very cool, I wasn't expecting to find this so interesting. I yesterday for the first time thought about the "abuse the free tier" actors. I was trying to use a batching job service which limited free-tier batch sizes to 5, which was so low that it took away the point from using the automated job in the first place. I think the little info box explained that they keep the limit low to prevent abuse, and I started thinking about other ways they could prevent that abuse. Your post was very topical. thanks for sharing!
Keeping our free tier sustainable by preventing abuse
11–20 of 47 posts
Re: Keeping our free tier sustainable by preventing abuse
#12Where can we get a blocklist of those throwaway email domains?
or perhaps a really big whitelist of good ones? that would be extremely helpful!
Re: Keeping our free tier sustainable by preventing abuse
#13so you implemented some sort of machine learning?
Not at this time. Some simple heuristics go a long way and also makes it very easy to test and debug the logic.
I’ve seen fraud detection used in a SaaS product, and the great thing about a weighted rules approach, is professional services can understand it well enough to adjust it without help from engineering or data science, and they can explain to customers how it produced the results it did in a particular case, and the tradeoffs of adjusting the weights or thresholds, and the customers can understand it too. Whereas, a machine learning model, is much harder to understand and adjust, so issues are much more likely to be escalated back to engineering.
(This isn’t protecting the SaaS vendor against abusive signups, it is a feature of the SaaS product to help its customers detect fraud committed against themselves within the SaaS product’s scope.)
Re: Keeping our free tier sustainable by preventing abuse
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not at this time. Some simple heuristics go a long way and also makes it very easy to test and debug the logic.
I once did a machine learning project at Intel. The end result was that it was no better than simple statistics; but the statistics were easier to understand and explain. I realized the machine learning project was a "solution in search of a problem," and left.
Career hack: skip the machine learning and implement the simple statistics, then call it machine learning and refuse to explain it.
Re: Keeping our free tier sustainable by preventing abuse
#15Free tier and free trial abuse is a huge problem, but also a huge opportunity.
We have seen customers where free tier abusers created 80k+ accounts in a day and cost millions of dollars. We have also seen businesses, like Oddsjam add significant revenue by prompting abusers to pay.
The phycology of abuse is also quite interesting, where even what appears to be serious abusers (think fake credit cards, new email accounts etc.) will refuse a discount and pay full price if they feel they 'got caught'
Re: Keeping our free tier sustainable by preventing abuse
#16Where can we get a blocklist of those throwaway email domains? or perhaps a really big whitelist of good ones? that would be extremely helpful!
I don't see how you could know what everyone's personal domain is to whitelist.
Re: Keeping our free tier sustainable by preventing abuse
#17Free tier and free trial abuse is a huge problem, but also a huge opportunity. We have seen customers where free tier abusers created 80k+ accounts in a day and cost millions of dollars. We have also seen businesses, like Oddsjam add significant revenue by prompting abusers to pay. The phycology of abuse is also quite interesting, where even what appears to be serious abusers (think fake credit cards, new email accou…
I’d love to hear more about the idea that somebody making a fraudulent signup with a stolen credit card is potentially going to pay full price if they “get caught”
Re: Keeping our free tier sustainable by preventing abuse
#18Where can we get a blocklist of those throwaway email domains? or perhaps a really big whitelist of good ones? that would be extremely helpful!
Neither is a viable option, otherwise all the big players would've done this a long time ago. Nothing is stopping you from creating a throwaway account on Gmail while someone using a custom domain might be your new B2B lead. There's no realistic way to tell which it is simply from the domain.
Re: Keeping our free tier sustainable by preventing abuse
#19Free tier and free trial abuse is a huge problem, but also a huge opportunity. We have seen customers where free tier abusers created 80k+ accounts in a day and cost millions of dollars. We have also seen businesses, like Oddsjam add significant revenue by prompting abusers to pay. The phycology of abuse is also quite interesting, where even what appears to be serious abusers (think fake credit cards, new email accou…
I’d love to hear more about the idea that somebody making a fraudulent signup with a stolen credit card is potentially going to pay full price if they “get caught”
I imagine an amateur who wants the problem to go away as quickly as possible and with minimum fuss, to the point of overcompensating from anxiety.
Re: Keeping our free tier sustainable by preventing abuse
#20Where can we get a blocklist of those throwaway email domains? or perhaps a really big whitelist of good ones? that would be extremely helpful!
Neither is a viable option, otherwise all the big players would've done this a long time ago. Nothing is stopping you from creating a throwaway account on Gmail while someone using a custom domain might be your new B2B lead. There's no realistic way to tell which it is simply from the domain.
I think they were referring to actual throwaway email providers. Companies that specifically provide that as a service.