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Twilio blocked our account and with it hundreds of our customers [resolved]

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Re: Twilio blocked our account and with it hundreds of our customers [resolved]

#61

Post by dx034 »

blowski wrote: post #38
holoduke wrote: post #25

Welcome to the new world where tech companies rule. Where moral standards are gone. Where local laws do not apply. This shit is happening a lot. Artists on Youtube, App builders on Playstore/iOS. Marketing companies on Google search, pretty women on Instagram, political men on Facebook or Twitter. I feel for you. Hope it gets alright.

Remove the tech-specific words from your comment, and you would probably find people saying the same thing throughout all of history.

Not sure if large car companies or clothes manufacturers (just two examples of large companies) were ever able to ignore legal rights of their customers. This has only become possible with digital services where companies refuse to acknowledge local laws and regulation.

Re: Twilio blocked our account and with it hundreds of our customers [resolved]

#62

Post by anonporridge »

morrbo wrote: post #39
work_for_x wrote: post #28

I work for Twilio and forwarded it internally. If you are 6 years with the company, you probably have an AE assigned to your company or have been in touch with any other human being along the way? UPDATE: Your account should be active now.

It's a bit shit that they had to jump through so many hoops, with HN being the only one that actually worked (after 7 hours) in order to get in touch. Serious kudos to you for helping them but I know a lot of people who wouldn't touch your company with a bargepole for these kind of reasons. Having to kick up a fuss on social media in order to get service, how very 2021..

It makes sense.

If the problem really gets kicked up in the media and left unaddressed, then eventually politicians will be forced to add some real regulation to force companies to do right by their customers.

That'd be expensive. So instead, ignore customers who can't kick up social attention and quickly resolve those that can before it gets legs. No one cares about the unknown, disconnected hordes of betrayed customers who lost their access for unknown reasons.

And I'm sure no company is covertly doing this to their tiny, would be competitors, killing the baby in the crib so to speak.

In fact, if you're an employee that actually cares about your customers, you'd do well to not internally raise these issues. Let the PR hit the executives harder and make them squirm.

Re: Twilio blocked our account and with it hundreds of our customers [resolved]

#63

Post by plasma »

ksajadi wrote: post #29

Sorry to hear. Twilio has changed since its early days. Last month, our bill went from $20 per month to $16,000. The reason: fraudsters use Twilio to setup premium numbers, then use Twilio customers (like us) to send OTPs to those numbers using bots. The result is us out of pocket, fraudsters and Twilio making money. Twilio is also the only Pay as you Go SaaS vendor that doesn’t have spend limits on accounts and advi…

I've only briefly played with Twilio, but would it be possible for your app/TwilML to intercept the request to send a text to those numbers, and detect a volume of X messages being sent to the same number (highly unlikely) and abort?

Re: Twilio blocked our account and with it hundreds of our customers [resolved]

#64

Post by halfdan »

dx034 wrote: post #61
blowski wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remove the tech-specific words from your comment, and you would probably find people saying the same thing throughout all of history.

Not sure if large car companies or clothes manufacturers (just two examples of large companies) were ever able to ignore legal rights of their customers. This has only become possible with digital services where companies refuse to acknowledge local laws and regulation.

Car companies selling cars exceeding allowed emission levels and clothes manufacturers exploiting child labour in third world countries?

Sure there were "fines" but as usual that was pocket change them..

Re: Twilio blocked our account and with it hundreds of our customers [resolved]

#65

Post by jFriedensreich »

a lot of us have this as nightmare scenario.

- long term we really should move to an industry wide due process system with legislation for compensation and other parameters. once there is some more structure there can also be insurances or similar ways to prevent something like this to ruin a company.

- there maybe is a market for more intermediaries that bundle twilio and messagebird or similar providers and have an official strong communication channel to the providers to resolve issues and provide failover

Re: Twilio blocked our account and with it hundreds of our customers [resolved]

#66

Post by srmarm »

ovi256 wrote: post #43
Rastonbury wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How the the fraudster make money, not familiar with the concept of premium numbers. EDIT: Oh premium numbers charge the sender

The fraudsters setup premium numbers with some other telephony provider, possibly in another country. Then they use those numbers to receive 2FA (two factor auth) passwords (either SMS or read aloud in calls). Because the defrauded party's servers called those premium numbers through Twilio, the defrauded party has to pay Twilio. AFAIK there's no easy way to always, securely detect premium numbers. The fraudster can…

> The fraudster can setup a forward from a normal number to a premium one anyway. So checking number prefix is useless.

Would the forwarding party not have to pay the premium rate part in this case?

Re: Twilio blocked our account and with it hundreds of our customers [resolved]

#67

Post by rapnie »

> Since then, we are trying to get in contact with them through every channel we could find: email, Twitter, LinkedIn, [..] They don't have a support number we can call.

Tons of platforms seem to operate like this, and this kinda thing happens all the time. HN is turning into a desperate last resort as a PleaForHelp-as-a-Service (hoping that bad PR or a company insider is the trigger).

But by now business decision-makers should really wake up and acknowledge the risk of choosing such platforms. Of course they should demand better service, but this is also something to research upfront ("is there a support desk and at least a phone number.") and then decide if they want to pay the extra money, or go somewhere else that addresses their needs.

Re: Twilio blocked our account and with it hundreds of our customers [resolved]

#68

Post by t0mas88 »

srmarm wrote: post #66
ovi256 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fraudsters setup premium numbers with some other telephony provider, possibly in another country. Then they use those numbers to receive 2FA (two factor auth) passwords (either SMS or read aloud in calls). Because the defrauded party's servers called those premium numbers through Twilio, the defrauded party has to pay Twilio. AFAIK there's no easy way to always, securely detect premium numbers. The fraudster can…

> The fraudster can setup a forward from a normal number to a premium one anyway. So checking number prefix is useless. Would the forwarding party not have to pay the premium rate part in this case?

Yes, in all telco systems I know the one that sets up call forwarding pays for the part from forwarder to destination.

Re: Twilio blocked our account and with it hundreds of our customers [resolved]

#69

Post by blowski »

dx034 wrote: post #61
blowski wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remove the tech-specific words from your comment, and you would probably find people saying the same thing throughout all of history.

Not sure if large car companies or clothes manufacturers (just two examples of large companies) were ever able to ignore legal rights of their customers. This has only become possible with digital services where companies refuse to acknowledge local laws and regulation.

For most of history, customers didn't have the kind of legal rights they have now. Businesses could refuse to serve you, warranties were non-existent until late 1800s. And even when consumers did get rights, there have been constant stories in newspapers of "big companies trampling on the rights of consumers".

Re: Twilio blocked our account and with it hundreds of our customers [resolved]

#70

Post by ksajadi »

blowski wrote: post #40
ksajadi wrote: post #29

Sorry to hear. Twilio has changed since its early days. Last month, our bill went from $20 per month to $16,000. The reason: fraudsters use Twilio to setup premium numbers, then use Twilio customers (like us) to send OTPs to those numbers using bots. The result is us out of pocket, fraudsters and Twilio making money. Twilio is also the only Pay as you Go SaaS vendor that doesn’t have spend limits on accounts and advi…

That's painful for you, but a good thing to know as a community. Is it possible to prevent sending to premium numbers?

Yes, but it adds insult to injury. One of the suggestions by Twilio is to use their service to check the number and send only to mobile numbers. The issue? Twilio charges per call for that service! So you pay them to "possibly" stop you paying them more and fraudsters. The whole thing stinks
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