DigitalOcean: Introducing Our London Region • Hacker News Board

Re: DigitalOcean: Introducing Our London Region

#41

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Jul 15, 2014, 2:25 PM UTC

raiyu wrote: post #32

benbristow wrote: post #31

"We will need you to send us a high quality scan of a government ID or passport in order to verify your account. Please send the picture, or a link of the picture, to:" No thanks.

Unfortunately we deal with a large amount of abusive and fraudulent signups which leads to a bunch of abuse on the network such as mining, port scanning, and flooding. We do everything we can to filter out abuse automatically and then determine whether or not a customer is legitimate outside of that but unfortunately that information isn't always available or conclusive. We'd love to hear suggestion on how we can imp…

SMS verification of a phone number?

Barring that, detect mining and terminate it with system monitoring tools, and prevent port scanning/flooding at your network border (your netops team is active on NANOG and seem to know what they're doing).

Re: DigitalOcean: Introducing Our London Region

#42

Post by meritt » Tue, Jul 15, 2014, 2:25 PM UTC

raiyu wrote: post #32

benbristow wrote: post #31

"We will need you to send us a high quality scan of a government ID or passport in order to verify your account. Please send the picture, or a link of the picture, to:" No thanks.

Unfortunately we deal with a large amount of abusive and fraudulent signups which leads to a bunch of abuse on the network such as mining, port scanning, and flooding. We do everything we can to filter out abuse automatically and then determine whether or not a customer is legitimate outside of that but unfortunately that information isn't always available or conclusive. We'd love to hear suggestion on how we can imp…

Why is mining in particular disallowed? Aren't you allocating a set amount of CPU to a paying customer?

Re: DigitalOcean: Introducing Our London Region

#43

Post by vdaniuk » Tue, Jul 15, 2014, 2:33 PM UTC

raiyu wrote: post #32

benbristow wrote: post #31

"We will need you to send us a high quality scan of a government ID or passport in order to verify your account. Please send the picture, or a link of the picture, to:" No thanks.

Unfortunately we deal with a large amount of abusive and fraudulent signups which leads to a bunch of abuse on the network such as mining, port scanning, and flooding. We do everything we can to filter out abuse automatically and then determine whether or not a customer is legitimate outside of that but unfortunately that information isn't always available or conclusive. We'd love to hear suggestion on how we can imp…

I am a current DigitalOcean client and I was recommending DO to my friends and professional contacts.

New policy of requiring scanned documents is unacceptable in the environment of pervasive nation-state level monitoring and destruction of privacy. If this is a permanent change, I won't recommend DO any longer.

The solution is extremely simple: accept bitcoins for payments and/or fair use verification for free tiers. Also there is a market for forged document scans, just read krebsonsecurity.

Re: DigitalOcean: Introducing Our London Region

#44

Post by justincormack » Tue, Jul 15, 2014, 2:33 PM UTC

artumi-richard wrote: post #34

corford wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doc is dated 2003 so I guess the regs have changed (and there have been some pretty major changes recently like CA2006 and FA2011). I certainly don't get VAT invoices from the US suppliers I use (linode and digital ocean for example). Edit: The 4th paragraph here seems to settle it: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/vatpossmanual/vatposs14300.ht... The reverse charge mechanism places the burden for accounting for V…

I have a more up-to date reference http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/start/register/when-to-register.h... I do get them from pingdom, and AWS. I do not get them from Mailchimp or hostgator.

It may also matter that the service being provided by Digital Ocean is in the UK as well, although I haven't had a chance to read all this yet.

Re: DigitalOcean: Introducing Our London Region

#45

Post by bryanlarsen » Tue, Jul 15, 2014, 2:36 PM UTC

meritt wrote: post #42

raiyu wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately we deal with a large amount of abusive and fraudulent signups which leads to a bunch of abuse on the network such as mining, port scanning, and flooding. We do everything we can to filter out abuse automatically and then determine whether or not a customer is legitimate outside of that but unfortunately that information isn't always available or conclusive. We'd love to hear suggestion on how we can imp…

Why is mining in particular disallowed? Aren't you allocating a set amount of CPU to a paying customer?

Just a guess: mining produces less than $5 per month of bitcoins, so it's fairly strong evidence of a fraudulent credit card or hacked account.

Re: DigitalOcean: Introducing Our London Region

#46

Post by threeseed » Tue, Jul 15, 2014, 2:42 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #41

raiyu wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately we deal with a large amount of abusive and fraudulent signups which leads to a bunch of abuse on the network such as mining, port scanning, and flooding. We do everything we can to filter out abuse automatically and then determine whether or not a customer is legitimate outside of that but unfortunately that information isn't always available or conclusive. We'd love to hear suggestion on how we can imp…

SMS verification of a phone number? Barring that, detect mining and terminate it with system monitoring tools, and prevent port scanning/flooding at your network border (your netops team is active on NANOG and seem to know what they're doing).

How does SMS verification help ? You can just buy a prepaid phone.

Re: DigitalOcean: Introducing Our London Region

#47

Post by bryanlarsen » Tue, Jul 15, 2014, 2:43 PM UTC

Osmium wrote: post #35

fendale wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you shop around in the UK for a credit card, you will get one with zero fees and an excellent exchange rate on foreign currency transactions. I use the Halifax Clarity card and I believe The Nationwide and the Post Office do a good card too. I'd never use a Debit Card for foreign currency transactions though, they always seem to have fees involved.

> I'd never use a Debit Card for foreign currency transactions though, they always seem to have fees involved. Nationwide used to have commission-free cash withdrawals on their debit cards abroad, but I think it was abused by people who had second homes in other countries so withdrawn a year or two ago. I believe they still offer a commission-free credit card though.

My impression was that the banks made a lot more money from the spread than they did from the commission, so I kind of find that surprising. In Canada it's easy to find commission-free cards. The spread is a hidden fee though, so the banks have hiked that up several times.

Re: DigitalOcean: Introducing Our London Region

#48

Post by IgorPartola » Tue, Jul 15, 2014, 2:46 PM UTC

nwh wrote: post #27

kintamanimatt wrote: post #25

The biggest thing that should be celebrated about this announcement is the availability of IPv6 addresses. Hopefully the rest of the regions will be enabled soon too!

At least one other region has had them for a while (Singapore I think).

If by "a while" you mean less than a month: https://www.digitalocean.com/company/blog/announcing-ipv6-su....

I am a customer of DO's but I am not a happy one since I have to muck around with 6in4 tunnels just to get this basic stuff working.

Re: DigitalOcean: Introducing Our London Region

#49

Post by meritt » Tue, Jul 15, 2014, 2:53 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #45

meritt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is mining in particular disallowed? Aren't you allocating a set amount of CPU to a paying customer?

Just a guess: mining produces less than $5 per month of bitcoins, so it's fairly strong evidence of a fraudulent credit card or hacked account.

Ah, if it's indeed related to fraud that's a fine reason generally.

I'm worried about a company restricting usage to resources which you have been allocated, as I thought we were well past the problems of shared hosts with the rise of virtual machines / linux containers.

Re: DigitalOcean: Introducing Our London Region

#50

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Jul 15, 2014, 2:57 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #46

toomuchtodo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMS verification of a phone number? Barring that, detect mining and terminate it with system monitoring tools, and prevent port scanning/flooding at your network border (your netops team is active on NANOG and seem to know what they're doing).

How does SMS verification help ? You can just buy a prepaid phone.

How does using ID verification help? I can just use a borrowed/stolen/pilfered ID?

At some point, you're hitting diminishing returns in your verification requirements.