards coming from non completely sanctioned countries. This means legal pathways. 2) If fraud is prevalent and these numbers can be tracked it makes for better policy decisions. It's not uncommon knowledge that we don't have the best privacy and security. This is at least ammo to do something about it.
- bongodongobob 3y ago
  Blizzard doesn't get paid for reporting fraud. They lose money. So what's the incentive for them to give a damn? They'll just push it back to the CC companies to deal with, if anything.
  - godelski 3y ago
    > So what's the incentive for them to give a damn? Do you only do things that you get paid to do?
    - bongodongobob 3y ago
      At work? 100% yes. If it's out of scope for my role or the project, it gets kicked up.
      - godelski 3y ago
        So if it is out of scope for your role or the project you mention the issue to someone else who's job it is to resolve those types of problems or do you make no such report and just hope they figure it out themselves? It's unclear which you mean.
        bongodongobob 3y ago
        If we are talking about credit card fraud for World of Warcraft accounts, the cost to fight it is far higher than ignoring it or kicking it back to your credit card company. There is 0 incentive for them to care other than doing the bare minimum because it's not their problem, it's the credit card company's problem. They offer MFA and that's all they should have to do.
        godelski 3y ago
        Did you dodge the question because you knew that you couldn't be consistent or because you felt that bringing up a new topic was better? > There is 0 incentive for them to care other than doing the bare minimum because it's not their problem, it's the credit card company's problem. I don't buy this and it sounds incredibly myopic. If it wasn't "their problem" then they wouldn't be doing anything about it. Which the OP talked about. So they aren't just taking the money and letting the credit card companies handle it, that doesn't even make any sense. Credit card companies have to get the money back. Honestly, it sounds cheaper to report it if reporting it leads to a significant reduction because you then have to pay fewer people to deal with this issue and process far fewer charge-backs. It's not much work to do (literally create a program to automate filling out a forum to the gov). We're arguing over less than a week's amount of work. Plus, it's the right thing to do. Idk about you, but money doesn't run my entire life. Letting it seems incredibly myopic as well. Money is just a tool to help me better my life but it sure isn't the only way to do that. And if we're not trying to do "the right thing" then the fuck do we even have a society for? Seriously, please reconsider your actions, because you're enabling the shittiness in society. I'm not saying you gotta be a saint, but if there's a pretty cheap action you can do to make your society any bit better, just do it.
faronel 3y ago
From the article as an example of what doesn't scale: "...He was going through emails in his inbox, then responding to questions in the craigslist forums, and hopping onto his cellphone about once every ten minutes. Calls were quick and to the point "Hi, this is Craig Newmark from craigslist.org. We are having problems with a customer of your ISP and would like to discuss how we can remedy their bad behavior in our real estate forums". He was literally chasing down forum spammers one by one, sometimes taking five minutes per problem..." Seems like it's possible but not feasible to build a pipeline to scale out that sort of behavior.
- saagarjha 3y ago
  Why not? It doesn't have to the founder on every call if you are looking to scale.
  - michaelt 3y ago
    It depends if your revenue scales as fast as abuse scales. Amazon should be able to keep on top of fraud easily, twice the sales means twice the revenue means they can afford twice the fraud checks, if they want to. That fake $30 "2tb microsd card" puts $30 of real money in their bank account. But for something like Twitter, revenue is only vaguely related to number of tweets. That "elon musk wants to give you free dogecoin" tweet doesn't make them a cent.
    - Jochim 3y ago
      Then their business isn't viable. The alternative is that we allow businesses to externalise those costs onto society.
jph00 3y ago
When I was at FastMail I did a lot of very manual work to not just block spammers and other abusers, but to make their life as difficult as possible. That included figuring out how to notify the people running the servers they used (including sometimes finding the IRC chat for the folks on that server and telling them they had an intruder). One of my favorite things was to redirect bounce messages that were targeted at innocent FastMail customers to the actual spammer's email address -- which I found stopped the spam from them very quickly, once their inbox filled up with thousands of bounce messages! Personally, I think it's reasonable to care about such things, and to try to do something about it. If no-one cares or tries, then sucky people will just suck even more.
- holigot 3y ago
  Thx for this detailed feedback. Is there any reason why you did change mail away from Fastmail after such a long time and now use Google as Mailserver?
Nextgrid 3y ago
> to a VPN or web of proxies? Or more likely grandmas infected Windows XP computer? Legislation can be changed so people are considered responsible for the abuse that comes from their network unless they can pass the buck to someone else. This will quickly cause those Windows XP machines to fall off the internet unless their owners fancy constantly being bogged down in legal trouble. > Going to get the FBI involved for a $20 purchase? The alternative is effectively saying that theft under 20 bucks is decriminalized?
- probably_wrong 3y ago
  > The alternative is effectively saying that theft under 20 bucks is decriminalized? Those who tried to convince a police officer to investigate a bike theft can tell you that the threshold is actually higher.
- underdeserver 3y ago
  San Francisco is trying that right now, aren't they? How's that going for them?
- bongodongobob 3y ago
  Probably anything under $1000, yes.
- derivagral 3y ago
  $20 seems cheap; not long ago scooter operators would lose hundreds to theft at least, with little interest.

godelski 3y ago

> Going to get the FBI involved for a $20 purchase? Sure, why not? And if you're at the scale is Blizzard I'm sure it's a lot more than $20. We're collecting all kinds of information these days. Surveillance capitalism is a common term for it. Data is gold they say. So why not give that data to people that can use it to stop crime?

