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> it's more likely intended for something else and is infected with malware / some intern being cute Nah, DO offers free credits so threat actors just keep abu
by KomoD 8mo ago
> it's more likely intended for something else and is infected with malware / some intern being cute
Nah, DO offers free credits so threat actors just keep abusing that, it's really easy to make (or buy) tons of fresh trial accounts.
- djkurlander 8mo agoAh, that makes sense. I’ve been wondering why DigitalOcean has so much of the bot traffic.
- TurdF3rguson 8mo agoHmm, I'll try to do it and report back on how easy it was.
- djkurlander 8mo agoThanks. I'd like to better understand the origin of DO's bot activity, and look forward to your report!
- TurdF3rguson 8mo agoActually it looks like it's because DO accepts Paypal, most hosts will require a credit card because of PP fraud but I guess they're going for markets where it's not common to have one. They do have free credits but PP billing requires a $5 charge which is already higher than a lot of other VPS plans.
- KomoD 8mo agoNo, it's not really because of PayPal. You can verify with a card, and stolen (or virtual) cards are cheap and easy to get. Even if you do the PayPal way and pay $5, that's still better specs and lasts longer than what you get with a $5 VPS, because the trial credit is $200 for a few months (or if you go the commonly abused method: GitHub student, you can get $200 for a year). And then combined with poor anti-fraud, poor abuse handling
- TurdF3rguson 8mo agoI think it's probably harder to sign up for hosting with a credit card than you think. It was a struggle for me until I managed to get a secured credit card (A deposit is made against the limit) which is very different from a debit card (Almost nobody accepts these) or a virtual card (these were impossible for me to get)
- KomoD 8mo agoI didn't specify credit card and what do you mean almost nobody accepts debit cards? My entire life I have pretty much only used debit cards everywhere and not once have I had an issue, especially not at hosting providers. Hetzner, AWS, Azure, DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, GCP, I can keep going, all of these have accepted my debit cards. And I was also not just guessing when I said those things, I have been in those circles previously.
- TurdF3rguson 8mo agoYours is likely issued from a US bank so you will experience less friction than the rest of us.