Pwned or Bot

If people were content to get the product at a fair price, scalpers wouldn't be a problem in the first place. The whole reason scalpers are considered a problem is that people want the product at a cheaper than fair price, and scalpers prevent that by buying up any inventory that is being sold for below the market rate.

Basically, if companies employed the strategy you suggest, then they'd effectively become the scalpers in the eyes of people who consider scalping a problem, with all the PR issues associated with that.

That's not to say it's necessarily a bad idea though. Once you accept the fact that scalpers exist, it makes sense for companies to capture those profits themselves rather than let scalpers just have them for free.

I don't think Troy is not interested in handling subadressing in the general sense, I think he just dismisses it as "not worth the time" given current statistics.

If it is worth the time and you were writing one of these "Pwned or Bot" "email credit score" detectors, it is easy: you could easily strip +whatever before an @ and check if that exists as well. (Check both!)

> which would improve his service

It's not actually his service he's talking about in this particular article. He doesn't run an explicit "Pwned or Bot" "email credit score" service. He's pointing out it is an interesting use of the HIBP API and also to do it right it needs some sort of value add/scoring system, which he hints at ways to do that but does not provide one (and especially not as a service).

HIBP itself doesn't support subaddressing as a feature, but that's on purpose for a different reason: many of the people that use subaddressing, especially consistent users, use HIBP to narrow down specific account threats and it is useful to them today that HIBP tracks all of their subaddresses independently.

Wanting an RNG / ping based system is not in everyone's interests. Plenty of people want to be able to just buy a product wherever they feel like and not have to spam refresh at specific time for a chance to get a product. Resellers offer this convince and clearly people are willing to pay for it.

It's either some consumers get a good deal while others get nothing, or all consumers pay a fair price and get it.

This isn't even getting to the higher resale price if resellers are blocked because there is less competition between resellers.

After all, Meta's TOS stipulates that you must provide accurate information about yourself, and that you cannot share anything that is misleading.

It also prohibits making groundless reports or appeals, so maybe you could take an eye for an eye it you get unfairly targeted.

Sounds like a self fulfilling prophecy, if they use these rules to authorize transactions.