NullMind’s Lair

Hosting Fraud .. whats the point ?

I was looking thru our logs today for (VPS.NET) sales, and found out that in for each successful sale, our fraud system stops on average 7.5 other sales from going thru.

We have several methods of stopping the fraudster from gaining access to an account, and even so once a while one of them manages to get by, usually our post-sale fraud measures catch them within a few hours anyway.

While those numbers are abysmal, the real mind boggling fact is .. those few that do get by, they never do anything with their account … so .. what is the point ?

If people are going to try to buy hosting with a stolen credit card, you’d expect them to use it to further exploit other revenue streams, be SPAM or hosting fake baking logins, but on the cases that we seen go by, the accounts just sit there, a VPS is created by nothing is ever uploaded, or in most cases even accessed (using it to try and access other VM’s is also out of the question, we use Xen in a cloud setup, you just cant see who is around you).

So it begs the question .. why ? why would anybody steal somebody else’s identity and card details to buy something they never use ?

I guess for some people this is just a sick game to see how far they can go … unfortunately it is a costly game for providers, as they the ones who have to invest in yet more costly fraud prevention technology and pay the premiums for dealing on a high risk merchant market, of course those extra costs then have to be filtered down to the mass public who buys their stuff legit, AKA .. the rest of us.

So my advise, if you know anybody who steals CC info, dont bother reporting them to the authorities … beat them up instead, make sure to break a few typing fingers …

Yes .. I advocate violence towards a fraudster…

12.07.2009 Computers / Internet, Short Rants 2 Comments

Not SPAM… Marketing

So I asked one of our Tera CP developers, who is working on the new VPS.NET integration, to create me a “TEXT” area on the Cloud Servers section that would show to clients who dont have any cloud servers.

The idea is to place some nice text explaining what Cloud Servers are and why people should but it.

He did it, but he called it SPAM !!

pam

No respect I tell ya…

09.07.2009 Computers / Internet, Work 1 Comment

Imitation .. not flattered

They say “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery“

But when the imitation is nothing but poorly modified a rip-off of your work, then I am not so sure the term still fits

This is our VPS.NET “Slider”, we are very proud of it, it conveys exactly what the product is and it’s sleek and sexy

This in the other hand is a blunt rip-off, made by a second grade designer who attempted to pass it as his own

Come on !!, if you are going to steal somebody’s design, at least dont murder it like that !!

24.06.2009 Short Rants 3 Comments

CDN Kicks Ass

For the past few weeks I have been working on the upcoming CDN offering we (UK2 Group) are working on, one of my newest favorite features is called “Origin Pull”.

Origin Pull basically means when somebody hits your site for the first time via one of the CDN pop’s, all of it’s new (referenced) content is cached by the CDN and will, from then on, be served by the CDN network directly (via the closest pop).

Originally I was not keen on it, as I did not understood it, I preferred the option to upload to the CDN directly, but the more I use it, the more I like it, also enjoy retaining the control over the content on my own storage.

Cool Stuff.

20.06.2009 Computers / Internet No Comments

Tired

I had a brainstorm yesterday with D regarding a new offering we are planning, we had agreed on it, but do you know when the back of your brain simply wont rest about it, there is something on it that you feel just wont work ?

So I found mysef up at 4:00 AM working on the idea again, ended up leaving for the office at 5:30 AM and by 9:00 AM I had a new plan that was rock solid .. hurray right ?

No !!, now it’s 6:00 PM and I feel like crap :p ..

06.05.2009 Work No Comments

Wall-E Robot

My latest addition to my desk, a Wall-E RC Robot.

I love to surround my desk with statues and other memorabilia of stuff I like, gives it a bit of color and it’s source of entertainment

20.04.2009 Work No Comments

Piggy Bank

I hate to carry coins, so every night I tend to empty my pockets of any coins I accumulated during the day, so as such, I noticed I was starting to gather quite a few handfuls of coins all around the apartment, it was time for a Piggy bank

And this is it, over 2 feet tall, probably will hold quite a few hundred quid when full, if I timed it correctly, should be read to empty just around XMAS .. the girls will like that

15.04.2009 General No Comments

Pricing Wars

A couple of weeks ago, we announced the final pricing for VPS.NET .. this was not an easy exercise either, it took allot of work and study to determine what prices we had to set that where both attractive to customers while at the same time ensuring our product was profitable.

picture-249jpg

But it seems that for some people we might have as well put a few prices on a cork-board and trow darts at it, where it landed .. that was the price.

It’s not that simple, when pricing a product of this magnitude (a Cloud) one needs first to gather all the costs associated with deploying and maintaining the product, then you need to account for the growth period (remember, one will deploy a cloud system that costed millions of dollars to setup, but you will have 0 clients that first day .. with $0 revenue incoming), it takes months, sometimes years, to recuperate initial costs, while at the same time you have staff and ongoing expenses that ned to be meet as well.

Not, if you compare the traditional VPS market, a traditional VPS provider will buy or lease a server, costing a few hundred dollars to a few thousand and sell out “chunks” of that server, very minimal initial capex and usually they will break even within weeks.

How in the world then do people expect Cloud computing to be priced identical to standard VPS ?, it’s simple .. in general people dont !, those who cannot afford it do !.

It seems that we have now a new generation of people that believe if there is something in the internet that they cannot afford it, then the price is wrong, sorry, but thats not the case, sometimes your budget only really allows for mediocre.

I have instead focused on asking those people who “actually” signed up and their reaction could not be any more different, they love the product and they believe (like us) the pricing is actually it’ strongest point, the initial cost these days for anybody to get into a cloud setup is the hundreds of dollars per month, we reduced it to $30 !!!.

My team and I get demoralized when we read of people blasting us because we dont match the price of a traditional VPS setup, and for a while we did try to see if the math added up, could be be any cheaper ?, no, it does not add up, why would we sell at a loss ?, we are competitively priced and will stop dwelling on what a few leeches are screaming about and concentrate on providing a great product for those people who see the real value of our offering.

I too sometimes browse ebay for that elusive DB9 for a VW Bug price … but it’s just not going to happen.

10.04.2009 Computers / Internet, Short Rants 2 Comments

Sunset

In the Manchester train admiring this gorgeous sunset

– Post From My iPhone

31.03.2009 Uncategorized No Comments

Persistence pays off … sort of

Who says thieves dont work hard ? here is a good example of how desperate fraudster are, this gem of a person utilized 7 different credit cards until one went thru.

The appalling thing is the last one’s details where so good, and the owner is most certainly still oblivious that the cars is stolen, that the anti-fraud systems had no problem passing it thru :p

We are implementing stronger fraud checking, but this is scary, imagine how many cards that a-hole must have ….

30.03.2009 Computers / Internet No Comments

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