Bitcoin + https://www.privateinternetaccess.com.
What's a credit card?
Mastercard and Visa Start Banning VPN Providers
51–60 of 113 posts
Re: Mastercard and Visa Start Banning VPN Providers
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its really not bold at all. If you drink that koolaid, Sounds like you would also believe megaupload was used 'primarily for non infringing use'
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.
Well you did draw the conclusion that it was a "bold claim" without evidence...
The phrase "bold claim" is usually reserved for cases where the claim seems unlikely.
Re: Mastercard and Visa Start Banning VPN Providers
#53Earlier 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?
Because the cost isn't limited to a single merchant, transaction, or customer. Every incident of credit card fraud increases the inconvenience of using credit cards.
That's exactly the opposite of what credit card companies want. They want to make the process of using your credit card as simple and painless as possible.
Ironically, this is also why they've taken none of the obvious technological steps that could virtually eradicate credit card fraud.
Re: Mastercard and Visa Start Banning VPN Providers
#54Keep 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…
As a westerner working a tech job in China this is honestly a bad trend.
How am I possibly going to live without access to Facebook?
Re: Mastercard and Visa Start Banning VPN Providers
#55Using a random Wifi hotspot when traveling is an act of insanity without a VPN. There are some bad guys that use VPNs, but so do many affluent, tech-savvy business travelers. This group, which is highly coveted by Visa/MC, will now be introduced to and eventually become comfortable with Bitcoin. It's like Visa had an all-hands meeting to come up with the best way to drive their target customers to alternative payment methods.
Re: Mastercard and Visa Start Banning VPN Providers
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
My credit card was once stolen and used to sign up for a VPN
Bad luck, but this is only an anecdote, thus hardly any sort of evidence.
The problem is that the only people with data are the Credit Card companies and the VPN providers, and they both have dogs in this fight. We wouldn't believe the numbers they released, if they released numbers, which they probably won't...
So we're left with anecdote and personal opinions to base our decisions on. There's plenty of opinion in this thread - a few anecdotes won't hurt.
Re: Mastercard and Visa Start Banning VPN Providers
#57Keep 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…
As a westerner working a tech job in China this is honestly a bad trend. How am I possibly going to live without access to Facebook?
Setup your own VPN.
Re: Mastercard and Visa Start Banning VPN Providers
#58Keep 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…
> Keep in mind that this is about chargeback risk,
First, I do not think this is about chargebacks, at all. I don't know what it is about, but it's not chargebacks. This looks like a blanket revocation of anonymizing/VPN services. That isn't how fraud/risk engines work (note: I wrote several fraud/risk engines for ecommerce/banking/travel industry as well as passive device fingerprinting).
Sure, make this a riskier transaction, flag it for review. Uh oh, CC info is from Ohio, but IP is from Russia? Up the risk. Same device that is trying to conduct this transaction also tried 30 others in the past two days? Flag for review, up the risk (several hundred more etc etc).
Second, I can't think of a single thing that is legal to buy that is blanket revoked by some company like this.
Third, adult sites, online pharmacies, ticket brokers and the others are NOT treated the same way. They are treated as higher risk transactions that A. need more/closer review B. have a more comprehensive/exhaustive/deeper risk rules engine run on them. and/or C. have a special set of rules that apply specifically to that domain. The CC companies don't just turn off buying an entire domain of goods (adult, online pharmacies, ticket brokers....or VPNs), that isn't how they work.
If true, this smells of something different.
Re: Mastercard and Visa Start Banning VPN Providers
#59Using a random Wifi hotspot when traveling is an act of insanity without a VPN. There are some bad guys that use VPNs, but so do many affluent, tech-savvy business travelers. This group, which is highly coveted by Visa/MC, will now be introduced to and eventually become comfortable with Bitcoin. It's like Visa had an all-hands meeting to come up with the best way to drive their target customers to alternative payment…
Well, I agree with your first point, but I think you're overstating both the carrot and the stick of the alternative. The corporate users have company VPNs; the solo road warriors / lean startups can (already do) rent a cheap VPS for tunnel egress. And whatever your personal view, Bitcoin still sounds like snake oil to most people.
Re: Mastercard and Visa Start Banning VPN Providers
#60Keep 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…
> the people signing up for them are more often "bad guys" than tech professionals looking for privacy
Thank you. All we hear about is how the government is trying to silence us and there's some vast payment processor conspiracy trying to stop us from using credit cards, as if they would want to stop us from giving them money. No, HN, the majority of VPN traffic is not innocent nerds accessing Facebook on a public wifi.
I say this as someone who does rely on a VPN quite a lot. There's sticking up for righteous ideals and then there's ignoring the fact that a ton of your traffic is nefarious. We can't sit around doing nothing as bad guys use our tech for criminal activities and then get outraged when someone brings it up.