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Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

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Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

#51

Post by nhebb »

piramida wrote: post #19

Not only Nigeria, may I point out that most countries of the world, besides the very few top ones (US, Canada, Japan, Australia and Eurozone countries) are in about the same position regarding e-commerce and web acceptance in general. You can't start a paypal account, you can't pay online with locally issued credit cards, and you generally are prejudiced as a criminal. Which must be contributing to the online crime c…

> if you are already treated as a thief, why not just be one?

Because that would just perpetual the problem.

Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

#52

Post by kehers »

jacquesm wrote: post #44
markessien wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not doing a statistical determination. There is no algorithm behind it that indicates when a country is safe to do business with. They have just switched off Nigeria. There is no appeal. There is no review.

While I very much sympathize with your viewpoint I've been peripherally involved in analyzing a bunch of e-commerce traffic and I'm sorry to report that of all the charges coming from Nigeria over a substantial period of time there was not a single one that was actually legitimate. I'm sure there is at least one person in Nigeria that goes against the flow here and that is an honest person simply trying to get by but…

> all the charges coming from Nigeria over a substantial period of time there was not a single one that was actually legitimate

How can dis even be possible? You mean not even one out of the possible millions in a day is legitimate? Haba!

Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

#53

Post by maguay »

MichaelGG wrote: post #38
BoppreH wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works well for normal people. And these options can be configured from the "under the hood" preferences tab.

You're incorrect on both accounts. First, if my OS and browser preferences are stating English (or any language for that matter), why should the IP come into play? "Normal" people will already be using a localized OS and hence will send an Accept-Language with their preferred language (and perhaps country). Second, while you can go try to navigate the "Under the Hood" section in another language to switch languages,…

You're 100% correct here ... That's exactly my experience of downloading Chrome in Thailand. Plus, even if you add Google serch again fresh, it doesn't do instant search from the address bar. It's maddening to say the least!

Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

#54

Post by iwwr »

tylerarnold wrote: post #40
rsheridan6 wrote: post #3

"I cannot ignore two very fair arguments. The amount of fraud from this end has necessitated these measures. Hey! That’s a gap in the market, why don’t you guys in Africa do something about it?0 Fuck off." That's really not a very convincing counterargument.

I'm having the exact same issue while traveling in Romania. Romania is a part of the European Union as well. It's incredibly frustrating just to sit there and get "unable to process." What a crappy error message too. How about "this is a suspicious transaction. Please call GoDaddy or join a LiveChat session to continue." It really feels second class. Fuck indeed!

"Fuck indeed"? You mean fuck GoDaddy, it has competitors, use those instead.

Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

#55

Post by jacquesm »

kehers wrote: post #52
jacquesm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I very much sympathize with your viewpoint I've been peripherally involved in analyzing a bunch of e-commerce traffic and I'm sorry to report that of all the charges coming from Nigeria over a substantial period of time there was not a single one that was actually legitimate. I'm sure there is at least one person in Nigeria that goes against the flow here and that is an honest person simply trying to get by but…

> all the charges coming from Nigeria over a substantial period of time there was not a single one that was actually legitimate How can dis even be possible? You mean not even one out of the possible millions in a day is legitimate? Haba!

No, it means that Nigeria already has a very low number of people that are going to be paying customers for online services and that those people are completely drowned out by the number of Nigerians that attempt to commit fraud.

It's sad, but it's really true.

The possible millions make use of free services they're not possible millions of e-commerce consumers.

You wish. If Nigeria had millions of legit e-commerce consumers the situation would be quite different.

Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

#56

Post by jacquesm »

microarchitect wrote: post #45
rmc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small population? Nigeria has 180 million people. The rest of Africa has similar paypal issues, and a population of 600 million people

He said 'internet population', not population. Do you realise that 70% of the country is below the poverty line? It seems like I'm missing something, so I have a question for those who upvoted this comment. Do you all seriously think that the OP should set up an "african paypal" just because the real paypal is broken for him?

An African paypal that is open to those countries that were locked out due to excessive fraud would have an even harder time to stay alive than paypal already has. After all their fraudulent:legit ratio would be a lot worse than paypals'.

Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

#57

Post by yummyfajitas »

markessien wrote: post #22
yummyfajitas wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paypal, Google adwords, and many other services, do use statistical predictors to determine what is likely to be fraud. Many innocent people get flagged by them. This is a known and accepted risk of using such services. The fact is, if Paypal were not permitted to statistically discriminate, they wouldn't exist. Is it really a moral travesty that they are using nation of origin as one of the predictors?

They are not doing a statistical determination. There is no algorithm behind it that indicates when a country is safe to do business with. They have just switched off Nigeria. There is no appeal. There is no review.

Are you disputing the claim that P(scam | from nigeria) >> P(scam | not from nigeria)? Keep in mind, a scam rate of even 1% would put Paypal Nigeria way into the red.

Obviously, a "which country to do business in" decision is not done by algorithm. That doesn't mean Paypal isn't using objective metrics to make that decision.

Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

#58

Post by todayiamme »

cturner wrote: post #43
markessien wrote: post #4

What I dislike about the attitude of many businesses towards Nigeria is the way they just dismiss the country with a wave of their hand. Sure, there is some scam coming out of the country, but some guy just looks at the numbers and then sends an email "Block Nigeria". And we're not talking of some small site, we're talking of one of the the biggest payment processors in the world. The country is the biggest market in…

What I dislike about the attitude of many businesses towards Nigeria is the way they just dismiss the country with a wave of their hand. I've thought about it before, and wish it was easier to do and that there was more of it. I get lots of ssh connection attempts and spam from the third world. I don't regularly communicate with anyone there. It would fabulous if there was a way I could tell my servers to block traff…

It won't work.

The scam artists and the spammers will learn how to spoof their IP address. Or, just start using VPNs and proxies. It doesn't matter to them as they will find a way around, precisely because their livelihood depends on it.

On the other hand, the genuine users will be the one who suffer. They simply won't have the inclination to spend their entire time trying to engage in subterfuge against your "defenses". They'll throw their hands up. Grumble a bit. Say fuck you for a while and just give up in sheer hopelessness.

At the end this won't punish the sp/cammers. You'll end up targeting whose only crime is honesty. I don't think that's what you want.

There's a saying where I live that sums this up; "locks only exist for the innocent".

Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

#59

Post by markessien »

Actually, there is a lot of talk of the problems, and little talk about solutions. I have a potential solution:

Local whitelisting companies. Paypal and all other payment providers partner with local companies who claim that will pre-screen people who want to use paypal. These companies then use whatever methods they want (visiting the homes, checking bank accounts, escrow) to verify that the people will be valid paypal customers.

Paypal then does not need to verify thousands of people, it just needs to trust this company, and if the company fails a few times, it's replaced and pays some kind of penalty.

Also, amounts can be limited to some value that the verification company holds in escrow for paypal. Something that moves the burden of verification to people who are aware of how things work locally.

Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

#60

Post by epochwolf »

markessien wrote: post #36
damoncali wrote: post #34

This will all go away when Nigerians stop the fraud. It's really that simple (or that complex, depending on your point of view). Like many of Africa's problems, this one is systemic.

How many percentage of internet users from Nigeria are scamming? It's a small minority, probably similar to the number of Americans sending spam emails. But Nigeria can be simply cancelled from the system, because it's a low income country. It's not a systemic problem, and it's not an 'Africa problem'. It's a choice by paypal.

> It's a small minority, probably similar to the number of Americans sending spam emails.

Do you have any data to verify your claims?

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