Mastercard and Visa Start Banning VPN Providers

Post by weavejester » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 2:28 AM UTC

jasonlotito wrote: post #38

weavejester wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that most people who commit copyright infringement are not credit card thieves. However, I don't like drawing conclusions without evidence, and I don't think it should be considered naive to ask for evidence before making up one's mind. In fact, I'd consider it extremely foolish to do otherwise.

I don't have any evidence I can point to. However, I can reference the hundreds of millions of dollars processed through various payment systems I oversaw to state that if you were trying to pay through a VPN, it would classified as extremely high risk, and outside of a few extenuating circumstances, we'd simply deny the transaction. When researching the various scoring mechanisms, we generally find that the VPN was…

Post by dangrossman » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 2:33 AM UTC

jnbiche wrote: post #39

dangrossman wrote: post #6

Keep in mind that this is about chargeback risk, not implementing some secret government policy. "Anonymizing VPNs" are a high risk service -- the people signing up for them are more often "bad guys" than tech professionals looking for privacy -- and they're signing up with stolen payment information. There are far more hackers, crackers, carders, "script kiddies", spammers and other people that need to hide their lo…

I'm pretty dismayed to read this. If you regularly connect to random wireless networks in cafes and hotels, you're a moron if you don't connect through a VPN. If you're not connecting through a VPN all your non-SSL/TLS traffic is available for reading for whatever bored cracker has found his way onto the router. Plus, not all sensitive sites implement SSL/TLS and those that do often implement it poorly[1]. . Not to e…

Post by kbenson » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 2:43 AM UTC

weavejester wrote: post #41

jasonlotito wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any evidence I can point to. However, I can reference the hundreds of millions of dollars processed through various payment systems I oversaw to state that if you were trying to pay through a VPN, it would classified as extremely high risk, and outside of a few extenuating circumstances, we'd simply deny the transaction. When researching the various scoring mechanisms, we generally find that the VPN was…

Isn't paying through a VPN a rather different matter to paying for a VPN? I mean, there's no point to using a privacy VPN to hide your identity only to then give out your credit card details, so it sounds like an inherently biased scenario.

Post by bravura » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 2:52 AM UTC

dangrossman wrote: post #43

jnbiche wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty dismayed to read this. If you regularly connect to random wireless networks in cafes and hotels, you're a moron if you don't connect through a VPN. If you're not connecting through a VPN all your non-SSL/TLS traffic is available for reading for whatever bored cracker has found his way onto the router. Plus, not all sensitive sites implement SSL/TLS and those that do often implement it poorly[1]. . Not to e…

I don't think anyone thinks that. You only need more than 1% of the customers of a service to be paying with fraudulent instruments to be unable to accept credit cards, practically. 1% of your volume coming back in chargebacks consistently is the cutoff with most MAPs.

Post by ketralnis » Thu, Jul 04, 2013, 3:02 AM UTC

bravura wrote: post #47

dangrossman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone thinks that. You only need more than 1% of the customers of a service to be paying with fraudulent instruments to be unable to accept credit cards, practically. 1% of your volume coming back in chargebacks consistently is the cutoff with most MAPs.

Can someone explain why the CC companies ban high-chargeback-risk companies? Why can't they simply ask for a higher fee?