golergka 3y ago
Because they're in Russia or North Korea, and their bosses bosses are good friends of local police and secret services. What exactly can FBI do about them?
- godelski 3y ago
  Well I guess to be fair it would be a matter of Homeland Security. Either way, there are agencies who's directives are about dealing with international fraud. Global commerce comes with global agreements. 1) There's certainly cards coming from non completely sanctioned countries. This means legal pathways. 2) If fraud is prevalent and these numbers can be tracked it makes for better policy decisions. It's not uncommon knowledge that we don't have the best privacy and security. This is at least ammo to do something about it.
bongodongobob 3y ago
Blizzard doesn't get paid for reporting fraud. They lose money. So what's the incentive for them to give a damn? They'll just push it back to the CC companies to deal with, if anything.
- godelski 3y ago
  > So what's the incentive for them to give a damn? Do you only do things that you get paid to do?
  - bongodongobob 3y ago
    At work? 100% yes. If it's out of scope for my role or the project, it gets kicked up.
    - godelski 3y ago
      So if it is out of scope for your role or the project you mention the issue to someone else who's job it is to resolve those types of problems or do you make no such report and just hope they figure it out themselves? It's unclear which you mean.
      - bongodongobob 3y ago
        If we are talking about credit card fraud for World of Warcraft accounts, the cost to fight it is far higher than ignoring it or kicking it back to your credit card company. There is 0 incentive for them to care other than doing the bare minimum because it's not their problem, it's the credit card company's problem. They offer MFA and that's all they should have to do.
        godelski 3y ago
        Did you dodge the question because you knew that you couldn't be consistent or because you felt that bringing up a new topic was better? > There is 0 incentive for them to care other than doing the bare minimum because it's not their problem, it's the credit card company's problem. I don't buy this and it sounds incredibly myopic. If it wasn't "their problem" then they wouldn't be doing anything about it. Which the OP talked about. So they aren't just taking the money and letting the credit card companies handle it, that doesn't even make any sense. Credit card companies have to get the money back. Honestly, it sounds cheaper to report it if reporting it leads to a significant reduction because you then have to pay fewer people to deal with this issue and process far fewer charge-backs. It's not much work to do (literally create a program to automate filling out a forum to the gov). We're arguing over less than a week's amount of work. Plus, it's the right thing to do. Idk about you, but money doesn't run my entire life. Letting it seems incredibly myopic as well. Money is just a tool to help me better my life but it sure isn't the only way to do that. And if we're not trying to do "the right thing" then the fuck do we even have a society for? Seriously, please reconsider your actions, because you're enabling the shittiness in society. I'm not saying you gotta be a saint, but if there's a pretty cheap action you can do to make your society any bit better, just do it.

faronel 3y ago

From the article as an example of what doesn't scale: "...He was going through emails in his inbox, then responding to questions in the craigslist forums, and hopping onto his cellphone about once every ten minutes. Calls were quick and to the point "Hi, this is Craig Newmark from craigslist.org. We are having problems with a customer of your ISP and would like to discuss how we can remedy their bad behavior in our real estate forums". He was literally chasing down forum spammers one by one, sometimes taking five minutes per problem..." Seems like it's possible but not feasible to build a pipeline to scale out that sort of behavior.

saagarjha 3y ago
Why not? It doesn't have to the founder on every call if you are looking to scale.
- michaelt 3y ago
  It depends if your revenue scales as fast as abuse scales. Amazon should be able to keep on top of fraud easily, twice the sales means twice the revenue means they can afford twice the fraud checks, if they want to. That fake $30 "2tb microsd card" puts $30 of real money in their bank account. But for something like Twitter, revenue is only vaguely related to number of tweets. That "elon musk wants to give you free dogecoin" tweet doesn't make them a cent.
  - Jochim 3y ago
    Then their business isn't viable. The alternative is that we allow businesses to externalise those costs onto society.

jph00 3y ago

When I was at FastMail I did a lot of very manual work to not just block spammers and other abusers, but to make their life as difficult as possible. That included figuring out how to notify the people running the servers they used (including sometimes finding the IRC chat for the folks on that server and telling them they had an intruder). One of my favorite things was to redirect bounce messages that were targeted at innocent FastMail customers to the actual spammer's email address -- which I found stopped the spam from them very quickly, once their inbox filled up with thousands of bounce messages! Personally, I think it's reasonable to care about such things, and to try to do something about it. If no-one cares or tries, then sucky people will just suck even more.

holigot 3y ago
Thx for this detailed feedback. Is there any reason why you did change mail away from Fastmail after such a long time and now use Google as Mailserver?

Nextgrid 3y ago

> to a VPN or web of proxies? Or more likely grandmas infected Windows XP computer? Legislation can be changed so people are considered responsible for the abuse that comes from their network unless they can pass the buck to someone else. This will quickly cause those Windows XP machines to fall off the internet unless their owners fancy constantly being bogged down in legal trouble. > Going to get the FBI involved for a $20 purchase? The alternative is effectively saying that theft under 20 bucks is decriminalized?

probably_wrong 3y ago
> The alternative is effectively saying that theft under 20 bucks is decriminalized? Those who tried to convince a police officer to investigate a bike theft can tell you that the threshold is actually higher.
underdeserver 3y ago
San Francisco is trying that right now, aren't they? How's that going for them?
bongodongobob 3y ago
Probably anything under $1000, yes.
derivagral 3y ago
$20 seems cheap; not long ago scooter operators would lose hundreds to theft at least, with little interest.