11–18 of 18 posts
Open your account with a $100 Visa gift card.
Can I use an anonymous user?, that is I don't want to disclose my name, address, email or any other personal information
Amazon verifies accounts heavily to stop fraud and abuse. I needed a legitimate telephone number (which they called).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Has that been a common problem for AWS users? I'm not asking to be snide, I honestly don't know. I just haven't heard a lot about that happening. Something else to keep in mind... Amazon have a reputation for being pretty good about issuing refunds in situations where people rack up large bills due to various kinds of accidents. There are a number of such stories in old HN posts, and my own experience was very favora…
API key theft is a common problem with AWS users. The problem people have is that when they generate an API key they grant that key "everything" even account management stuff. Instead of giving it the least privilege needed to accomplish whatever it is that it does. Then they'll inadvertently upload it to e.g. GitHub or similar in some source code and bad guys have bots which will steal it then make use of your accou…
OK, yeah, that was the one scenario I was thinking about. I just didn't know if there was some other AWS hack being employed commonly.
For this, there is at least a solution, even if people don't use it, and that is to use IAM roles. Create your root account and never (or almost never) use it, except to create IAM users with more limited permissions, and then use the AIM user for all your day to day stuff.
If latter, may I suggest you try digitalocean then ? I know you are talking about AWS sepcifically but for your use case, get a $5 DO VPS and play as much as you want.
They have a "billing alerts" feature that should help. It will send you email if your charges exceed the amount you've set.
If you are hacked the first thing the bad guys do is to disable your billing alerts.
I interpreted "doing something silly" as "firing up 10,000 instances and forgetting to shut them back down", rather than fraud.
There are free micro instances, last I knew.
Unfortunately the word free is a little ambiguous since it can be free (as in beer) but suddenly you are charged because you make something stupid (or someone hacked your account and created a zillion services)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are hacked the first thing the bad guys do is to disable your billing alerts.
Well, if you are hacked, you're not liable for the fraudulent charges anyway (in the U.S.... mileage may vary elsewhere). Your CC company will charge it back, in the unlikely event that Amazon didn't take care of it on their own initiative (which they almost certainly would... as another poster noted, they have a good reputation in that area). I interpreted "doing something silly" as "firing up 10,000 instances and f…